Lucas Cranach the Elder

German, 1472 - 1553

Lucas Cranach was born in 1472 and took his name from his birthplace, the Franconian town of Kronach, which was part of the bishopric of Bamberg. His father, Hans Maler, was an artist and it is assumed that he was Cranach's first teacher. Around 1501, Cranach traveled to Vienna where he stayed until at least 1504. In addition to several woodcuts which were strongly influenced by the graphic art of Albrecht Dürer, these years saw an outpouring of paintings of extraordinary quality.

Although the exact date of his appointment is not known, by April 1505, Cranach was employed at the court of Friedrich the Wise, Elector of Saxony, at Wittenberg. The Venetian, Jacopo de' Barbari, was also at court from 1503 to 1505 and his art had a continuing influence upon Cranach. During this time Cranach supplied paintings, murals, and decorations for the various ducal residences at Wittenberg, Veste Coburg, Torgau, and elsewhere. The murals no longer survive, but the altarpiece of The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine monogrammed and dated 1506 contains views of the castle of Coburg and was most likely a ducal commission. In 1508, Cranach spent several months in the Netherlands, particularly Antwerp; in his Holy Kindred altarpiece, dated 1509, the women's kerchiefs are clearly Netherlandish and critics have seen the compositional and stylistic influence of Quentin Massys and Jan Gossaert.

Cranach headed a large workshop that included his sons Hans (c. 1513-1537) and Lucas the Younger (1515-1586) as well as numerous apprentices and journeymen. Well in excess of four hundred paintings have been assigned to Cranach and his atelier. The early works are often signed with the monogram LC, but in 1508 Duke Friedrich the Wise granted Cranach a coat-of-arms depicting a serpent with upright bat wings holding a ring in its mouth. The winged serpent probably had humanistic or hieroglyphic significance and could stand for Kronos, the Greek god of time, a pun on the artist's name in Latin as well as German. Cranach used this device of his paintings from 1508 onward. After 1534, however, the serpent's wings are those of a bird and shown folded. The new form is prevalent from 1537 onward and has been connected with the death of the artist's son Hans in 1537. The presence of the serpent with folded wings on paintings dated 1535 and 1536 undermines this somewhat romantic notion but has been seen as an attempt by Cranach to distinguish the work of his sons.

Lucas Cranach is probably the artist most closely associated with the Protestant Reformation. He was a friend of Martin Luther who lived and taught in Wittenberg under the protection of the Electors of Saxony. Cranach and his shop produced great numbers of portraits of Luther, his wife, and other Reformers, as well as depictions of such "Protestant" themes as Christ Blessing the Children and Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery. It should be remembered that the artist also worked for Luther's adversary, Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg and in 1525 and 1527 depicted the Cardinal as Saint Jerome in indoor and outdoor settings. The range of subject matter in Cranach's paintings is, in fact, quite wide. In addition to religious works, he produced a variety of mythological and secular subjects, probably intended for humanist or courtly patrons. Cranach was also an excellent portraitist.

For most of his life Cranach lived in Wittenberg in Saxony, and loyally served not only Friedrich the Wise, but his successors Johann the Steadfast and Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous.

Numerous documents testify to Cranach's industry and prosperity. As one of the leading citizens of Wittenberg he owned several houses, as apothecary, a publishing firm that specialized in Reformation literature, and on several occasions served on the city council and as burgomaster. In 1547 when Johann Friedrich was taken prisoner by Charles V, Cranach joined him in exile in Augsburg and Innsbruck, and in 1552 followed him to Weimar where Johann Friedrich re-established the Saxon court. Lucas Cranach died in Weimar in 1553 at the age of eighty-one.

[Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1993: 26-27.]

