The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion

1536

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Artist, German, 1472 - 1553

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.”

Media Options

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In The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion, Lucas Cranach the Elder chose to portray a scene of religious redemption. The crucified Christ, silhouetted against a darkened and troubled sky, is at the point of death; his last words from the cross are inscribed above him in German: VATER IN DEIN HET BEFIL ICH MEIN GAIST (Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit [Luke 23:46]). At that moment, a Roman centurion, astride a white charger, recognizes Christ's divinity and pronounces: WARLICH DISER MENSCH IST GOTES SVN GEWEST (Truly, this man was the Son of God [Mark 15:39]).

The theme of The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion especially appealed to Protestants because it clearly illustrated the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, the central precept of their creed. The centurion, clothed in contemporary armor, symbolized the "Knight of Christ" who steadfastly defends his new-won belief despite all adversity.

From 1505 until his death, Cranach was the court painter to three successive electors of Saxony. He became close friends with Luther -- who lived in the Saxon town of Wittenberg -- and is considered the foremost artist of the Reformation.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/german-painting-fifteenth-through-seventeenth-centuries.pdf

On View

NGA, West Building, M-035-A

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 50.8 x 34.6 cm (20 x 13 5/8 in.)
    framed: 67.6 x 51.7 x 5.3 cm (26 5/8 x 20 3/8 x 2 1/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.69

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Dr. Demiani, Leipzig, by 1899;[1] (sale, Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, 11 November 1913, no. 40). Mrs. Jenö Hubay [née Countess Cebrian Rosa]; sold after her husband's death in 1937 to Mathias Salamon; acquired 1947 by Aladar Feigel, Budapest; George Biro; sold 1952 to (Dominion Gallery, Montreal);[2] sold 1952 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), jointly owned by (Pinakos [Rudolf Heinemann], Inc., New York); purchased February 1952 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.[4]
[1] The painting was lent to the 1899 Cranach-Ausstellung in Dresden.
[2] Letter dated 8 January 1952 from George Biro to the Dominion Gallery, Dominion Gallery Fonds, Box 71, file 4, purchased 1951-1959, A-E, National Gallery of Canada (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also letter of 8 January 1952 from Max Stern, Dominion Gallery, to Charles Henschel, M. Knoedler & Co., in Knoedler files (copy in NGA curatorial records).
[3] M. Knoedler & Co. Records, accession number 2012.M.54, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Stock book no. 10, p. 67, and Sales book no. 16, no. A4763 (copies in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2128).
[4] The painting was at the NGA from June 1953, but was not formally given to the Gallery by the Kress Foundation until 1961.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1899

  • Cranach-Ausstellung (Deutsche Kunst-Ausstellung), Dresden, 1899, no. 65.

2007

  • Knights in Shining Armor: Myth and Reality 1450-1650, Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania, 2007, fig. 21.

Bibliography

1899

  • Friedländer, Max J. "Die Cranach-Ausstellung in Dresden." Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 22 (1899): 242.

1900

  • Flechsig, Eduard. Cranachstudien. Leipzig, 1900: 275, no. 65, 282, under no. 115.

1932

  • Friedländer, Max J. and Jakob Rosenberg. Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. Berlin, 1932: 85, under no. 303. (Rev. ed., The Paintings of Lucas Cranach. Amsterdam, 1978: 145, no. 378c, repro.).

1956

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 60, no. 20, repro. 61.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 309, repro., as The Crucifixion with Longinus.

1961

  • Seymour, Charles. The Rabinowitz Collection of European Paintings. New Haven, 1961: 41.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 34, as The Crucifixion with Longinus.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 27, repro., as The Crucifixion with Longinus.

  • Talbot, Charles W. Jr. "An Interpretation of Two Paintings by Cranach in the Artist's Late Style." Report and Studies in the History of Art, 1967-1968 1 (1967): 68, 71-78, repro. 69.

1972

  • Angulo Iñiguez, Diego. "Lucas Cranach: el Calvario de 1538 del Museo de Sevilla." Archivo Español de Arte 45 (1972): 6.

1974

  • Schade, Werner. Die Malerfamilie Cranach. Dresden, 1974: 86, no. 635.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 86, repro.

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 165, no. 187, repro. 164.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 24-25, fig. 15.

1982

  • Abrams, Richard I. and Warner A. Hutchinson. An Illustrated Life of Jesus, From the National Gallery of Art Collection. Nashville, 1982: 123-124, color repro.

1983

  • Wolff, Martha. German Art of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1983: unpaginated, repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 165, no. 181, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 106, repro.

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, 1992: 54-55, 68, color repros.

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, 1993: 44-48, color repro. 47.

1995

  • Löcher, Kurt. Review of German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries, by John Oliver Hand with the assistance of Sally E. Mansfield. Kunstchronik 43 no. 1 (January 1995): 15.

2004

  • Koerner, Joseph Leo. The Reformation of the Image. Chicago, 2004: 226-239, fig. 106, 111.

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 136-137, no. 103, color repro.

2009

  • Mack, Rosamund E. "When Armor Was Art: Exploring Images of Armor in the National Gallery of Art Collections." Washington, 1990: color repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: 1536; below date, the artist's device, a serpent with folded wings; across top: VATER IN DEIN HET BEFIL ICH MEIN GAIST (Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit); at top of cross: I.N.R.I; center, below Christ's feet: WARLICH DIESER MENSCH IST GOTES SVN GEWEST (Truly, this man was the Son of God)

Wikidata ID

Q3698212

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