The ‘Deutsch’ and the ‘Welsch’: Jörg Breu the Elder's sketch for the Story of Lucretia and the uses of classicism in sixteenth-century Germany

Jörg Breu the Elder's Story of Lucretia (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 7969; Figure 7.1), ¹ was painted in 1528 as the first of a cycle of paintings of Heroines commissioned from prominent Bavarian and Swabian artists by Wilhelm IV, the Wittelsbach Duke of Bavaria, and his wife Jacobaea von Baden. At the same time, the duke commissioned a further series of Antique Heroes, to which Breu contributed a panel of the Battle of Zama (Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 8). ² These cycles hung in the Residenz in Munich, though their precise location there is unknown. ³ The prestige attached to such commissions may be judged from the fact that Albrecht Altdorfer declined a term as mayor of Regensburg in order to paint the Battle of Issus, depicting the defeat of Darius by Alexander the Great in 333 b.c., which today is the cycle's best known image. ⁴