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The Triumph of the
City
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The High Renaissance
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Mannerism
(Renaissance
Art Map)
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See collection:
Lucas
Cranach the Elder
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Lucas
Cranach the Elder
born 1472, Cranach, bishopric of Bamberg [now Kronach, Ger.]
died Oct. 16, 1553, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar
original name Lucas Muller leading painter of Saxony, and one of the
most important and influential artists in 16th-century German art.
Among his vast output of paintings and woodcuts, the most important
are altarpieces, court portraits and portraits of the Protestant
Reformers, and innumerable pictures of women—elongated female nudes
and fashionably dressed ladies with titles from the Bible or
mythology.
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Venus
1532
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Life and career
Lucas Muller was born in a village approximately 55 miles (90 km)
north of Nurnberg. Although only a year younger, he survived
Albrecht Durer, the great genius of German art, by 25 years and, in
fact, outlived all the significant German artists of his time.
Lucas's teacher was his father, the painter Hans Muller, with whom
he worked from 1495 to 1498. He is known to have been in Coburg in
1501, but the earliest of his works that have been preserved date
from about 1502, when he was already 30 and living in Vienna. It was
in that city that he dropped the surname of Muller, calling himself
Cranach after his hometown, which is now spelled Kronach.
In Vienna Cranach made an important contribution to the painting and
illustrations of the Danube school, the art of the Austrian Danubian
region around Vienna and other towns. In Vienna he also came in
contact with the humaniststeaching at the university and did
portraits of the scholars Johannes Stephan Reuss (1503) and Johannes
Cuspinian (c. 1502–03).
Presumably while Cranach was still in Vienna, he received news of
his appointment as court painter to the elector Frederick the Wise
of Saxony; he must already have been a famous artist, for he was
given two and a half times the salary paid to his predecessor. In
spring 1505 he arrived in Wittenberg, a university town on the Elbe
River and seat of the electors, where he remained for 45 years,
until 1550, as court painter. He became a prominent citizen, serving
as a member of the town council in 1519–20 and as burgomaster three
times in the years 1537–44. Through Cranach, who received important
commissions from three successive electors and caused many young
artists to come to Wittenberg, the town became an art centre.
The Protestant Reformation had begun in 1517 in Wittenberg with
Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses. Cranach was on friendly terms
with Luther, who had been a teacher at the University of Wittenberg
since 1508. Cranach painted portraits of Luther, his wife, Katherina
von Bora, and his parents. Through these and other portraits, he
helped form today's image of Luther's circle. Indeed, apart from his
other duties as court artist, Cranach became the chief pictorial
propagandist of the Protestant cause in Germany, multiplying the
images of the Reformers and theProtestant princes in innumerable
painted, engraved, and woodcut portraits. The scope of this activity
is indicated by asingle payment in the electoral accounts (1533) for
“sixty pairs of small paintings of the late Electors.” Cranach also
did altarpieces and paintings for Lutheran churches. His works were
sought after by Protestant and Roman Catholic patrons alike, and
hundreds of pictures now in museums and private collections testify
to his exceptional productivity. Aside from his paintings, there are
more than 100 separate woodcuts by him.
Paintings
Cranach did not sign his works with his full name. The early ones,
before 1504, were unsigned; from 1504 to 1506 his signature
consisted of an entwined “LC”; from 1506 to 1509, it consisted of
the separated initials “LC”; from 1509 to 1514, it consisted of
these spaced initials and his coat of arms, the winged serpent,
which became his sole signature in 1515. All works, even those that
had issued from his large workshop or studio (in which he often
employed 10 or more assistants), henceforth carried this device,
which was also used by his son Lucas the Younger, until the latter's
death in 1586. This gave rise to many problems of attribution that
still remain unsolved. The fact that so few works bear any date
further complicates the establishment of a Cranach chronology.
