1989.72
Virtue Overcoming Vice
Artists
Marie Katharina Prestel
(1747 - 1794);
[
after
Jacopo Ligozzi];
[
also attributed to Johann Gottlieb Prestel
Johann Gottlieb Prestel]
Title
Virtue Overcoming Vice
Creation Date
1781
Century
18th century
Dimensions
12 1/16 in. x 8 7/8 in. (30.7 cm. x 22.6 cm.)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
Europe, Germany
Medium and Support
etching and aquatint on paper
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1989.72
Maria Katharina Prestel’s spectacular print faithfully reproduces, although in reverse, Jacopo Ligozzi’s drawing with its gold highlights from around 1590 (Albertina Museum, Vienna).Ligozzi’s eerie design pits beauty against monstrosity: a serpent coils around the male figure’s legs, its dog-like head suggestively protruding from between them. To the left, a large-headed grotesque spews out a river of bile. The powerful female figure raises her arm to strike her opponent while treading on his hand and grabbing his hair, recalling Donatello’s famous statue Judith Killing Holofernes. The subject previously identified here as “Truth Conquering Envy” is in fact “Virtue Conquering Vice.” The allegory of Envy appears most often as an aged woman rather than as a male. In Ligozzi’s related painting The Allegory of Virtue, Love Defending Virtue, Virtue appears in a long flowing garment with bared breasts like the female victor shown in this print.
Object Description
The print has been attributed to Maria Prestel’s father, Johann Gottlieb Prestel (German, 1739-1808). It is a reproduction of a drawing by Jacopo Ligozzi, Italian,active 1547 - c. 1627
