Lucas Cranach d.ä.
Court painter of the Reformation.
Lucas Cranach was a friend of Martin Luther and painted his portrait many times. His workshop in Wittenberg produced portraits, myths and slender, elegant nudes.
Lucas Cranach was born around 1472 in the town of Kronach in Franconia, from which he took his name. He learned to paint from his father. Around 1501–04 he worked in Vienna, where he painted religious pictures and portraits with dramatic landscapes of fir trees and mountains. He is therefore counted among the early exponents of the so-called Danube School, in which nature plays a major role.
In 1505 he became court painter to Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, in Wittenberg. He stayed there for almost fifty years. In 1508 he was granted a coat of arms with a winged serpent, which he then used as his signature. He was a successful businessman. Besides a large painting workshop he ran a pharmacy, a wine business and a printing press, and he was several times mayor of Wittenberg.
In Wittenberg he became a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a witness at Luther’s wedding in 1525 and godfather to one of his children. Cranach’s workshop painted many portraits of Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora, and they were circulated in large numbers as a kind of propaganda for the Reformation. He also illustrated Luther’s Bible translations with woodcuts. At the same time he went on working for Catholic patrons, which says something about how businesslike his view of his profession was.
Cranach’s style is easy to recognise. His women, such as Venus, Lucretia and Judith, are slender and pale, with small heads, almond-shaped eyes and transparent veils that conceal very little. They stand against a black background or in a green landscape. His workshop, where his sons Hans and Lucas the Younger also worked, produced many versions of popular subjects. As a result, the quality varies between different pictures that bear his name.
After the Protestant elector’s defeat in war in 1547, Cranach followed him into captivity. He died in Weimar in 1553. His son Lucas the Younger carried on the workshop. Cranach shaped the visual world of the German Reformation and gave us the image of Luther that we still have.