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Justice (Frontispiece to The Seven Deadly Sins)

Léon Davent (French, active about 1540–1556)
After: Luca Penni (Italian, 1500–1556)
1550s

Medium/Technique Etching and engraving
Dimensions Sheet: 29.4 × 30.8 cm (11 9/16 × 12 1/8 in.)(trimmed wihin the platemark)
Credit Line Fund in memory of Horatio Greenough Curtis
Accession Number1996.253
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsPrints

Catalogue Raisonné Zerner L.D. 85 bis (i.e., the second state of L.D. 85); Herbet 65; not in Bartsch; IFF (16th cent.) vol. 2, p. 292
DescriptionFrontispiece to The Seven Deadly Sins. Chained to Justice's belt are personifications of the seven deadly sins: lust (torch) gluttony (meat and drink), avarice (moneybags), anger (dagger), envy (snake), sloth (handlessness) and pride (mirror). The seven prints in the series, Zerner L.D. 86-92, treat these subjects. Made when Davent and Penni were in Paris in the 1550s; see The French Renaissance in Prints (UCLA, 1994), pp. 468-9.

This second state of the print has additional hatching in many places.
Marks Verso, left center, stamped in brown ink, the mark of the MFA (Lugt 282)