Five Sages from Ancient Greece

These five sheets from a series which originally must have depicted the Seven Sages of Greece can be attributed to the North-German artist Riesenberger, the technique and subject-matter of whose work resembles that of fellow-artists active in Hamburg, such as Jacob Matthias Weyer and Johann Joachim Pfeiffer the Elder (for an example by the former, 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. 94, ill.). A bound collection of drawings by Riesenberger’s son, many similar in style and technique, dated 1689, is at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (P. Prange, Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle Kupferstichkabinett, I, Deutsche Zeichnungen 1450-1800. Katalog, Cologne and other cities, 2007, no. 740, ill.).