Avarice

Dürer's Avarice from 1507 depicting the allegorical figure of greed reflects the northern humanist tradition of personifying the Seven Deadly Sins, which combined moralizing intent with opportunities for dramatic pictorial invention. Dürer painted this during a productive period following his second Italian journey in 1505-1507, during which he had studied Venetian colorism and compositional techniques. The figure's grasping hands and hunched posture translate a moral concept into physical form with Dürer's characteristic combination of symbolic precision and visual drama. Such allegories circulated through multiple media — prints, painted panels, sculpture, tapestries — and Dürer's prints on similar themes reached an international audience far beyond the German-speaking world.

The figure combines Italian-influenced modeling with Northern precise detail, the allegorical attributes rendered with Dürer's characteristic meticulous technique and psychological intensity.