Lucas Cranach the Elder and the Reformation of European Art
Today I’m pleased to feature the writing of Amy Mantravadi, whose blog Sub-Creations features her consistently enlightening and informative discussions of theology, philosophy, and their intersection with the arts and with historical Christianity. For the past few years she has been writing a novelization of the theological conflict between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the first volume of which is available on Amazon; today’s essay discusses the influence that Luther’s new theology had on a star of the Northern Renaissance art world who is somewhat overlooked but who, as you will read, was of great influence in the development of Christian artistic expression.
When people think of the Renaissance they tend to think of art, and when they think specifically about the Northern Renaissance, their minds turn to Albrecht Dürer. Until recently, I was no different. Dürer is a towering figure, not only in the history of the Northern Renaissance, but in the history of Germany as a nation and the visual arts as a discipline. It was he who, more than any other, brought the aesthetic of the Italian Renaissance north of the Alps and gave the rich imperial free city of Nuremberg a place alongside Florence in the annals of art history.
But as I have hinted, my understanding of the Northern Renaissance has shifted of late, particularly regarding its connection to the Protestant Reformation. Were you to judge purely by a visit to Munich’s famed Alte Pinakothek who the most important German artist of the sixteenth century was, you would likely find yourself won over by Dürer’s stunning self-portrait in the tradition of Salvator Mundi. Further down the hall, past Dürer’s imagined depiction of Charlemagne and study for a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, you would encounter a few works by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Here you would probably conclude, along with the majority of historic scholars, that these works show some definite skill, but not on the level of Dürer.
Context is key to understanding the nature of art. Modern curators choose to feature certain works, drawing your attention to the way they have influenced subsequent artists, but often providing less information about the significance of those works of art in their own time. The fact is that Lucas Cranach the Elder was, in his own context, every bit as important as Albrecht Dürer and perhaps more so.
The reason lies chiefly in historical accidents. Dürer found patronage in Nuremberg, while Cranach became the court artist of the Elector of Saxony. This meant that in the year 1517, when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg (one of the Saxon elector’s primary seats), it was Cranach and not Dürer who lived just down the street. Equally significant, Dürer died in 1526, just as the Reformation was beginning to hit full stride. These two relative coincidences ensured it was Cranach and not Dürer who became the chief artist of the Reformation, for while Dürer embraced Luther’s theology, he had little time to collaborate with the growing ranks of Church reformers.
Therefore, it was Lucas Cranach the Elder who would bring about substantial changes in the visual arts by his involvement with the Reformation. Over the course of four decades, Cranach worked closely with Martin Luther and others to produce polemical pamphlets, altarpieces, images for personal devotion, and the first readily accessible German translation of the Bible. Dürer’s art adorned the grandest churches and homes of nobility, but Cranach found his way more readily into the homes of average Germans, changing the way they thought about art. In so doing, he likely became the most important artist of the Northern Renaissance and one of the most influential in European history, for all Protestant art owes something to Cranach.
As befits the visual medium, I will show you a few of Cranach’s most important works and explain how they differed from what had come before and influenced what was to come after.
Charity
The cardinal and theological virtues were popular subjects in Western European art during the late medieval period. All were portrayed as women, and usually in a group. The virtue Charity could be identified by the fact that she was nursing an infant. In Pollaiolo’s imagining (above, top), Charity is portrayed in royal attire: a red velvet gown, fur cape, bejeweled brooch, and glistening crown. Her gaze is distant and severe. We get the feeling she is only deigning to grant the babe access to a tiny portion of her breast.
Then there is Cranach’s depiction of Charity, one of several that he produced (above, bottom). Cranach introduces three new elements that would become typical ever after. First, there are multiple children crowding around the young mother. Second, they are sitting next to a fruit tree. Third, Charity is completely naked.
Whereas the earlier depiction of Charity looks rather like a traditional Virgin and Child, with Mary crowned as Queen of Heaven, Cranach’s Charity “sits in blissful nakedness on a stone bench, her legs modestly crossed, with only a thin veil, indicating her status as a married woman, covering her head and shoulders.”1 This was in line with Luther’s teaching that the vocation of marriage was of equal dignity to that of celibacy, if not greater. Additionally, Cranach did not paint Charity nude for prurient reasons. As Steven Ozment notes, “In the context of a loving mother and dependent child, total nudity conveys total maternal self-sacrifice.”2
And what of that tree? It seems that Cranach wished to associate the fruitfulness and generosity of the plant with that of the mother. Both expend effort to nourish others. In different ways, they are both stripped, even as Christ was upon Mount Calvary. The greatest love, Christ said, was to lay down one’s life for another (John 15:13). The medieval Church and the art it produced, often focusing on the lives of ascetic saints, had provided one image of what self-giving love meant. Now, Cranach was providing another that would dominate Protestantism down to the present day.
