What Was Lucas Cranach’s Legacy? A Dynasty in the German Renaissance

Lucas Cranach the Elder was a remarkable artist, businessman, and political figure. He was a close friend of the leader of the Protestant Reformation movement Martin Luther, with his art actively shaping the visual culture of the era. Art historians name Cranach the intermediary figure between the classic Renaissance painting and Mannerism, a proto-Baroque art movement that manipulated form and proportion. His son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, took on running his father’s workshop and was soon recognized as a painter with his own signature style.

Lucas Cranach was not the first painter in his family and he received his training from his father. His early life remains a mystery since he gained prominence in his thirties, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He became particularly famous in the 1520s as the leading painter of visual propaganda for a new religious movement, Protestantism. Led by an ex-friar Martin Luther, Protestants demanded to limit the power of clergy over interpreting the Bible, ban selling indulgences, and get rid of idolatrous images in churches.

Lucas Cranach the Elder created numerous portraits of Luther and his wife (an ex-nun who went against the Catholic rule) illustrated his pamphlets, and even became the godfather of his first son. While Luther did not call for the destruction of all religious images recognizing their educational power, some of his followers took it too literary. What followed was the tragic event of iconoclasm that raged in Northern Europe, with crowds looting churches and destroying precious works of art.

From Court Painter to City Mayor

According to many Cranach experts, the most productive and remarkable period of his career happened during his stay in Vienna in the early 1500s. There, he experimented with genres and forms, sought inspiration in the works of Albrecht Durer, exchanged opinions with other artists, and enjoyed relative creative freedom. Apart from portraiture, he experimented with landscape backgrounds, which were often overlooked by other artists of his time. However, it is necessary to say that those promoting Cranach’s early period of work often accuse him of commercializing his later work and turning from an artist to a businessman. Contrary to the beliefs of the modern era, in Cranach’s time there was nothing shameful in monetizing skills and appeasing clients.

In Vienna, he was noticed by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick III, and invited to work for him in the city of Wittenberg. Frederick III was also a prominent Protestant who played a crucial role in the Reformation: after the condemnation of the Protestant teaching by the Vatican, the Elector saved Martin Luther’s life by providing him refuge. For almost fifty years, Lucas Cranach the Elder worked as a court painter to the Elector, earning the post of the Wittenburg city mayor and the official noble status. Cranach even designed the insignia for his family, with which he signed his paintings—a winged serpent holding a ruby ring in its mouth.

The headstone of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s tomb holds a title he was the proudest of during his lifetime—the swiftest painter of all. In Cranach’s practice, fast work was not synonymous with low quality: he prided himself on being able to successfully fulfill a commission much faster than his competitors. The reason for this was not only his outstanding skill but a well-organized process inside his workshop. The Cranachs were skilled and talented entrepreneurs with immaculate bookkeeping who ran a successful business. Apart from a painting studio, they kept a store that sold artistic materials and pigments which was the only shop in Wittenburg, thanks to the monopoly granted to them by the Elector.

Cranach’s workshop was not a one-man enterprise. Apart from his family members, he employed more than a dozen other painters. Overall, around 20 men worked in his studio, each of them having a distinctive specialization like hands, costumes, backgrounds, or others. They kept templates and stencils for popular compositions and offered complete sets of details and tones to their clients. Lucas Cranach the Elder, as well as his son later, had very limited involvement in the painting process. In most cases, he simply observed the strict following of guidelines and made sure that the works bore his signature style. The artistic dynasty of Cranachs continued for more than a century, with its last representative being the great-grandson of the original workshop owner. The later branches of the Cranach family tree included many notable characters from European history, including the famous writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

As you might have noticed, Lucas Cranach enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime, yet his recognition as a crucial figure in the German history of art happened several centuries later, in the Modern era. The art of the late nineteenth century, with its experimental treatment of line and form, opened the door for the true appreciation of Cranach’s work.

Many art historians believe that Cranach was the artist who stood between the old canons of Renaissance art and the new rules of Mannerism. Mannerism was an early form of Baroque art that used distorted forms and exaggerated colors to manipulate the emotional intensity of the work. Cranach used elongated flowing shapes (particularly, in the rendering of women’s bodies), bold tones, and patterns. Instead of idealizing his clients’ features, he sometimes even exaggerated them, yet never crossing the line and making them look like offensive caricatures.

One of the most prominent features of Cranach the Elder’s art was his deep admiration of landscape and unusual attention to it. At the time, the genre of landscape had already existed for centuries but was considered a genre of lesser value than portraiture. Surprisingly, Cranach recognized the symbolic and emotional potential of a landscape scene and paid careful attention to the backgrounds of his works. Sometimes, he even moved the figures to the side, as if cropping the image, in order to expose more of a nature scene behind the principal characters. Subsequently, landscape would become one of the signature genres of Post-Reformation art that switched religious imagery to ideologically neutral scenes of nature.

From his early days, Lucas Cranach the Younger was trained to become the next great Cranach in the family and take over his father’s workshop. He started by copying the master’s work and managing the studio in his absence. He also followed his political inclinations, becoming a counselor and then a mayor of Nuremberg. As an artist, Cranach the Younger moved on to develop his own stylistic nuances. Particularly, he preferred large-scale, multi-figure compositions with more architectural elements. His choice of color was also distinctively different from his father’s, yet scholars still struggle to distinguish his early work.

Specifically, such a distinction becomes impossible in the works from the mid-1550s. In 1553, Lucas Cranach the Elder died at the age of 81, leaving an array of unfinished projects. In the following years, Cranach the Younger would finish them for his father, sometimes allowing himself creative liberties. For instance, the altarpiece for the Weimar’s Church of St. Peter and Paul still holds an endearing and heartwarming reminder of family love and respect.

Next to the figure of Jesus crucified, three figures stand, observing the scene: John the Baptist, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and his friend Martin Luther, who passed away in 1546. The blood from Christ’s wound squirts directly on Cranach’s forehead, with the Savior himself discreetly eyeing him from above. Although it seems absurd today, for Cranach the Younger, this scene probably signified the great hope for the salvation of his father’s soul and forgiveness of his sins.