Cranach the Elder:

180 Colour Plates

By Maria Peitcheva

First Edition

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Cranach the Elder: 180 Colour Plates

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Copyright © 2016 Maria Peitcheva

 Foreword

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553) was a German Renaissance painter
and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the
Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits,
both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant
Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm, becoming a close
friend of Martin Luther. He also painted religious subjects, first in the
Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran
religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude
subjects drawn from mythology and religion. 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 of Albrecht
Dürer and Hans 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 and chiaroscuro.

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 and altarpieces, woodcuts, engravings, and designing the coins for
the electorate.

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 at Coburg and Locha. Before 1508 he had
painted several altar-pieces for the Castle Church at Wittenberg in
competition with Albrecht 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. In 1509 Cranach went to
the Netherlands, and painted the Emperor Maximilian and the boy who
afterwards became Emperor Charles V. Cranach was the court painter to the
electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, an area in the heart of the emerging
Protestant faith. His patrons were powerful supporters of Martin 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 the Bible. Somewhat later the duke conferred on him the
monopoly of the sale of medicines at Wittenberg, and a printer's patent with
exclusive privileges as to copyright in Bibles. Cranach's presses were used
by Martin Luther.

The death in 1525 of the Elector Frederick the Wise and Elector John's in
1532 brought no change in Cranach's position; he remained a favorite with
John Frederick I. In 1547, John Frederick was taken prisoner at the Battle of
Mühlberg, and Wittenberg was besieged. 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. Three years afterward,
when all the dignitaries of the Empire met at Augsburg to receive
commands from the emperor, and Titian came at Charles's bidding to paint
King Philip 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.

He died at age 81 on October 16, 1553, at Weimar, where the house in

which he lived still stands.

Cranach the Elder had a large workshop and many works exist in different
versions; his son Lucas Cranach the Younger, and others, continued to
create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. Lucas
Cranach the Elder has been considered the most successful German artist of
his time.
Drawings and Prints
 Thief on the cross, facing left
1502, Charcoal with white highlights on red-toned paper
A terrible straining of the body, the belly surges forward, the legs seek to
free themselves from their bonds… The companion piece shows the other
thief, who has already collapsed and hangs limply, his hair has fallen over
his eyes and concealing his face.

During his productive period, Lucas Cranach the Elder completed around
5000 paintings, including 'Venus and Cupid' (1508) and numerous popular
portraits. Particularly characteristic of his work is his handling of light and
materiality. He also attained popularity for his secular and allegoric nudes, in
which one frequently observes the body through transparent scarves, the
typical attribute of Cranach's paintings.
 Thief on the cross, facing right
1502, Charcoal with white highlights on red-toned paper
The Crucifixion
1502, Woodcut
Detail
Detail
Detail

Detail
 Detail

Cranach’s earliest works (dating from the years following 1502) reveal an
independence and vitality which reveal that he began his career as a highly
gifted master. This print, the only known copy of the woodcut, is one of his
earliest works and was created shortly before a similar depiction of the
Crucifixion, which is dated 1502.
St. Michael
1506, Woodcut on laid paper
Detail

Detail
 The third tournament
1509, Woodcut on paper
Detail
Detail
Detail
 The Crucifixion i
1509, Woodcut on paper
Detail
Detail
Detail

Detail
Detail
Martin Luther, Bust in Three-Quarter View
1520, Engraving, on laid paper

Detail
The Entombment
1509, Woodcut

Detail
 The Lamentation,
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Detail
Pilate Washing His Hands
Before 1509, Woodcut
Detail

Detail
The Second Tournament with the Tapestry of Samson and the Lion
1509, Woodcut
Detail
Detail
The Penitence of Saint Jerome
1509, Woodcut

Detail
The Judgment of Paris
1508, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Hunter on Horseback Hunting a Wild Boar
1506, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
 Christ before Annas
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
Detail

Detail
Christ Bearing the Cross
Before 1509, Woodcut
Detail

Detail
Detail
David and Abigail
1509, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
 Saint Christopher
1506, Chiaroscuro woodcut printed in gray and black

Detail
The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene
1506, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Adam and Eve in Paradise
1509, Woodcut
Detail

Detail
A Saxon Prince on Horseback
1506, Woodcut

Detail
Venus and Cupid,
1506, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Christ on the Mount of Olives
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Detail
Christ Taken Captive
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
 Christ before Herod
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
The Flagellation
Before 1509, Woodcut

Detail
Detail
Detail
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
1506, Woodcut

Detail
Christ Crowned with Thorns
Before 1509, Woodcut
Detail
Paintings
The Crucifixion, 1501
Detail
Saints Genevieve and Apollonia, 1506
Detail
Detail
Saints Christina and Ottilia, 1506
Detail
Detail
Portrait of Johann the Steadfast, 1509
Detail
Portrait of Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, 1509
Detail
The Virgin Mary, with the Infant and Saint John the Baptist, 1509 – 1512
Detail
The Judgment of Paris, 1512–14
Detail
Detail
Detail
Duke Henry the Pious, 1514
Detail
Duchess Katharina von Mecklenburg, 1514
Detail
Pietà, 1510 – 1515
Detail
The ill-matched couple, 1517
Detail
Madonna with Child, 1518

Detail
Madonna and Child in a Landscape, 1518

Detail
The Garden of Gethsemane, 1518
Detail
The Birth of John the Baptist, 1518
Detail
Virgin and Child (Around 1520)
Detail
The Virgin Suckling the Child, 1515
Detail
Detail
The Crucifixion, 1506-1520
Detail
The Ill-Matched Couple, 1522

Detail
Christ and the Virgin Interceding for Humanity before God the Father, 1516–
1518

Detail
The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with Saints Dorothy,
Margaret and Barbara, 1516–1518

Detail
Saint Helena with the Cross, 1525
Detail
Lamentation of Christ with Saint Wolfgang and Saint Helen and
Unidentified Donors, 1515–1520
Detail
Portrait of a Woman, 1525
Detail
Cupid complaining to Venus, 1525
 Detail

Bildnis Martin Luthers / Bildnis Katharina Luthers, 1526

Detail
A Faun and His Family with a Slain Lion, 1526
Detail
The Ill-matched Couple, 1520–1522

Detail
Apollo and Diana, 1525 – 1527
Detail
The Judgement of Paris, 1527
 Detail

Gesetz und Gnade, 1529

Detail
The Garden of Eden, 1530
Detail
Venus with Cupid Stealing Honey, 1530
Detail
The Close of the Silver Age (?), 1530
Detail
The Unequal Couple (Old Man in Love), 1530
 Detail

The Golden Age, 1530

Detail
Detail
Landscape with Apollo and Diana, 1530
Detail
Adam and Eve in paradise (The Fall), 1531
Detail
 Venus, 1532

Melancholy, 1532
 Detail

Portrait of John Frederic the Magnanimous, Elector and Duke of Saxony,

1533
Detail
The Nymph of the Fountain, 1534
Detail
The Three Graces, 1535
Detail
Lucretia’s suicide, 1535
Detail
Adam and Eve, 1538 – 1539

Detail
Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, 1530s
Detail