Avarice. 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.

The Church applied avarice or greed to mean an artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote: 'Avarice is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal thing'. The inscription at the base of Aldegrever's engraving is a confirmation of this. It translates as: 'The faithless traitor, the robber who robs pious defenseless people, follows the greed of his own accord as mistress'.

The focal point of the engraving, Avarice (Avaritia) is a female personification of this vice/sin. She sits astride an animal that looks like a wolf crossed with a bear, with more of the former. Wolves traditionally symbolise the avaracious and rich, who rip (off) their prey without being hungry, purely with the desire to destroy them. Vultures are admired for their sharp sight and keen and speedy appetite for carcasses, which they observe from sometimes considerable distances. Crows are also carrion birds, known for their cunning and malign qualities as well as their hearty appetites. The symbolism of the chicken on the spit is less obvious, but overlaps with gluttony as the gratifying object of greed.