Portrait of Simon von Liebenstein (?)
Hans Schwarz German
Not on view
This sensitive portrait is one of a series of some 168 drawings said to have been owned by the patrician Pfinzing family of Nurnberg. Originally attributed to Albrecht Durer, they were correctly reassigned to the celebrated German medalist Hans Schwarz in the late nineteenth century following the discovery of his fragmentary monogram on a drawing’s verso. Schwarz’s oeuvre includes remarkable profile portraits of the burghers of the early German Renaissance, as imposing in quality as the imagery on antique coins. The Lehman drawing was preliminary to the carving of a portrait medal of Simon von Liebenstein, a canon of the cathedral in Speyer. The annotation “Maister Arnold” refers to a much later inscription relating to the sheet’s misattribution to Albrecht Durer.
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