Cranach had a large workshop and many of his works exist in different versions; his sonLucas Cranach the Younger and others continued to create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. He has been considered the most successful German artist of his time.[1]
Signature of Cranach the Elder from 1508 on a winged snake with ruby ring, depicted in a 1514 portrait
He was born atKronach in upperFranconia (now centralGermany), probably in 1472. His exact date of birth is unknown. He learned the art of drawing from his father Hans Maler (hissurname meaning "painter" and denoting his profession, not his ancestry, after the manner of the time and class).[2] His mother, with surname Hübner, died in 1491. Later, a variant of the name of his birthplace was used for his surname, another custom of the times. Where Cranach was trained is not known, but it was probably with local south German masters, as with his contemporaryMatthias Grünewald, who worked atBamberg andAschaffenburg (Bamberg is the capital of the diocese in which Kronach lies).[3] There are also suggestions that Cranach spent some time inVienna around 1500.[2] From 1504 to 1520, he lived in a house on the south west corner of the marketplace inWittenberg.[4]
According to Gunderam (the tutor of Cranach's children), Cranach demonstrated his talents as a painter before the close of the 15th century. His work then drew the attention of DukeFrederick III, Elector of Saxony, known as Frederick the Wise, who attached Cranach to his court in 1504. The records ofWittenberg confirm Gunderam's statement to this extent: that Cranach's name appears for the first time in the public accounts on the 24 June 1504, when he drew 50 gulden for the salary of half a year, aspictor ducalis ("the duke's painter").[3] Cranach was to remain in the service of the Elector and his successors for the rest of his life, although he was able to undertake other work.[2]
Cranach married Barbara Brengbier, the daughter of aburgher ofGotha and also born there; she died atWittenberg on 26 December 1540. Cranach later owned a house at Gotha,[3] but most likely he got to know Barbara near Wittenberg, where her family also owned a house, which later also belonged to Cranach.[2] Cranach had two sons, both artists:Hans Cranach, whose life is obscure and who died inBologna in 1537; andLucas Cranach the Younger, born in 1515, who died in 1586.[2] He also had three daughters. One of them was Barbara Cranach, who died in 1569, married Christian Brück (Pontanus), and was an ancestor ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe. His granddaughter marriedPolykarp Leyser the Elder, thus making him an ancestor of thePolykarp Leyser family of theologians.[5][6]
Apollo and Diana, 1530Portrait ofMartin Luther, 1529
The first evidence of Cranach's skill as an artist comes in a picture dated 1504. Early in his career he was active in several branches of his profession: sometimes a decorative painter, more frequently producing portraits andaltarpieces, woodcuts, engravings, and designing thecoins for the electorate.[3]
Early in the days of his official employment he startled his master's courtiers by the realism with which he painted still life, game and antlers on the walls of the country palaces atCoburg and Locha; his pictures of deer and wild boar were considered striking, and the duke fostered his passion for this form of art by taking him out to the hunting field, where he sketched "his grace" running the stag, or Duke John sticking a boar.[3]
Before 1508 he had painted several altar-pieces for theCastle Church at Wittenberg in competition withAlbrecht Dürer,Hans Burgkmair and others; the duke and his brother John were portrayed in various attitudes and a number of his best woodcuts and copper-plates were published.[3]
In 1509 Cranach went to the Netherlands, and painted theEmperor Maximilian and the boy who afterwards becameEmperor Charles V. Until 1508 Cranach signed his works with his initials. In that year the elector gave him the winged snake as an emblem, orKleinod, which superseded the initials on his pictures after that date.[3]
Cranach was the court painter from 1505 to 1550[7] to the electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, an area in the heart of the emergingProtestant faith. His patrons were powerful supporters ofMartin Luther, and Cranach used his art as a symbol of the new faith. Cranach made numerous portraits of Luther, and provided woodcut illustrations for Luther's German translation of theBible.[8] Somewhat later the duke conferred on him themonopoly of the sale of medicines at Wittenberg, and a printer's patent with exclusive privileges as tocopyright inBibles. Cranach's presses were used by Martin Luther. His apothecary shop was open for centuries, and was only lost by fire in 1871.[3]
Cranach, like his patron, was friendly with theProtestant Reformers at a very early stage; yet it is difficult to fix the time of his first meeting with Martin Luther. The oldest reference to Cranach in Luther's correspondence dates from 1520. In a letter written fromWorms in 1521, Luther calls him his "gossip", warmly alluding to his "Gevatterin", the artist's wife. Cranach first made an engraving of Luther in 1520, when Luther was an Augustinianfriar; five years later, Luther renounced his religious vows, and Cranach was present as a witness at the betrothal festival of Luther andKatharina von Bora.[2] He was also godfather to their first child, Johannes "Hans" Luther, born 1526. In 1530 Luther lived at the citadel ofVeste Coburg under the protection of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and his room is preserved there along with a painting of him. The Dukes became noted collectors of Cranach's work, some of which remains in the family collection atCallenberg Castle.
