Object Description
371 TEMPTATION OF FAITH, ca. 1535-40
In front of a mountainous landscape near a church with chapel, Faith sits with bare chest and bent head, raising her left arm; a cross lies before her. Four monsters are tempting her. At the right one of them, a man with glasses wearing a hooded robe, bows from a hole in a tree and holds out a sausage to her. Further right another, a bird with a mask wearing a cowl and slippers, appears from a small door in a wall. On its back rides a monk, his body clothed in a barrel and wearing scapulary and cappa. He holds a book in his left hand and the bird's neck in his right. To Faith's left another, a bitch with woman's head wearing a woman's cap, holds an article of clothing. At the left, the fourth monster, a bird(?) having hen's legs and a human head with cockscomb, stretches two wings in the air behind. Left background, a bridge connecting two parts of a burning city.
Bronze, aftercast, 96 x 107 mm.
This plaquette is known as the Great Temptation of Faith, as opposed to another, the Small Temptation of Faith. Weber (no. 37) has corrected the name of the smaller temptation to the Temptation of Patience. This plaquette is dated by Bange (AMP [1921/22], p. 46ff.) in the early period of Flotner—that is, before 1537, but it probably was done in the late 1530s. In a recent publication by Edward Lucie-Smith and Aline Jacquiot (The Waging Dream: Fantasy and the Surreal in Graphic Art, 1450-1900, New York 1975, p. 24, no. 51, illus.) there appears an illustration of a woodcut in reverse after the same subject. It is given no attribution or provenance, but appears to be a study for or copy after the plaquette. The woodcut also contains more detail.
Other specimens: (lead) Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh; Berlin, Staatliche Museen (lost); London, British Museum; Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum; Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum; (bronze) Munich, Staatliche Muenzsammlung (gilt); Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale; Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Coll. Wasset); Prague, Kunstgewerbemuseum.
Bibl.: Lange, no. 115, p. 131; Leitschuh, p. 19, no. 85, pl. 8; Bange, D.M., p. 79, no. 5689, pl. 6; DeCoo, no. 2382; Weber, no. 38. Auction catalogs: Lobbecke, no. 890, pl. 43; Heinrici, no. 158, pl. 19; Rosenheim, no. 764, 2.