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A nude woman with pale, rosy skin lies across a grassy field in front of a pool fed by water from a rocky outcropping, with a town in the distance in this horizontal painting. The woman lies back against a scarlet-red garment, presumably a dress, bunched under her shoulders, with her head to our left. Her face turns to us, but she cuts her eyes to our right, her lids nearly closed. She has a wide face, a pointed chin, and her thin, rose-pink lips are closed. Her blond hair is pulled back and gossamer fabric, nearly invisible, creates a veil reaching her arched eyebrows. She rests her head against her raised right arm, closest to the grass on which she lies, and her other arm rests along the side of her body. Her ankles are together but her knees fall slightly apart. More sheer fabric wraps across her hips. She wears a black cord tied in a bow around her neck and a longer, thick, gold chain necklace with a pendant with a ruby-red stone and pearls. On her left hand, along her body, she wears a crimson-red and gold, jeweled bracelet and three gold rings with red and blue jewels on her thumb, pointer, and pinkie fingers. The grass beneath her is painted with emerald-green plants and leaves against a dark, forest-green background. Two partridges walk in the grass, one pecking at the ground, near the lower right corner of the composition. An ash-gray tree trunk spans the height of the painting near the birds, and a bow and garnet-red, long, box-like quiver of arrows hang from a branch. Beyond the band of grass, to our left, is a pool being fed from a stream of water coming from the rocky, cave-like opening above. The pool is lined with more dark green trees and bushes. In the distance, to our right, is a town with slate-gray buildings with burgundy-red roofs. The sky above deepens from pale, sunshine yellow along the horizon to shell pink to watery blue. A rectangular plaque in the upper left corner reads, “FONTIS NYMPHA SACRI SOM NVM NE RVMP QVIESCO.” On the rock face of the cave nearby is a tiny silhouette of a serpent with folded wings holding a ring in its mouth.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Nymph of the Spring, after 1537, oil on panel, Gift of Clarence Y. Palitz, 1957.12.1

The Nymph of the Spring

Lucas Cranach the Elder · after 1537 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1957.12.1

An armored man on horseback looks up at the middle of three men hanging on rough-hewn wooden crosses placed along on a low, stony hill against a dark sky in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin, and the crucified men wear white loincloths wrapped around their hips. The man on the central cross, Jesus, has a close-cropped beard and a ring of thorns around his scraggly, reddish-brown hair. His head tilts to our left and his eyes roll up under knit brows, his mouth slack. His long loincloth swirls in the wind on either side of his knees. Each hand is nailed to the cross, and his overlapping feet are nailed with a third. The letters “INRI” are inscribed on a strip of paper above the cross. The men on the other crosses have more tanned skin and the crosses are angled inward to face Jesus. Both men have reddish beards and short hair, and their loincloths are tightly tied. The man to our left has a lean build and looks at Jesus so is seen in profile. The man to our right turns his head away, to face us, and has a heavier build. At the foot of the central cross, the silvery-gray horse faces our right in profile as it rears up with its front legs lifted. The rider wears pewter-gray armor with a ruby-red, wide-brimmed hat with a ring of puffy, white feathers along its edge. The rider has short, flax-colored hair and a trimmed beard. He looks up at Jesus with mouth open and raises his right hand, with the first two fingers raised. Pleated red fabric hangs from his right hip, and the gold hilt of a sword hangs off the opposite hip. The hill is lunar-gray and scattered with stones. The sky behind the hill and crosses deepens from buttercup yellow along the hill to marigold orange, blush pink, and a wider band of indigo blue. The top half of the sky is filled with heavy, roiling, steel-gray clouds that darken to black along the top edge. A line of German text painted with pale yellow is placed near the horseman’s mouth, and it reads, “WARLICH DISER MENSCH IST GOTES SVN GEWEST.” A second line of text appears near the top center, over Jesus’s cross: “VATER IN DEIN HET BEFIL ICH MEIN GAIST.”
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion, 1536, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.69

The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion

Lucas Cranach the Elder · 1536 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.69

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Madonna and Child, probably c. 1535 or after, oil on panel, Gift of Adolph Caspar Miller, 1953.3.1

Madonna and Child

Lucas Cranach the Elder · probably c. 1535 or after · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1953.3.1