Portrait of Martin Luther, 1526, The Phoebus Foundation
The death in 1525 of the ElectorFrederick the Wise and ElectorJohn's in 1532 brought no change in Cranach's position; he remained a favourite withJohn Frederick I, under whom he twice (1531 and 1540) filled the office of burgomaster ofWittenberg.[3]In 1547, John Frederick was taken prisoner at theBattle of Mühlberg, and Wittenberg was besieged. As Cranach wrote from his house to the grand-masterAlbert, Duke of Prussia atKönigsberg to tell him of John Frederick's capture, he showed his attachment by saying,[3]
I cannot conceal from your Grace that we have been robbed of our dear prince, who from his youth upwards has been a true prince to us, but God will help him out of prison, for the Kaiser is bold enough to revive the Papacy, which God will certainly not allow.[3]
During the siege Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, remembered Cranach from his childhood and summoned him to his camp at Pistritz. Cranach came, and begged on his knees for kind treatment for Elector John Frederick.[3]
Three years afterward, when all the dignitaries of the Empire met atAugsburg to receive commands from the emperor, andTitian came at Charles's bidding to paint KingPhilip II of Spain, John Frederick asked Cranach to visit the city; and here for a few months he stayed in the household of the captive elector, whom he afterward accompanied home in 1552.[3]
He died at age 81 on 16 October 1553, atWeimar, where the house in which he lived still stands in the marketplace.[1] He was buried in theJacobsfriedhof in Weimar.
TheLutheran Church remembers Cranach as a great Christian on 6 April along with Dürer,[9] and possibly Grünewald or Burgkmair.[10]
Adam and Eve, woodcut, 1509Study for portrait of Margaret of Pomerania (1518–1569), c. 1545, a drawing with all details of the sitter's costume meticulously described, was intended for the future reference and to facilitate the work on large number of commissions in the artist's atelier.
The oldest extant picture by Cranach is theRest of the Virgin during the Flight into Egypt, of 1504. The painting already shows remarkable skill and grace, and the pine forest in the background shows a painter familiar with the mountain scenery ofThuringia. There is more forest gloom in landscapes of a later time.[3]
Following the huge international success of Dürer's prints, other German artists, much more than Italian ones, devoted their talents to woodcuts and engravings. This accounts for the comparative unproductiveness as painters ofAlbrecht Dürer andHans Holbein the Younger, and also may explain why Cranach was not especially skilled at handling colour, light, and shade. Constant attention to contour and to black and white, as an engraver, seems to have affected his sight; and he often outlined shapes in black rather than employing modelling andchiaroscuro.[3]
A dozen likenesses ofFrederick III and his brother John are dated 1532. It is characteristic of Cranach's prolific output, and a proof that he used a large workshop, that he received payment at Wittenberg in 1533 for "sixty pairs of portraits of the elector and his brother" on one day.[3] Inevitably the quality of such works is variable.