It was not the image of a virgin but that of a matron that would dominate the Protestant imagination.
Christ Blessing the Children
Trying to find a historical precedent for Cranach’s depiction of Christ Blessing the Children is rather difficult, because this biblical episode was not a common feature in medieval Christian art. It was Cranach who first chose to focus on this story because it helped to emphasize two aspects of Reformation theology: the centrality of faith as the instrument by which we receive salvation, specifically faith like a child; and the spiritual value of marriage, parenthood, and children. As explained in the official guide to a recent Cranach exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts, “Prior to Cranach this subject does not seem to have been treated as a panel painting; at least no predecessors have been found . . . The warning contained in the picture illustrates a central Lutheran position: only an unspoiled childish belief in God, as revealed in Christ, can prepare the way for sinful mankind to achieve redemption. In its emphasis on family values, it also related closely to basic Reformist views, giving a Protestant thrust to the picture.”3
The similarity with Cranach’s depiction of Charity is clear. In both cases, children represent the human’s true status before God: helpless, dependent, unable to earn God’s favor. Yet, the love of God welcomes them in as children and heirs to eternal life, granting them the sustaining grace to live as Christians, held fast in the arms of God. “Here the grim, ascetic religious mindset that rather chose chastity, repression, and the single life over God-ordained marriage, sex, and family met its ‘betters’ in the army of happy mothers and contented infants directly blessed by their Savior,”4 Ozment writes.
Numerous artists have since returned to this biblical episode for inspiration, especially those in the Protestant tradition. The English artist and mystic poet William Blake created his own version (above), making the tale part of his post-Enlightenment, Romantic vision. The contrast between childhood and maturity, light and darkness, faith and doubt is central to Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Thus, the bold faith of Cranach’s work is mixed with doubt in all that Blake produced, their contexts strikingly different. Nevertheless, the latter could not exist without the former.
The Crucifixion
The crucifixion of Christ has been a popular subject in Christian art since the latter days of the Church Fathers (around 400-500 CE). Painted scenes often featured the central image of Christ crucified with a large cast of characters below, while the ubiquitous crucifix was popularly displayed in stone, wood, or metal. But another mini-episode also received special focus: Christ’s declaration to his mother and the disciple John, “Woman, behold your son.” (John 19:26) In this, he signified that it would be John who would take up the responsibility for Mary’s care, as an eldest son would be expected to do.
By the late medieval period, some artists were depicting this moment with only the three persons involved rather than the large crowd, as seen in Rogier van der Weyden’s surprisingly modern looking depiction (above, top). But though Mary and John are certainly important characters in the story, it is Christ on the cross who remains central in the viewer’s field of vision, as he had throughout Christian history.
Cranach began his career painting the crucifixion this way, but then in 1503, he created The Lamentation of Christ, also known as The Schleißheim Crucifixion (above, bottom). You will note this was a full decade and a half before the Reformation’s formal beginning, but already Cranach showed his willingness to break with tradition and introduce new concepts to art. For here he does something unanticipated, shifting the entire viewing angle. Christ is moved to the right-hand side of the frame and viewed from the side, whereas Mary and John appear closer to the center, facing the viewer. As Alexander Stepanov explains, “The compositional scheme of The Crucifixion, which became established some five hundred years before Cranach, was symmetrical: Christ on the Cross in the centre, Mary to the right of him and John to the left, both turned to face the viewer. This arrangement began to strike Cranach’s contemporaries as too stylized. They wanted to see Mary and John accepting Christ’s dying wish.”5
Cranach changed the central episode in Christian art by focusing not on the cross itself, but the impact it was having on others. Medieval Christian art, literature, and practice led the believer to contemplate Christ’s sufferings, that by becoming one with the experiences of Christ, he or she could become one with him, receiving salvation. Cranach instead wants us to see that Christ is pouring out his life for Mary and John. Luther would come to emphasize the importance that Christ was given not only for the world but specifically for you.
