Lucas Cranach, the Elder

German artist

• Born: 1472
• Birthplace: Kronach, Upper Franconia (now in Germany)
• Died: October 16, 1553
• Place of death: Weimar, Saxony (now in Germany)

A friend of Martin Luther, Cranach was one of the first German artists to incorporate elements of early Reformation theology into his work. His numerous examples of mythological subjects and portraits can be related to Humanist scholars and to erudite tastes of the Saxon court.

Early Life

Lucas Cranach (LEW-kahs KRAHN-ahk), the Elder, probably received his first training as an artist from his father, Hans Müller, in Kronach. Cranach later changed his name to reflect the town of his birth. Older accounts of Lucas’s life suggest that he might have accompanied Frederick III, elector of Saxony, on a trip to the Holy Land in 1493. He is mentioned in Kronach documents between 1495 and 1498 and in Coburg in 1501.

Between this time and 1504, Cranach settled in Vienna, where he produced a series of distinctively dramatic paintings and woodcuts. The most notable of the Vienna paintings include the double betrothal portraits of the university rector Johannes Cuspinian and his wife, Anna (1502-1503), a Saint Jerome in Penitence (1502), and an asymmetrically composed Crucifixion (1503). Along with woodcuts, such as the Agony in the Garden (1502), these works show Cranach’s flair for exaggerated gestures, emotive facial expressions, and bold draftsmanship. His interest in placing his figures in the ambient space of primordial Alpine landscape settings credits him with being an early founder of the Danube style of landscape painting.

Some compositional elements in these early works show that Cranach was familiar with the art of his famous Nürnberg contemporary, Albrecht Dürer . Cranach’s works to 1504, however, show a conscious decision on his part to reject the studied geometry and classic proportions of Dürer’s figures. Instead, Cranach’s pictures seem more spontaneous and free, rendered in an almost nervous drawing style.

Life’s Work

Cranach may have joined the court at Wittenberg as early as 1504, but he was definitely in Frederick’s employ in April, 1505, at which time he was paid for making decorations at the elector’s castle in Lochau. Cranach worked, uninterruptedly, for the court until his death in 1553, serving three successive heads of the Saxon court: Frederick III, John the Steadfast, and John Frederick the Magnanimous. In 1508, Frederick held him in high enough regard to grant him a coat of arms of a winged serpent, a device Cranach used to sign his pictures throughout his life.

In the same year, Frederick entrusted him with a diplomatic mission to the Lowlands. Cranach’s biographer and friend, Christoph Scheurl, related the attention Cranach received from Netherlandish artists with his lifelike portrait of the youthful Charles V (which he supposedly painted on an Antwerp tavern wall). Cranach’s familiarity with Netherlandish art is documented in his monumental Holy Kinship Altarpiece of 1509, which is clearly derived from Quenten Massys’s triptych, now in Brussels.

After his return from the Lowlands, Cranach settled into a prominent and extremely comfortable life in Wittenberg. His wife, Barbara Brengbier, bore him two sons, Hans and Lucas the Younger, and three daughters. He was so successful in his business affairs that in 1528 he was listed as the second wealthiest burgher in Wittenberg. He owned an apothecary (which has functioned to modern times in the town), a winery, several houses, and a publishing house. He served on the city council between 1519 and 1549, and he was elected to three consecutive terms as burgomaster, 1537-1543.

Cranach’s busy life and the vast number of pictures he produced have led most historians to believe that he was aided by a large and well-ordered shop of assistants. Certainly his two sons were central to his production. Little is known of Hans, but two dated paintings of 1534 and 1537 by him survive, along with an interesting sketchbook in Hannover; he died in Italy in 1537. It seems clear that Lucas the Younger was the inheritor of his father’s workshop, and he no doubt played an increasingly important part in the workshop, especially in Lucas the Elder’s later years. The role of the Cranach shop makes definite attributions of individual works to Cranach himself difficult to establish, even when they are signed and dated.

The terms of his court appointment were apparently never written down, but his position did entitle him to a yearly stipend and to a rather pampered life; moreover, there were seemingly no restrictions on commissions he could accept from outside the court. Court documents show that his clothing and that of his assistants, feed for his horse, kitchen provisions, and various household services were all provided to him on request. Except for the trip to the Lowlands in 1508 and local visits to the elector’s castle in Lochau and his hunting lodge in Torgau to supervise decorations, Cranach rarely traveled. He was extremely reluctant late in his career to follow the court of John Frederick and consequently was dismissed from service temporarily between 1547 and 1550. He ultimately did obey John Frederick’s request to move to Augsburg in 1550 and subsequently to Weimar in 1552, where he died the following year.

