Lucas Cranach the Elder, Workshop Portrait of... Lot 1008

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Workshop Portrait of Martin Luther Oil on wood. 19.1 x 14.8 cm. Inscribed and dated center left with the snake signet between the two pairs of numbers 15 and 32. Provenance In family ownership for three generations. Lucas Cranach the Elder was a staunch supporter of the Reformation and a close personal friend of Martin Luther. The Protestant movement had a major influence on both the artist's personal and artistic life. The first portraits of the Reformer were created in the Cranach workshop as early as 1520 and in the years that followed, different types of portraits were developed, showing him as Junker Jörg, a monk or a scholar with and without a doctor's hat. It is these portraits by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop that still shape our image of Luther's appearance today. This painting shows Luther with a black beret. He is looking to the side and no longer towards the viewer as in earlier portraits. This type of portrait was developed from 1530 onwards, so our work, dated 1532, is a very early example of this type of portrait. In an examination report dated 15 May 2023, Prof. Dr. Gunnar Heydenreich attributed our painting to the Cranach workshop on the basis of technological and stylistic findings. He also sees evidence that supports an attribution to Hans Cranach (c. 1513-1537), the eldest son and pupil of Lucas Cranach the Elder and older brother of Lucas Cranach the Younger. Like Lucas Cranach, Hans Cranach became an employee in his father's Wittenberg workshop at a young age and his works can hardly be distinguished from those of his father. He died very young in Bologna in 1537 during a trip to Italy. His younger brother Lucas Cranach the Younger is likely to have risen to become his father's closest collaborator as a result of this event.