Cranach's religious subjects reflect the development of theProtestant Reformation, and its attitudes to religious images. In his early career, he painted several Madonnas; his first woodcut (1505) represents the Virgin and three saints in prayer before acrucifix. Later on he painted the marriage ofSt. Catherine, a series ofmartyrdoms, and scenes from thePassion.[3]
After 1517 he occasionally illustrated the old subjects, but he also gave expression to some of the thoughts of the Reformers, although his portraits of reformers were more common than paintings of religious scenes. In a picture of 1518, where a dying man offers "his soul to God, his body to earth, and his worldly goods to his relations", the soul rises to meet theTrinity in heaven, and salvation is clearly shown to depend on faith and not on good works.[3]
Other works of this period deal with sin anddivine grace. One showsAdam sitting betweenJohn the Baptist and a prophet at the foot of a tree. To the left God produces the tables of the law,Adam and Eve taste the forbidden fruit, theserpent raises its head, and punishment manifests in the shape of death and the realm ofSatan. To the right, the Conception, Crucifixion andResurrection symbolize redemption, and this is duly impressed on Adam by John the Baptist. There are two examples of this composition in the galleries ofGotha andPrague, both of them dated 1529.[3] His workshop made an altarpiece with a Crucifixion scene in the centre which is now in theKreuzkirche, Hanover.
Towards the end of his life, after Luther's initial hostility to large public religious images had softened, Cranach painted a number of "Lutheran altarpieces" of theLast Supper and other subjects, in which Christ was shown in a traditional manner, including ahalo, but the apostles, without halos, were portraits of leading reformers. He also produced a number of violent anti-Catholic and anti-Papacy propaganda prints in a cruder style. His best known work in this vein was a series of prints for the pamphletPassional Christi und Antichristi,[11] where scenes from thePassion of Christ were matched by a print mocking practices of the Catholic clergy, so that Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple was matched by the Pope, orAntichrist, signing indulgences over a table spread with cash (see gallery below). Some of the prints were echoed by paintings, such as hisAdoration of the Shepherds (c. 1517).
One of his last works is the altarpiece, completed after his death by Lucas Cranach the Younger in 1555, for the Stadtkirche (city church) atWeimar. Theiconography is original and unusual: Christ is shown twice, to the left trampling on Death and Satan, to the right crucified, with blood flowing from the lance wound.John the Baptist points to the suffering Christ, whilst the blood-stream falls on the head of a portrait of Cranach, and Luther reads from his book the words, "The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin."[3]
Cranach was equally successful in a series of paintings of mythological scenes which nearly always feature at least one slim female figure, naked but for a transparent drape or a large hat.
These are mostly in narrow upright formats; examples are several ofVenus, alone or withCupid, who has sometimes stolen a honeycomb, and complains to Venus that he has been stung by abee (Weimar, 1530; Berlin, 1534). Other such subjects are theThree Graces,Diana withApollo, shooting a bow, andHercules sitting at the spinning-wheel mocked byOmphale and her maids.[3] A similar approach was taken with the biblical subjects ofSalome andAdam and Eve. He and his workshop also painted more than sixty versions ofLucretia, the self-stabbing pagan heroine whose death sparked the Roman Republic.