In James Tissot’s What Christ Saw from the Cross the perspective is shifted completely. We are no longer confronted with the sufferings of Christ, but the way those sufferings are impacting the people whom Christ came to save. We see the faithful women, villainous religious leaders, and befuddled Roman soldiers. This perspective is in line with Western Christianity’s individualist turn in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and thus it runs the risk of making us forget certain things about the cross. The meaning of the cross becomes subjective rather than objective, fed through the prism of the individual’s emotional experience. While I certainly do not mean to condemn Tissot’s work, which I find utterly fascinating, Cranach’s painting strikes a more obvious balance between emphasizing both the objective work of Christ and the real benefits received by humanity.
The Weimar Altarpiece
Like Judaism before it, Christianity is a religion of blood. Yet, it was never written in the Hebrew Scriptures (though it was hinted at in places) that God would require the sacrificial blood of a human being for the purpose of atonement. This is a Christian distinctive: the shedding of human blood is both the highest evil and highest good simultaneously.
In medieval depictions of Christ’s crucifixion, such as Giotto’s Berlin Crucifixion (above, top), angels can be seen hovering next to Christ, collecting his shed blood in bowls. The sacred liquid will then be communicated to generations of Christians in the holy rite of the Eucharist, when according to Roman Catholic doctrine, wine is transformed into the blood of Christ and given for the people to drink. Presiding over the Eucharist is a priest, the Church’s official representative and mediator between the congregation and the Almighty, even as the priests of ancient Israel mediated for their fellows. It is the Church alone that dispenses the holy blood of Christ. That is why it must be collected for future use.
However, in the central scene of the Weimar Altarpiece, begun by Lucas Cranach the Elder and completed by his son Lucas Cranach the Younger, we see something extraordinary. There are no angels there to collect Christ’s blood. Instead, it spurts freely like something out of a horror film, landing directly on the head of a man with his hands held in prayer. That man is Lucas Cranach the Elder. This was not part of the elder Cranach’s original design. It was added by his son after the father’s death.
The implication is striking: angels may have mediated the Old Covenant to Moses, but in the New Covenant, Christ alone is mediator between God and man. The blood of Christ is given to Cranach directly and freely. This should not be seen as a rejection of the literal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, for Luther acknowledged that to his grave. Rather, it emphasizes once again Luther’s insistence that Christ is for you. Cranach claims this truth for his father, who despite his imperfect life made a good confession of faith at the end. “Christ was given for my father,” the younger Cranach declares.
The Protestant clergyman then is not a mediator between the congregation and God. He is a preacher, revealer of divine mysteries, and herald of spiritual truths. Both congregant and clergyman may approach Christ directly in prayer to receive forgiveness of sins, without the need for penance. Luther maintained pastoral confession solely for the soothing of the believer’s conscience. The pastor assures the congregant of what is already true: their sins are forgiven in Christ.
A Man in His Time
I could point to dozens more works of Cranach that reveal various aspects of Reformation theology and helped to change the way artists operate, but I hope the few I have presented here are sufficient to convince the reader of the scope of Cranach’s influence.
“While agreeing that artistic images were not the selfsame Holy Spirit bearing grace, Cranach’s altar panels put the gospel message before the viewers’ eyes as effectively as Luther’s sermons planted it in their ears,”6 Ozment concludes. “In Cranach, the reformers had an artist who could portray sin and redemption, death and the devil, hell and heaven, with the same force and clarity as Luther did from the pulpit.”7
The Germans of Cranach’s era encountered his art not only in the local church they visited multiple times each week, but in the Bible they may finally have been able to purchase, the catechism book they studied with their children, and the pamphlets being hawked in the marketplace. More than any other artist, Cranach was part of their daily lives: even the widespread prints of Dürer were less influential than Luther’s Bible. And no artist was more influential on future generations of Protestant artists in Germany, the Low Countries, England, and beyond than Cranach. Even Catholic artists (perhaps unwittingly) incorporated Cranach’s novelties into their own works, signaling a break from the medieval era.
Therefore, while he may never be as beloved as Dürer among average museum-goers, Cranach was at least as important, if not more so, to the Northern Renaissance, and he stands alone as the father of Reformation art. In his own context, he was king.
Cranach, ed. Bodo Brinkmann (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007), 206.
Ozment, Steven. The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 205.
Cranach, 214.
Ozment, 25.
Stepanov, Alexander. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Great Painters series, trans. Paul Williams (Bournemoth, UK: Parkstone Press, 1997), 25.
Ozment, 149.
Ozment, 150.
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Great work, Amy. And it's great because it brings the historical document to us along with its historical context, enriching both. "Broken Bonds" was already on my list, and so reading your comments on Cranach was all the more fun.
Joseph Koerner is great on Cranach: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3626496.html