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hercules Relieving Atlas of the Globe, c. 1530, pen and black ink over brush and gray wash over chalk on laid paper, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2006.111.2

Hercules Relieving Atlas of the Globe

Lucas Cranach the Elder · c. 1530 · pen and black ink over brush and gray wash over chalk on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2006.111.2

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of a Woman, 1522, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.2

Portrait of a Woman

Lucas Cranach the Elder · 1522 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1959.9.2

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther as 'Junker Jorg', 1522, woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.2875

Luther as 'Junker Jorg'

Lucas Cranach the Elder · 1522 · woodcut ·  Accession ID  1943.3.2875

Shown from the waist up, a clean-shaven man with pale, peachy skin is dressed in black and burgundy red in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are as wide as the composition and his hat nearly touches the top edge, so he almost fills the painting. His body and face are angled to our right, and he looks off in that direction with hooded brown eyes under slightly raised brows. He has a long, bumped nose, high cheekbones, the hint of a five-o-clock shadow, and his pale pink lips are closed. His hair is cut straight across at ear length, and fuzzy sideburns come down to his jawline. A wide, soft black cap curves down either side of his head to ear level. He wears a white shirt with a delicate black pattern on the neckline, which is tied with a thin black ribbon. A voluminous dark red shawl or wrap has two black bands along the bottom hem, and it engulfs his sloping shoulders. In the lower corners of the painting, we see long black sleeves under the wrap. The sleeves have slashes to allow the white undergarment to show through. He is set against a lime-green background and illuminated by bright light from the upper right, which creates a darker green shadow behind him, to our left. The artist signed the painting with a symbol on a small, light brown panel, which appears to be affixed to the back wall in the upper left corner of the painting. The date, “1522,” appears over a winged serpent holding a ring in its mouth.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of a Man, 1522, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1959.9.1

Portrait of a Man

Lucas Cranach the Elder · 1522 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1959.9.1

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c. 1520, woodcut, Rosenwald Collection, 1953.6.12

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Lucas Cranach the Elder · c. 1520 · woodcut ·  Accession ID  1953.6.12

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther as an Augustinian Friar, 1520, engraving, Rosenwald Collection, 1964.12.1

Luther as an Augustinian Friar

Lucas Cranach the Elder · 1520 · engraving ·  Accession ID  1964.12.1

Shown from the lap up, a young girl with pale, peachy skin and long, light brown hair wears a crimson-red dress with slashed, puffed sleeves and three large, gold-colored necklaces covering much of her chest in this vertical portrait painting. She sits with her body angled slightly to our left and, with her head tipped slightly forward, she looks off in that direction with slate-blue eyes under faint brows. Her long, wavy, golden-brown hair falls from her high forehead and lies loose around her shoulders. Her dress has bands of a floral pattern outlined in a lighter red against a ruby-red background, and the bodice ties with red laces down the front over a white undershirt. The tight-fitting, long sleeves are slashed around the elbows so the white linen shirt can be pulled through to create puffs. Her high-necked chemise has a jeweled band at the neck. The three strings of the distinctive necklace seem to be made of gold-colored strips of fabric or leather made into twisting loops, which are then linked together like a paper chain. Each strip is painted or decorated with a fine, dense lattice pattern and edged in gold. The girl sits with her wrists crossed in her lap against a black background.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, A Princess of Saxony, c. 1517, oil on panel, Ralph and Mary Booth Collection, 1947.6.2

A Princess of Saxony

Lucas Cranach the Elder · c. 1517 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1947.6.2

Bibliography

1932

  • Friedländer, Max J. and Jakob Rosenberg. Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. Berlin, 1932. Also rev. ed. The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, Amsterdam, 1978.

1974

  • Koepplin, Dieter and Tilmann Falk. Lukas Cranach. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik. 2 vols. Exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel, 1974, 1976.

1980

  • Schade, Werner. Die Malerfamilie Cranach. Dresden, 1974. Also English trans. New York, 1980.

1993

  • Hand, John Oliver, with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1993: 26-27.