It is certain, however, that Cranach's style was fully formed and
underwent little development after about 1515, and the highly
finished, mass-produced paintings after that date suffer by
comparison with the more individual works he painted in early
adulthood. The paintings the 30-year-old artist did in Vienna were
of a profoundly devotional kind set in the wild landscapes of the
Alpine foothills, with ruins and windswept trees. These pictures
show Cranach as an avant-garde artist of considerable emotional
force, and one of the initiators of the Danube school. Notable among
them are a “Crucifixion” (c. 1500) and “St. Jerome in Penitence”
(1502; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
The first decade of Cranach's stay at Wittenberg was marked by a
series of experiments in which he adapted his style to suit the
demands of the Saxon court. The right wing of the “St. Catherine
Altarpiece” (1506; Gemaldegalerie, Dresden) already shows a radical
break with his earlier style; there is exquisite detail in the
realistic portrait heads, but courtly decorum has purged the scene
of all emotion and given it a decorative bias, with strong emphasis
on the patterns of dress. Following his visit to the Netherlands in
1508, Cranach experimented with Italo-Netherlandish ideas of spatial
construction and with monumental nudes, but his true talent lay
elsewhere, as is shown by the splendid full-length portraits of
“Duke Henry the Pious” and “Duchess Katharina von Mecklenburg”
(1514; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), which mark the establishment of his
official portrait style. Here, space and volume are annihilated;
magnificent clothes, set off by a featureless backdrop, are topped
by faces reduced to their essential, typical features. Cranach was a
pioneer of the frigid state portraiture of the 16th century, but he
fell short of the icy reserve of his successors—Hans Holbein the
Younger and Bronzino—because his abiding Gothic taste invariably led
him to exaggerate a feature or elaborate a beard or dress for the
sake of linear rhythms or calligraphic effects. With male sitters
his method sometimes yields an image of startling power—e.g., the
“Portrait of Dr. J. Scheyring” (1529; Royal Museum of Fine Arts,
Brussels). His female portraits are uniformly vapid, however.
The resurgence of Gothic linear rhythms is fundamental for the whole
of Cranach's later work, in which the borderline between sacred and
mundane art is blurred. He represented female saints as beautiful
and elegant ladies in fashionable dress and covered with jewelry.
His “Reclining River Nymph at the Fountain” (1518; Museum of Fine
Art, Leipzig) shows with what assurance he translated a Renaissance
model—Giorgione's “Venus”—into his personal language of linear
arabesque. This work inaugurated a long series of paintings of
Venus, Lucretia, the Graces, the judgment of Paris, and other
subjects that serve as pretexts for the sensuous female nude, in
which Cranach appears as a kind of 16th-century Francois Boucher.
The naive elegance of these ladies, whose slender, sinuous bodies
defy basic principles of anatomy, were clearly to the taste of the
German courts and have an enduring charm. But in conception and
style they look back to the International Gothic style of a century
before. Thus from a historical viewpoint Cranach's work was a
backwater in European art of the 16th century. And though he was the
dominant figurein the painting of northeastern Germany during his
lifetime, his influence was confined to his immediate circle.
Cranach is called Pictor celerrimus (“swiftest of painters”) on his
tombstone, and his contemporaries never ceased to marvel at the
speed with which he worked. But this very speed also suggested the
limitations of his art, for his strength lay not in reflection,
composition, and construction but in an impulsive creativity that
was nourished by his imagination and fancy, particularly in unheroic
and idyllic scenes. His art was especially popular in that period of
great political upheavals, perhaps because his contemporaries, who
in public life were the protagonists of embattled ideologies,
yearned for beauty in man and in nature and for apeaceful refuge
from the world's turmoil.
Both of Cranach's sons were members of his studio. The elder, Hans
Cranach, who died in 1537, left a few signed works that are
indistinguishable in style from those of his father. Lucas Cranach
the Younger (1515–86), whose part in the joint production of the
studio became important from about 1545, continued to work in the
family style long after his father's death in 1553.
