Portrait of a Seated Youth

By 1544 Georg Pencz had settled into a comfortable post as the official painter of Nuremberg, and by then he had twice made the long trip south to Italy. You can see where those journeys landed him. This seated young man is posed with the cool, unhurried poise of an Italian portrait rather than the sharp linear manner Pencz had learned in Germany. The plain background throws all the attention onto the face and the steady, slightly guarded gaze. Pencz had made his name as an engraver of small prints, and that precision is still here, tightened now into oil on a wooden panel.