Portrait of Pier Candido (after a medal by Pisanello)

This work and a closely related sheet in The Met's collection (2026.165) are based on portrait medals from the workshop of Pisanello. Representing two of the leading lights of the quattrocento--Pisanello himself (see 2023.569.5) and the humanist scholar Pier Candido--these drawings encapsulate fundamental tenets of Renaissance art history: the paragone (between art and literature and between drawing and sculpture) and transalpine artistic dialogue. Possibly made by Pencz during his second trip to Italy in 1540-41, these drawings once belonged to a series together with two other examples now in Frits Lugt Collection in Paris. Portraying women named Maddalena of Mantua and Isabella Michiel Sesso, the Paris sheets also record Italian medals, one from the school of Antico, the other by Giovanni Maria Pomedelli. Finished drawings, all four are mounted on larger sheets of antique laid paper and are beautifully preserved. This strongly suggests that they were always kept in an album, plausibly one that documented a larger art collection.