Friedrich Thone, Donald King
Encyclopaedia Britannica
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See collections:
Lucas
Cranach the Elder
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Lucas Cranach the Elder
Dr. Cuspinian and his Wife
1502-1503
N. Schneider
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Portrait of Dr. Johannes
Cuspinian
c. 1502
Oil on wood, 59 x 45 cm
Oscar Reinhardt Collection, Winterthur
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Portrait of Anna Cuspinian
c. 1502
Oil on wood, 59 x 45 cm
Oscar Reinhardt Collection, Winterthur
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 Portrait of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian (detail)
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Cranach painted this double portrait on the occasion of the
marriage of the Viennese humanist Johannes Cuspinian and his wife
Anna, daughter of an official of the Emperor. Cuspinian's
(1472-1529) real name was Spiepheimer, and he was originally from
Schwemfurt. He studied at Leipzig where he earned his laurels as a
poet, advancing, at the age of twenty-seven, to the position of
rector at the University of Vienna. He went on to hold various other
positions - Imperial Superintendent of the University from 1501, and
Dean of the Medical Faculty from 1501/02-eventually becoming
personal adviser and official historian at the court of Emperor
Maximilian I. In 1508, he edited Rufus' "Descriptio orbis "; he was
editor of Otto von Freising's "World Chronicle" (1515ff.), and
author of the "History of Roman Consuls up to Justinian" the
so-called "Consules" (almost completed by 1512), and of a renowned
book on Roman emperors ("De Caesaribus atque Imperatoribus Romanis",
Strasburg 1540). Like Conrad Peutinger, Conrad Celtis and others,
Cuspinian was undoubtedly one of the most versatile humanists of his
age. Initially, Cuspinian showed great sympathy for the theological
and political aims of the Reformation. Like many other humanists,
however, he distanced himself from the revolutionary movement after
the Peasants' War and reaffirmed his allegiance to the Catholic
Church.
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Portrait of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian
(detail)
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Portrait of Anna Cuspinian (detail)
Portrait of Anna Cuspinian (detail)
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Lucas Cranach, Cuspinian's equal in years, had entered his
father's workshop and travelled through south Germany before meeting
with success in Vienna, where his work was particularly well
received in humanist circles. The humanists provided him with access
to the court, thus paving his way to the position of court painter
(in 1504 he went to Wittenberg to take up this office under
Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony).
Cranach composed these portraits as a pair. This is apparent in the
continuity of the landscape behind the elegantly dressed couple. The
trees at the edges of the painting, on the left and right of the
figures, are placed so that their branches form an arch, imparting
an air of grandeur to the sitters. The background was evidently
composed
with a distinct purpose in mind: nothing here is arbitrary. The
landscape is full of erudite symbolism, probably devised by
Cuspinian himself. In a well-informed study on this double portrait,
Dieter Koepplin has suggested that Cuspiman's frame of reference was
Pico della Mirandola's "Poetica Theologica", and Marsilio Ficmo's
doctrine of divine mysteries. He concludes that the various images
disguise hieroglyphic allusions to the cabbala. An example of this
is the artist's secretive mimmalisation of symbols, turning them
into "occult" figures. At the left of the picture, for example,
behind the tree, there is a minuscule figure with long, flowing
hair, whom Koepplin has convincingly identified as Phoebus, or
Apollo, since the figure is given a lyre and bow, the attributes of
this antique god. However, Apollo does not appear here as the god of
light, but rather as the opposite: as a "chtonian-mantic" god (Koepplin),
almost a demon. The writhing snake on the ground is a reference to
Asclepius, the god of medicine, who was a son of Apollo (cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses 2, 602-620). The detail alludes to Cuspinian's medical
profession, as does the red beret on his head: "Medicus rubras fert
corpore vestes" (A doctor wears red clothing).
Another figure, one so tiny as to be almost invisible, stands on a
pinnacle of rock on the castle-topped mountain behind Cuspmian.
Shown in an antique gesture of adoration, the figure prays to a star
which Cranach has painted in real gold. The star is evidently
supposed to represent the Epiphany in the teachings of the early
Christian hymnic poet Clemens Prudentius. whose work demonstrably
had a profound effect on Cuspmian. Koepplin interprets the figure as
Orpheus, relating his position on the mountain to the Platonic
notion of "furor poeticus", and to the mountain-cult which often
accompanied the veneration of stars.
The nine women washing, bathing and carrying water in the middle
distance between Cuspmian and his wife, may be connected to Apollo,
too. They appear to be the nine Muses, who were answerable,
according to Greek myth, to their leader ("Musagetes") Apollo. Their
element is water, and a balance is evidently intended here to the
fire behind Anna Cuspinian. Perhaps this polarity symbolises the
distinction between the genders: according to Plutarch, fire was
male and water female, a notion adopted by Ficino. This theme seems
appropriate enough for a wedding painting. It is possible, however,
that the fire alludes to the burning bush (Exodus 3, 2), which was
used as a symbol for the Immaculate Conception during the late
Middle Ages because it "burned with fire" but "was not consumed",
just as Mary had remained a virgin during motherhood. The chastity
of the Virgin remained an ethical precept for married women for many
centuries. The motif of the parrot on the tree, given to Anna
Cuspinian as an attribute, is consistent with this precept. The call
of the bird was thought to be "Ave", the Angelic Salutation; since
the Middle Ages it had therefore been considered as a Marian symbol,
a sign of the innocence and purity associated with Mary.
