Lucas Cranach the Elder Paintings

Lucas Cranach Paintings for Sale

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Cranach Lucas the Elder oil painting artist

Lucas Cranach Biography

(1472-1553)
German painter

He takes his name from the small town of Kronach in South Germany, where Lucas Cranach the Elder was born, and very little is known of his life before about 1500-01, when Lucas Cranach the Elder settled in Vienna and started working in the humanist circles associated with the newly founded university.

his stay in Vienna was brief (he left in 1504), but in his period there Lucas Cranach the Elder painted some of his finest and most original paintings. They include portraits, notably those of Johannes Cuspinian, a lecturer at the university, and his wife Anna (Reinhart Collection, Winterhur), and several religious Lucas Cranach paintings in which he shows a remarkable feeling for the beauty of landscape characteristic of the Danube school. The finest example of this manner is perhaps the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), which shows the Holy Family resting in the glade of a German pine forest. It was painted in 1504, just before Cranach went to Wittenberg as court painter to Frederick III (the Wise), Elector of Saxony.

Cranach remained in Wittenberg until 1550, when Lucas Cranach the Elder followed John Frederick (the Unfortunate), the last Saxon Elector of the Ernestine branch, into exile, in Augsburg. During his time in Wittenberg Lucas Cranach the Elder became extremely wealthy and one of the city's most respected citizens, serving as burgomaster for several years. Lucas Cranach paintings were eagerly sought by collectors, and his busy studio often produced numerous replicas of popular designs, particularly those in which Lucas Cranach the Elder showed his skill at depicting female beauty -- more than ten versions are known of his Reclining Nymph.

He excelled at erotic girl bodys, which sometimes draw on Italian Renaissance models but are totally different in spirit, and Lucas Cranach the Elder also had a penchant for pictures of coquettish women wearing large hats, sometimes shown as Judith or the goddesses in the Judgment of Paris. The most innovative Lucas Cranach the Elder paintings of his Wittenberg period, however, are probably his full-length portraits (The Duke and Duchess of Saxony, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, 1514).

Cranach continued with religious Lucas Cranach painting, but his woodcut designs (notably those for the first German edition of the New Testament in 1522) are generally more interesting that Lucas Cranach the Elder paintings in this sphere. Lucas Cranach the Elder also painted several portraits of Martin Luther. Despite his allegiance to the Protestant cause, Lucas Cranach the Elder continued to work for Catholic patrons and was a very astute businessman. During the last years of his life Cranach was assisted by his son, Lucas the Younger (1515-86), who carried on the tradition of the workshop and imitated his father's style so successfully that it is often difficult to distinguish between their hands.