Between 1505 and 1510, Cranach’s style manifests an interest in solid, three-dimensional figures, including a series of drawings on tinted paper, two-color chiaroscuro woodcuts, and large-scale altarpieces, particularly the Saint Anne Altar. By 1515, however, Cranach’s style shifted to emphasize silhouetted shapes, strongly patterned compositions, and images with flatter, less insistent volume. Excellent examples of this stylistic change are two nearly life-size, full-length marriage portraits of Duke Henry the Pious and his wife, Duchess Catherine, of 1514. Accompanied by their pet dogs, the figures are spotlighted against plain dark backgrounds and dressed in rich, colorful costumes. The jaunty attitude of the two and the decorous surfaces of the panels communicate a statement of class rank that is unmistakably present in any number of other court portraits, including that of John Frederick of 1532-1535. The finery and aloofness of his court portraits contrast with another class of portraits of wealthy burghers of Wittenberg (such as Dr. Johannes Scheyring, 1529), in which Lucas presents a more straightforward and even plain characterization of his sitters.

There is a clear change in Cranach’s art from his Vienna days. The boldness and expressiveness of his early works give way to works designed to cater to the effete tastes of a court hungry for decorative surfaces, erotic subjects, rich colors, and elaborately designed brocades. As a component of his “court style,” Cranach developed a distinctive type of female figure, more Gothic than Renaissance. In his early engravings of The Judgment of Paris of 1508 or his Venus and Cupid woodcut of 1509, his nudes followed the Vitruvian proportions of Jacopo de’ Barbari and Dürer. Barbari had preceded Cranach at the Wittenberg court, and the two may have known each other. In these early works, Cranach’s figures are full-bodied, with insistent three-dimensional modeling; they are faithful in spirit to the classical sources of Italian art. From the 1520’s on, Cranach’s nudes change dramatically from the geometric proportions and the volume influenced by Italian art. He preferred instead female nudes who are adolescentlike, with large abdomens, small buttocks, and tiny breasts. They are willowy and lithe but ungainly and self-conscious. They assume choreographed poses that conform totally to the decorative surface rhythms of his later pictures.

Among the many mythological subjects produced by his shop, three themes recur frequently: the judgment of Paris, the sleeping water nymph, and the Venus with Cupid. These subjects are preserved in a number of versions dating in the 1520’s and 1530’s. In the 1530 version of The Judgment of Paris in Karlsruhe, Cranach transforms the mythological narrative into a courtly event with Mercury and Paris dressed in contemporary armor. Similarly, Minerva, Venus, and Juno wear jewelry of the period and sport the latest coiffures. Their awkward poses and the coy expression of one of the graces, who brazenly looks out at the spectator, serve to heighten the eroticism of the scene.

Cranach’s interest in mythological subjects was no doubt reinforced by Humanist scholars at the University of Wittenberg. Founded in 1502, the university had a distinguished faculty of Humanists teaching the classics and rhetoric, including Nikolaus Marschalk and Christoph Scheurl. Such works as the Reclining River Nymph at the Fountain (1518) and Venus with Cupid the Honey-Thief (1530) were inspired by specific classical inscriptions. Cranach must have had help with these classical literary sources from his Humanist friends.

In 1508, Martin Luther was appointed professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. Cranach knew him intimately. Cranach was a witness at Luther’s wedding in 1525 and a godfather to his son Johannes. He also published some of Luther’s writings and provided the designs for the title pages for two books by Luther published in 1518 and 1519. Cranach made several painted and printed portraits of Luther that serve to document Luther’s life under the protection of Frederick III. Two of the most interesting of these are a painted panel and a woodcut, both of about 1521, which depict Luther in his disguise as Junker Georg after Luther’s condemnation at the Diet of Worms.