What then is the significance of the other birds shown against the
darkening sky? Behind Cuspinian there is an owl with prey in its
talons being mobbed by a flock of birds; behind his wife on the
right, an eagle and a swan (on its back) are locked in combat. As a
humanist emblem, the owl was highly ambivalent, sometimes referring
to the goddess Athena's (or Minerva's) wisdom, sometimes to its
recalcitrant opposite: blind stupidity.
The motif of the struggle between swan and eagle can be elucidated
more clearly. It appears that Cuspinian and Cranach consulted Pliny
(X, 203) here. Pliny had been impressed by the swan's courage, since
it did not fear to do battle with an attacking eagle, and often
emerged victorious from the fight. It is not unlikely that Cuspinian
was using the motif of the flying bird - a signifcant cipher in the
"divinatory", or mantic, arts, in which the humanists liked to
dabble after the example of the Classics - to denote the principles
which he wished to govern his conduct: courage and wisdom, for
example.
It would be quite unsatisfactory merely to decipher the landscape
background symbol by symbol without seeing its significance as a
whole. Beyond a system of occult signs, the landscape allows a
generous framework for the couple's understanding of themselves,
providing a medium for the new cult of sensitivity and awareness of
nature which some humanists, notably Conrad Celtis, Joachim
Camerarius and others, were propagating in literary form through the
Classical topos of the pleasance, or pleasure-park.
Landscape acts as an echo-chamber for mental states, and, as such,
represents a macrocosm in which the individual, or microcosm, finds
his or her emotional world reflected. Perhaps this explains the
posture of Cuspinian's head. Of course, his pose may be intended to
show the humanist still pondering over a book, which he now holds
closed in front of him, his left hand - exposing two ringed fingers
- resting on its cover. However, his slightly raised head may
indicate that he is listening. The listening motif may refer to a
piece of Neoplatonic writing by Marsilio Ficino which was especially
popular in humanist circles: "It is through our ears that melodious
harmonies and rhythms enter our souls, admonishing and inspiring us
to lift our spirits forthwith, and, in the very depths of our being,
to ponder on such divine music."
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Portrait of Anna Cuspinian (detail)
c. 1502
Oil on wood
Oscar Reinhardt Collection, Winterthur |
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Lucas
Cranach the Elder
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Wittenberg Castle Church: Martin Luther reputedly nailed his
"Ninety-Five Theses" to the portal
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A Hotbed of Crime and Fornication
Martin Luther's "Ninety-Five
Theses" and schism
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Portrait of Martin Luther
1543
Panel
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
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Whatever happens on pilgrimages other than whores and knaves from
all over the place get together for their fun? And does the Pope do
anything other than defile and prostitute himself? We want neither
to go on pilgrimages nor to heed the words of the Pope, but only to
seek God in our hearts.
Martin Luther, "Table Talk", 1537
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Lucas Cranach the Elder
Martin Luther Preaching
(detail of the altar predella)
1539
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Trouble was brewing in Europe: abuse of authority, ostentation,
debauchery and bribery. Or so some Christians viewed the state of
affairs around 1500. They considered the Pope the devil incarnate
and his Church a bastion of lust, stupidity, greed and corruption.
The sermons of the Dominican Johann Tetzel were water on the
critics' mill. In 1517 Tetzel proclaimed that the Pope had granted
him such authority that he could grant absolution even to someone
who confessed he had fathered the child of the Virgin Mary — that
is, if the sinner was to pay.
For some time now pulpits had been resounding with sermons offering
remission of sins for money and a direct path to Heaven without a
detour through Purgatory. The sermons preached by Johann Tetzel,
however, were the ones that provoked Martin Luther, an Augustine
monk and professor of theology at Wittenberg. In mounting a
challenge, Luther said it was utter nonsense to think God could be
bought. He held that the only thing one could do for one's salvation
was to believe in God and live accordingly. Luther was in a rage
when he wrote out his "Ninety-Five Theses". He is said to have
nailed them to the portal of Wittenberg Castle Church on 31 October
1517. All that has been conclusively proved by historians, however,
is that he sent his "Theses" to his bishop on the Saturday that
marks the beginning of the Reformation.
