Georg Pencz (c. 1500 – 11 October 1550) was a Germanengraver,painter andprintmaker.^[1]

Pencz was probably born inWestheim nearBad Windsheim/Franconia. He travelled toNuremberg in 1523 and joinedAlbrecht Dürer’satelier. Like Dürer, he visitedItaly and was profoundly influenced byVenetian art; it is believed he worked withMarcantonio Raimondi. In 1525, he was imprisoned with the brothersBarthel Beham andHans Sebald Beham, the so-called"godless painters", for spreading the radical views ofThomas Müntzer by asserting disbelief inbaptism,Christ, andtransubstantiation. The three were pardoned shortly afterwards and became part of the group known as the "Little Masters" because of their tiny, intricate, and influential prints.

In Nuremberg, influenced by works he had seen in Italy, Pencz painted a number oftrompe-l'œil ceilings in the houses of patrician families; one, for which a drawing survives, showed workmen raising building materials on a hoist, against an open sky, to create the illusion that the room was still under construction.^[2]

Around 1539, Pencz briefly returned to Italy, visitingRome for the first time, returning to Nuremberg in 1540, where he became the city painter and earned his greatest success as aportraitist. As an engraver, he ranks among the best of the German “Little Masters”. Notable prints includeSix Triumphs of Petrarch andLife of Christ (26 plates). The best of his paintings are portraits, such asPortrait of a Young Man,Portrait of Marshal Schirmer, andPortrait of Erhard Schwetzer and his wife.

In 1550, he was namedcourt painter byAlbert,Duke of Prussia, but died inLeipzig before arriving at the court.^[3]

In March 1939, the NaziGestapo seized Pencz's "Young Couple in a Landscape" from the home of Arthur Feldmann, a Jewish collector who was murdered in the Holocaust. The Pencz was sold atSotheby’s in 1946. The art collector Rosi Schilling donated it to theBritish Museum, which settled a Nazi spoliation claim from Feldmann's grandson in 2013.^[4]

• Works by Georg Pencz at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
• Georg Pencz at Artcyclopedia