The Triumph of Eternity, plate six from The Triumphs of Petrarch

The final installment to Georg Pencz’s Italianate ode to Petrarch offers a dramatic rendition of the Last Judgment. Christ, the Evangelists, the Saints, and the Saved rise on clouds above the earthly turmoil of the Apocalypse. Rome burns to the left, and amid the skeletons, the Whore of Babylon ministers to the Damned below. The Parisian printseller Pieter Mariette II’s signature and the date, 1666, appear at the lower right in brown ink; clearly Pencz’s Triumphs series remained visually effective and eminently collectible over a century after its creation.