Luther's goal was a theological debate; the authorities would have
none of it. But thousands of copies of the "Theses" had been made
and distributed, thanks to the new technology of printing, and a
popular movement coalesced around them. It was too late for the
ancient Church: the Reformation became a revolution, scourging
pilgrimages and liturgical practises as "senseless foolery". Led by
Luther's rhetoric which was sometimes eloquent and religious,
sometimes violent and vulgar, the Reformers went quickly from
demanding the abolition of priestly celibacy to a thorough
re-casting of the Church. And the movement assumed a political and
social dimension, propagated under the slogan: "freedom of Christian
people". Together with the Humanist movement, the Reformation
effected cultural change on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
Luther had a broad following: he was joined by merchants, peasants,
craftsmen and princes. Supported by the princes, Luther was able to
stand up to the Pope and the Emperor. Among his followers was the
Northern Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. At the
Wittenberg Court, Cranach became a personal friend of the Reformer.
Cranach executed several portraits of Luther, among them one for St
Mary's Church, Wittenberg. It portrays Luther in his office as
preacher there. In much of northern Europe, the ancient Church was
no match for Luther's movement. After the Schism with Rome had taken
place, Protestantism was ready to grow into a world-wide movement.
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General view of the altar predella in St Mary's Church, Wittenberg
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See collections:
Lucas
Cranach the Elder
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Venus Standing in a Landscape
1529
Oil on wood, 380 x 255 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris |
The seductive nudes
of Cranach
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), born one year after
Durer, is as self-determined as Durer but without his
spiritual concentration. From an early stage in his career,
Cranach was able to obtain copies of Duurer's woodcut
prints, and his familiarity with these was to have lasting
influence on his painting, with its sharp definition and
brilliant color.
Cranach was almost two painters in one - artistically
schizophrenic, as it were. His most popular works are the
decidedly seductive nudes with which he delighted his
aristocratic patrons. These coy creatures have the rare
distinction of fitting in with modern tastes, being slender,
free-spirited, and even kinky. They have a sort of refined
sexuality, but it is also cold and teasing: we are tempted
to think that Cranach did not really care for women and may
even have feared them. His Nymph of the Spring
has hung up her hunting arrows, but the presence of a pair
of partridges (birds of Venus) suggests that it is the human
heart that she hunts. A distinctly diaphanous wisp of silk
draws attention to her loins by "covering" them, she wears
her jewelry provocatively, and she is clearly only
pretending to be asleep, propped up on the thick, sensual
velvet of her dress. She sprawls before us, part of the
landscape and in a sense its essence. A Latin inscription on
the upper left reminds us that this is a nymph of a sacred
fountain. She is not a secular image, despite her alluring
nakedness. We are warned not to break, not to shatter her
holy slumbers. Love, Cranach is telling us, is something we
have to approach with delicate reverence. A meaningful
landscape surrounds her. Close by is the mysterious,
symbolic cave in the rock - again, an image of sacred sexual
symbolism, the female hollow. Beyond that there is the world
of commerce and battle, church and family, in which the
sacred realities of sex are played out in actual life.
Sister Wendy
Venus wears only an elaborately jewelled hairnet and
necklaces. She is coyly holding a diaphanous veil and looks
out seductively at the viewer. Her body is idealized,
perhaps because artists at this time rarely used live female
models. Nude women were not often shown unless they appeared
in a narrative scene or as mythical goddesses. Cranach seems
to have ignored the Classical spirit of the dav, and for
this reason his nudes sometimes seem almost primitive. The
choice of a mythological rather than a religious subject for
this picture may have been because the patron was
Protestant. We know little about Cranach other than that his
influence in Protestant Germany was widespread. He seemed to
appear suddenly, and produced his best work early in his
long career, thereafter leading the easy life of a Court
painter. He is called Lucas the Elder because he was the
first in a dvnastv of artists who carried on his traditions
and style.
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Nymph of the Spring
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Nymph of the Spring
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The Nymph of the Fountain
1534
Panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
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Reclining River Nymph at the Fountain
1518
Oil on wood, 59 x 92 cm
Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig
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Lucas
Cranach the Elder
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