GEORG PECHAM (MUNICH 1568-1604)

This exceptionally large sheet may be the most ambitious surviving drawing by the Munich painter Georg Pecham (or Beham), who is also recorded as having worked elsewhere in Bavaria, as well as in present-day Switzerland and Austria. The drawing’s style, with a hint of Italian gracefulness which to some scholars has suggested the artist visited Venice, can be compared to signed sheets dated to the last decade of Pecham’s life (for two examples, see H. Tietze et al., Die Zeichnungen der deutschen Schulen bis zum Beginn der Klassizismus, Vienna, 1933, I, nos. 433, 434, II, pl. 146). Particularly close, also in subject, is the Vision of Ezechiel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2005.26; see S. Alsteens in Dürer and Beyond. Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400-1700, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012, no. 58, ill.).