Portrait of Georg Knauer (1537): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Georg Knauer (1537) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Peter Dell (German, 1490–1552).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

George Knauer sits behind a classical archway holding a personal letter. His age appears in the background while the date and the artist's initials "PD" are in the corners. With this relief, Dell was competing with painted portraiture. The emergence of small portrait reliefs coincided with the growing popularity of portrait medals. Produced in limited numbers, roughly two hundred wood reliefs survive today.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Georg Knauer
• Date: 1537
• Creator attribution: Peter Dell (German, 1490–1552)
• Culture: South Germany, 16th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: pearwood
• Dimensions: Overall: 14 x 8.9 cm (5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1927.427

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "German Portrait Plaques of the Sixteenth Century." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 7 (July 1928): 154-157
• Milliken, William. "Four Stone Models for German Medals." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 6 (June 1957): 118-121.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.