Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ and the Adulteress, c. 1520, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek. |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Golden Age, c. 1530, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek. |
Cranach the Elder Revisited on the 175th Anniversary of Alte Pinakothek |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Ill-matched Lovers (Unequal Couple), 1528, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lot and his Daughters, 1533, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek. |
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Alte Pinakothek Die dritte Ausstellung anlässlich des 175. Geburtstags der Alten Pinakothek präsentiert 30 ausgewählte Gemälde Lucas Cranachs d. Ä. (1472–1553) aus dem großen Bestand der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen. Es ist die erste Cranach-Ausstellung in der Alten Pinakothek. Im Jahr 1472 kam der Wittenberger Maler in den Grenzen des heutigen Bayern auf die Welt und wurde unter dem Namen seines oberfränkischen Geburtsorts Kronach berühmt. Sein erstes größeres Altarbild, die 1503 gemalte „Kreuzigung Christi“ der Alten Pinakothek, entstand mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit für ein bayerisches Kloster. Als das Gemälde 1804 in die kurfürstlich bayerische Galerie aufgenommen wurde, hatte die hiesige Cranachsammlung schon ein ansehnliches Alter. Denn bereits im 16. Jahrhundert waren die ersten Gemälde für München erworben worden. Der im frühen 19. Jahrhundert kräftig angewachsene Bestand umfasst heute mehr als 100 Gemälde Cranachs, von Künstlern seiner Werkstatt, aus seinem Umkreis und seiner Nachfolge. Davon sind 81 an sechs verschiedenen Orten im Freistaat Bayern ausgestellt. Die Ausstellung bietet einen Querschnitt durch diesen Bestand und berührt dabei zahlreiche Fragen, die die Forschung heute beschäftigen. Unter den 30 ausgestellten Gemälden befinden sich die fünf ältesten Werke der Sammlung, die schon im 16./17. Jahrhundert in München und Schleißheim nachzuweisen sind: Das „Goldene Zeitalter“, die lebensgroße „Lucretia“, „Christus und die Ehebrecherin“, der „Zug der Israeliten durch das Rote Meer“ und das „Opfer Abrahams“. Auch die späteren Erwerbungen sind pars pro toto vertreten. Das breite Themenspektrum der Cranach-Werkstatt – vom Alten Testament über die in der Renaissance beliebten Darstellungen aus Antike und Mythologie bis zu den humorvollen Präsentationen des „Ungleichen Paars“ – wird exemplarisch vor Augen geführt wie auch die Frage der seriellen Fertigung und der Motiv-Variation. „Cranach in Bayern“ illustriert darüber hinaus beispielhaft die dezentrale Aufstellung des Kunstbesitzes im Freistaat, die keine Erfindung unserer Tage ist, sondern schon vor 200 Jahren mit einem dichten und bis heute fortbestehenden Netz von Filialgalerien eingeführt wurde. Das erklärte Anliegen der Ausstellung ist es, anlässlich des Jubiläums der Alten Pinakothek darauf aufmerksam zu machen, dass die Schätze der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen nicht nur in München konzentriert sind, sondern eine Reise nach Aschaffenburg, Bamberg, Kronach, Nürnberg und Regensburg lohnen. Zur Ausstellung erscheint ein Katalog (ca. 160 Seiten) mit einer ausführlichen Geschichte der Sammlung, mit Kommentaren zu den ausgestellten Werken und einem illustrierten Gesamtverzeichnis der Gemälde Lucas Cranachs d. Ä.in den Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Elector Frederick III. the Wise of Saxony, 1532, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek. |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Israelites Crossing the Red Sea (Fall of the Pharaoh), 1530, © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek. |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, A Female Personification of Justice, 1537, Private collection. |
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Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Nymph of the Spring, after 1537, Washington, National Gallery of Art © National Gallery, Washington. |
A Trip to Flanders and Other Significant Influences on Cranach the Elder |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucretia, ca. 1510-1513, private collection © www.humanbios.com, Human Bios GmbH, Switzerland.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Mount of Calvary (Schottenkreuzigung), c. 1500, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judgment of Paris, 1527, Kopenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst © Kopenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Melancholy, 1532, Colmar, musée d'Unterlinden © Colmar, musée d'Unterlinde. |
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Centre for Fine Arts Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) was one of the most popular artists of the Renaissance in northern Europe; his portraits of the Reformer Martin Luther and his sensual paintings of nudes have become part of the collective memory. Outside of his own homeland, however, awareness of his exceptionally varied creative output has been somewhat hazy. The Brussels exhibition is in fact the first ever to be devoted to this German painter in one of the Benelux countries. Taking as its starting point Cranach's journey to Flanders in 1508, which brought him into contact with the latest in Low Countries art, it repeatedly explores the influences that Cranach was subject to. Thanks to his work as court painter to the Saxon Electors in Wittenberg over almost 50 years, moreover, the artist got to know some of the key figures of his eventful times, including Charles V, Margaret of Austria, and Martin Luther. In his portraits of them and in selected contrasts between Cranach's work and that of his Dutch, Low Countries, and Italian colleagues, we can see how extensively the artist was caught up in political and cultural events in Central Europe. A number of exhibits throw light on the operations of Cranach's workshop in Wittenberg, whose extraordinary productivity contributed greatly to his success. The exhibition presents more than 50 paintings and some 100 drawings and prints by Lucas Cranach the Elder related to contemporaries’ works. It is the first exhibition ever in a Benelux country devoted to this master of Northern Renaissance. The World of Lucas Cranach is presented on a broadly chronological basis and opens with Cranach's earliest known works, which were created around 1500 in Vienna. In this section of the exhibition his expressive early works