Avarice

Jacopo Ligozzi

National Gallery of Art

Drawn with pen and brown ink on pale brown paper, a man and woman are surrounded by three skeletons in this vertical composition. The woman sits facing and looking out at us on the right half of the drawing. She sits next to a cloth-covered table, which spans the left half of the composition. The woman rests one elbow on the table in her head in that hand and holds a sack down between her knees with the other. She wears long, voluminous robes over a low-cut bodice. Vessels, jewels, a chest, and other sacks line the floor around her bare feet. A balding, bearded man sits on the far side of the table from her. He is along the left edge of the drawing and faces our right in profile. He writes with a quill on an angled writing desk with an ink well closer to us and an ornate jar on the far side. The leftmost of the three skeletons behind them has a goatee and faces our right in profile, both hands raised. The middle skeleton, between the man and woman, has curly hair and holds a tablet with both bony hands. The third skeleton, to the right, has bat-like wings and holds a sack up in one hand and lifts the other hand high. That raised hand nearly brushes a flying creature with a torso like a plucked turkey, frog legs, a lizard-like, gaping mouth, and three-lobed dragonfly wings. The scene takes place under a deep arch. Through the opening to the right, a person wearing armor raises a sword over another person who crouches and holds up one hand in protection. Touches of gold create delicate highlights on the skeleton’s bones, the people’s features and bodies, and the luxurious objects spread across the picture. The drawing is signed with a monogram with the letters “ILHR” and the date 1590 in the lower left corner. The bag the woman holds is inscribed “cehim” and another at her feet is inscribed “ongavi.”