These subjects were produced early in his career, when they show Italian influences including that ofJacopo de' Barberi, who was at the court of Saxony for a period up to 1505. They then become rare until after the death of Frederick the Wise. The later nudes are in a distinctive style which abandons Italian influence for a revival of Late Gothic style, with small heads, narrow shoulders, high breasts and waists. The poses become more frankly seductive and even exhibitionist.[13]
Humour and pathos are combined at times in pictures such asJealousy (Augsburg, 1527; Vienna, 1530), where women and children are huddled into groups as they watch the strife of men wildly fighting around them. A lost canvas of 1545 is said to show hares catching and roasting hunters. In 1546, possibly under Italian influence, Cranach composed theFons Juventutis (The Fountain of Youth), executed by his son, a picture in which older women are seen entering aRenaissance fountain, and exiting it transformed into youthful beauties.[3]
The Nazis had a particular affection for Cranach's work andlooted many paintings during theThird Reich.[14] This has led to claims for restitution, notably from Jewish collectors who were persecuted or looted by the Nazis. The Nazis looted Cranach's Portrait of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony (around 1530s) from Jewish art collectorFritz Gutmann before murdering him but the painting was recovered by Gutmann's grandson Simon Goodman eighty years later after decades of searching.[15]
Cranach's "Cupid Complaining to Venus" passed through inHitler's personal collection, causing the National Gallery to research its history, suspecting that it may have been looted.[16][17] The diptychAdam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder has been the focus of a legal dispute between the heirs of the former owner, Dutch art collectorJacques Goudstikker, and theNorton Simon museum in California.[18] In 1999, the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress notified theNorth Carolina Museum of Art that its prized Cranach Madonna and Child had been looted by Nazis from the Jewish Viennese art collectorPhilipp von Gomperz.[19][20]
On 20 October 2000 a Budapest court ruled that a Cranach and other paintings claimed by the granddaughter of famous Hungarian Jewish art collectorBaron Herzog that were looted by Nazis with the Hungarian financial police should be returned to her.[21] In 2012 the heirs of Rosa and Jakob Oppenheimer submitted a claim to theNational Gallery of Ireland for a Cranach painting of Saint Christopher. The museum hired a private provenance researcher, Laurie Stein, to investigate the circumstance of the sale in 1934, and she concluded that the Cranach had not been sold under duress by the Jewish owners.[22]
In April 2021 Cranach's "The Resurrection" was sold at auction following a settlement between the heirs of Holocaust victimMargarete Eisenmann and the art dealerEugene Thaw.[23] After being looted, the Cranach had been consigned to Sothebys by Hans Lange and passed throughHugo Perls andKnoedler Galleries before being acquired by Eugene Thaw.[24][25] Most of the lawsuits last many years and go through several appeals in different courts. A painting by a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder titledLamentation and completed in the 1530s, which had been looted from Poland in 1946, was returned to theNational Museum, Wrocław in 2022.[26]
^abThe Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1984. p. 101.ISBN978-0-87099370-1.Lucas Cranach the Elder was perhaps the most successful German artist of his time.
Luther, Martin (1521)Passional Christi und Antichristi Reprinted in W.H.T. Dau (1921)At the Tribunal of Caesar: Leaves from the Story of Luther's Life. St. Louis: Concordia. (Google Books)
Posse, Hans (1942)Lucas Cranach d. ä. A. Schroll & Co., ViennaOCLC 773554 in German
Descargues, Pierre (1960)Lucas Cranach the Elder (translated from the French by Helen Ramsbotham) Oldbourne Press, London,OCLC 434642
Ruhmer, Eberhard (1963)Cranach (translated from the German by Joan Spencer) Phaidon, London,OCLC 1107030
Moser, Peter (2005)Lucas Cranach: His Life, His World, His Pictures (translated from the German by Kenneth Wynne) Babenberg Verlag, Bamberg, Germany,ISBN3-933469-15-5
Brinkmann, Bodoet al. (2007)Lucas Cranach Royal Academy of Arts, London,ISBN1-905711-13-1
Heydenreich, Gunnar (2007)Lucas Cranach the Elder: Painting materials, techniques and workshop practice, Amsterdam University Press,ISBN978-90-5356-745-6
Sören Fischer (2017):Gesetz und Gnade: Wolfgang Krodel d. Ä., Lucas Cranach d. Ä. und die Erlösung des Menschen im Bild der Reformation, Kleine Schriften der Städtischen Sammlungen Kamenz(in German), Band 8, Kamenz 2017,ISBN978-3-910046-66-5
Guido Messling, Kerstin Richter (Eds.):Cranach. The Early Years in Vienna, Hirmer publishers, Munich 2022,ISBN978-3-7774-3926-6.
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