Lucas Cranach the elder [antikvár]

LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have often been called the Golden Age of German painting, and they did in fact produce a splendid series of great artists. The Humanist Melanchthon named Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder as the three greatest — a judgment which is still valid to-day. Lucas Cranach's name has retained its glory over the centuries, and though his interpretations were much more distinctive and he himself much more uncompromising than Dürer, at no time has he ever been neglected or forgotten. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries valued him for his fidelity to nature and for his industry. Goethe proudly described himself as a « Cranachide » — a direct descendent of the master — and on painters of this century such as Kirchner, or even Matisse and Picasso, Cranach — perhaps alone among the old German masters — exercised a discernible influence. The year 1500 saw the final transition in European thought and art from the medieval, highly committed and expressive, yet humanly restrictive late Gothic style to the wider horizons of the Renaissance. We assume that Cranach was already working in the late Gothic style, but as our knowledge of him as a painter only begins when he was thirty years old. his earliest known works belong more to the Renaissance. Only later in his life was he to change direction back towards the Gothic style which must surely have dominated his first artistic creations. His Early Years Lucas Cranach the Elder was bom in 1472 in Upper Franconia, in the town of Kronach from which his name derives. His real surname is not known for certain, but was probably Sonder, Sunder or Müller. We know his year of birth from two sources: the inscription on his tombstone in the St. James's graveyard in Weimar, and a Latin obituary by Matthias Gunderam, sometime tutor to his children. The first thirty years of his life are cloaked in mystery. We only know that he probably received his basic artistic training from his father, who worked in Kronach as a painter. Only at the turn of the fifteenth century do we find a trace of him, as he travelled through Regensburg, and probably also Passau and Linz, on his way to Vienna, in the stimulating artistic climate of which city he stayed from 1502 to 1504. To this Vienna period belong his earliest known works. The first which can definitely be attributed to him is a Kreuzigung (Crucifixion). Against a bright blue sky with gathering clouds, rise the three crosses bearing the bleeding bodies of Christ and the two malefactors. On the ground lie partly decomposed limbs, bones and skulls, at which a dog is snifiing. On the left stand weeping saints and on the right savage-looking soldiers (p. 5) gaze unconcernedly at Christ. An emotional power emanates from this picture and can still grip one to-day. The most important picttires Cranach painted in Vienna were four portraits, of the lawyer Reuss, his wife, the historian Cuspinian (p. 6) and his wife (p. 7), a Büssender Hieronymus (St. Jerome doing Penance) of 1512, a Kreuzigung (Crucifixion) of 1503 (p. 8) and the Ruhe auf der Flucht (Rest on the Flight into Egypt) of 1504. These are also the purest examples of the so-called «Danube -style», which is to be found in Bavaria and the Danube basin in the sixteenth century, and is characterized by an original approach to nature. The painters of the Danube school, headed by Albrecht Altdorfer and Wolf Huber from Allgäu, gave greatest prominence to landscape, light and air in their works, and established landscape - painting as an independent artistic genre. It is astonishing to note that the stranger from Kronach did not fall tmder the influence of the local masters, but himself made an important contribution to this style and precipitated its development. The typically Danube individuality of composition is shown very clearly in Cranach's Kreuzigung (Crucifiocion) on page 8, which occupies a special place in his work. He was the first to present the Crucifixion from a new and unexpected angle, which numerous other masters were later to imitate: the onlookers are brought from the wings to the centre of the stage, and Christ is seen in profile instead of full-face. The two men throwing dice, Mary and John, are juxtaposed with the crucified Lord in a dramatic asymmetry which reveals Cranach as a bold innovator. 10