Jacob Ziegler

The tablet at the top reads, in Latin, the likeness of Jacob Ziegler of Landau, lettered in the antique manner a scholar of the time would want. Ziegler was born around 1470 in Landau on the Isar in Bavaria and studied under the humanist poet Conrad Celtis. He taught theology in Vienna, and in 1532 he published a geography of the Holy Land with a set of maps, one of them among the earliest printed maps of Scandinavia. He wrote to Erasmus and, like him, sympathised with the reformers while staying inside the Catholic Church. After a stay in Rome he wrote sharply against the papacy, then fell out with the Protestants as well. In old age he found shelter in Passau under the protection of its bishop, and that is where Huber painted him, some time between 1544 and 1549. Ziegler died in Passau in August 1549.