The Lutheran message of direct redemption and the importance of faith alone in attaining salvation are themes that occur in several of Cranach’s pictures and of those by Lucas the Younger. A late panel, often entitled the Allegory of Redemption , portrays the aging Cranach standing next to Luther beneath Christ on the Cross. Luther points to a passage in his translation of the Bible that promises direct salvation from Christ, while an arc of blood streams directly from the side of Christ onto Cranach’s head. Begun by Cranach the Elder before his death, the work was completed by Cranach the Younger in 1555. A picture dating earlier in Cranach’s career, the Allegory of the Law and the Gospel (1529), documents Luther’s position that the Old Testament is incomplete without the New Testament. Such works by Cranach are clearly didactic, serving as a visual form to Luther’s teachings.

Significance

The lasting contribution of Lucas Cranach, the Elder, to sixteenth century German art lies primarily in the quality of his works themselves. A prolific artist, no doubt aided by a well-supervised shop, Cranach produced a varied array of subjects in various media. They range in their scope from the naturalism of his portraits of real people to the impossible anatomy of his mythological nudes.

Lacking the intellect of Albrecht Dürer’s art or the sheer emotional power of Matthias Grünewald’s paintings, Cranach’s images seem more comfortable and less challenging. Yet Cranach was one of the first German artists to give visual form to early Reformation religious thought in his paintings, prints, and book illustrations. He developed conventions for illustrating classical mythology in an artistic tradition that had none. His art is a visual chronicle of the tastes and personalities of half a century of the Wittenberg court, a society that had a profound impact on the intellectual, religious, and political formation of sixteenth century Germany.

Bibliography

Bax, D. Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgment Triptychs. Translated by M. A. Bax-Botha. New York: North-Holland, 1983. A detailed discussion of the subject matter of a painting attributed to Hieronymus Bosch in Vienna and a work related to it ascribed to Cranach in East Berlin. A focused study, the book concludes that Cranach copied the front of a now lost altarpiece by Bosch.

Christensen, Carl C. Art and the Reformation in Germany. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979. Discusses more than a dozen paintings by Cranach and his shop that demonstrate subjects directly influenced by Protestant thought. There is also an excellent summary of Luther’s theology and its relation to sixteenth century German art.

Cuttler, Charles D. Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. A general survey of painting outside Italy during the Renaissance, the book devotes a separate chapter to Cranach’s art. A short biography of Cranach is combined with a thorough stylistic survey of specific paintings and prints by the artist.

Dillenberger, John. Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Study of the relationship between theology and the visual arts in the first half of the sixteenth century. Divided into seven chapters, each focusing on a specific artist, including one chapter on Cranach. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Falk, Tilman, ed. Sixteenth Century German Artists, Hans Burgkmair the Elder, Hans Schäufelein, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Vol. 11 in The Illustrated Bartsch, edited by Walter L. Strauss. New York: Abaris Books, 1980. Contains large illustrations of 155 engravings and woodcuts attributed to the artist. There is no commentary, but the illustrations provide an excellent resource of the prints by Cranach and his shop.

Friedländer, Max J., and Jakob Rosenberg. The Paintings of Lucas Cranach. Translated by Heinz Norden and Ronald Taylor. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978. The new English translation, along with the original German publication, is largely a detailed catalog of nearly four hundred works ascribed to Cranach and to his sons. Many details of the 1932 catalog have been updated with a new introduction by Rosenberg.

Grossmann, Maria. Humanism in Wittenberg, 1485-1517. Nieuwkoop: B. de Fraaf, 1975. The author surveys the impact of German Humanism on the Reformation. Her chapter on the visual arts discusses Cranach’s pictures in this context.

Hollstein, F. W. H. Cranach-Drusse. Vol. 6 in German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1400-1700, edited by D. G. Boon and R. W. Scheller. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1959. Provides lists of 140 prints and their locations by Cranach, the Elder, Cranach, the Younger, and impressions attributed to the Cranach workshop. Most entries are illustrated.

Schade, Werner. Cranach: A Family of Master Painters. Translated by Helen Sebba. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date. Schade’s work discusses Cranach’s life and art within the context of the contributions of his two sons. Profusely illustrated with many plates in color, the book also reprints in translation all documents relevant to the Cranach family with an extensive bibliography.

Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1985. Intended as a general survey of Netherlandish, French, and German art, the book contains a separate chapter on Cranach. The author stresses Cranach’s ties to Wittenberg Humanism and the Reformation aspects of his paintings.

Stepanov, Alexander. Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472-1553. Translated by Paul Williams. Bournemouth, England: Parkstone, 1997. Stepanov’s analysis is clumsily translated, but the book contains some of the best reproductions of Cranach’s work available, most full-page and in color. Includes bibliographic references.