Gluttony. From: The Vices.

Heinrich Aldegrever was one of the so-called 'Little Masters', a group of German artists making small prints in the generation after Albrecht Dürer, who included Hans Baldung Grien, the Beham brothers and Georg Pencz. The close resemblance of his work to that of Dürer led to Aldegrever being called the 'Albert of Westphalia', although his style went on to depart from his mentor's intricate line work to stress the optical effects of light and shadow. He became a Lutheran convert in 1531, but continued to depict religious themes, while his ornamental engravings were used as models by artists and craftsmen well into the 17th century. His images of virtues and vices were so popular that Aldegrever made cycles of both in 1549 (not yet represented in the collection) and, here, 1552. Te Papa owns the complete cycle of virtues and vices, all acquired in 1978. These complement several Aldegrever prints in the foundation art collection, presented to the Colonial Museum, forerunner of Te Papa, in 1869 by Bishop Ditlev Monrad.

Gluttony (Gula) is an engraving in the cycle of allegorical depictions of the Vices or the Seven Deadly Sins (counterparts to the Seven Virtues), based on biblical numerical symbolism and Christian moral metaphor. The inscription can be translated as 'Through gluttony, the common indulgence of acute senses is blunted, and creates vain pleasures, her companions'. St Thomas Aquinas considered it the deadliest of the Seven Sins, because it was essentially intemperate and lacked reason and restraint. A vivid modern personification of gluttony is Roald Dahl's Auguutus Gloop. Aldegrever's  female personification sits astride a boar, the traditional symbol of gluttony, who licks its mouth. Gula holds a lance from which a flag flies, with a hedghog as its motif. Hedghogs had a reputation for their ability to scale grapevines and pick several grapes at once to carry home, which led to their symbolism in this context. Owls would eat and regurgitate parts of their prey like bones and hair, while their enlarged pupils allude to drunkenneess, which is more overt in Aldegrever's other representations of gluttony. Cats, like owls, eat a lot of their fur while cleaning themselves again to regurgitate it. The obelisk is a reference to the decadence of the Roman Empire, with gluttony contributing to its downfall.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Aldegrever

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                   December 2016