are compared with Albrecht Dürer's seminal woodcuts, while works by Albrecht Altdorfer and Jörg Breu make clear the artist's key role in the development of the art of the "Danube school". The next section is devoted to the period following Cranach's appointment as court painter to the Saxon Electors in 1505. Among the most outstanding of his early Wittenberg works are a series of both technically and thematically striking woodcuts that were produced in competition with Hans Burgkmair and Dürer. In addition, Cranach's encounter with the art of Italy and the Low Countries at this time is highlighted by, for example, the presence of works by Quinten Massys, Bernard van Orley, and Francesco Francia. Depictions of the virtuous heroine Lucretia, which make these connections very clear, are followed by a thematic section that looks at Cranach's pictures of nudes, a group of paintings that more than any other has shaped our ideas about his work. A frame of reference for Cranach's own highly individual approach (both in terms of content and of style) is provided by works by Jacopo de'Barbari, Lucas van Leyden, and Albrecht Dürer, among others. This section both illustrates the thematic breadth of Cranach's nude paintings and focuses on the extraordinary success of these innovative works, which owed much to their mixture of erotic and moral-didactic characteristics. The last section looks at the age of the Reformation, our picture of which has been to a great extent formed by Cranach's works. With his portraits of Luther and of both his followers and opponents, the painter served both religious camps; comparable parallels can be drawn between the new instructive imagery of Protestantism, shaped by Cranach, and thematically conventional commissions from Catholic customers. Works on the theme of "the power of women" (Weibermacht), of which Cranach painted a number of early examples on panel, also became popular at this time. The exhibition brings together some 50 selected paintings by Cranach, a number of his most important drawings, and some 40 prints, of which in some cases the example on display is the only one in existence today. It includes renowned major works like the Vienna Schottenkreuzigung, a Crucifixion painted around 1500, which is the oldest known panel painting by Cranach, and the Budapest Martyrdom of Saint Catherine. In addition, visitors to the exhibition can see a whole range of paintings that have not been exhibited before or only on rare occasions in special exhibitions, including the 1534 Duke George the Bearded triptych, which has been in the cathedral in Meissen since the 16th century. The Cranach works on display are illuminatingly complemented by some 50 works by other artists. Some 50 public and private collections were persuaded to lend works for this exhibition, including renowned institutions such as the Royal Museums and the Royal Library in Brussels, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the National Gallery in Prague, the National Museum in Warsaw, and the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Apollo and Diana, c. 1530, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België © Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels (picture Speltdoorn).
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus with the Honey Thief, 1531, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussel © Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels (picture Speltdoorn). |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Tryptych of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, 1534, Hochstift Meißen © Hochstift Meißen. |
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, oil on wood, 73,5 x 54 cm (Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, Budapest) © Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, Budapest. |
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Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Gastmahl des Herodes (The Feast of Herod), detail, 1533, Oil on limewood, 79.8 x 112.7 cm, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Photograph © Jochen Beyer, Village-Neuf. |
Cranach the Elder, His Workshop, and Their Gift to German Art Imagery |
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Bildnis einer sächischen Prinzessin (Portrait of a Princess of Saxony), detail, ca. 1512, Mixed media on wood, 43.4 x 34.3 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Enthauptung Johannes des Täufers (The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, detail, 1515, Mixed media on limewood, 84.5 x 58 cm, Erzdiözese Olomouc (Olmütz), Erzbischöfliches Schloss Kromeríz (Kremsier), Courtesy Erzdiözese Olomouc (Olmütz), Erzbischöfliches Schloss Kromeríz (Kremsier).
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Venus, 1532, Oil on beachwood, 37 x 25 cm, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Photograph © Jochen Beyer, Village-Neuf.
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Portrait of a Yound Woman, 1500-1533, Oil on wood, 40 × 25,5 cm, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. |
Städel Museum In past decades, selections have been made from the enormous fund of works executed by Cranach and his workshop for a wide range of exhibitions on various specific aspects. In contrast, based on its own significant holdings, the Städel is pursuing a different, ambitious goal: By choosing masterworks from every phase of Cranach the Elder’s career, the focus is directed to the artist and his works themselves, and his entire oeuvre in its various facets. The reason for this approach is that every one of the recent undertakings has left one central question unanswered: What made Lucas Cranach so successful? On one hand, Cranach is distinguished by the high quality of his works. He was an entrancing portraitist and authored new pictorial inventions, whether hunting scenes, genre paintings, or erotica. On the other hand, his quality is founded in the certainty with which he sighted various patrons, reaching a public among adherents to the old Catholic faith while at the same time advancing to become the chief propagandist of the Protestant doctrine. At one point, the workshop seems to have owed its continued existence solely to this diversification, which, incidentally, went above and beyond the visual arts: In addition to the house and workshop, Cranach’s ‘empire’ encompassed the only apothecary in Wittenberg with a wine pub as well as — for a while — a share in a printing press. Cranach’s entrepreneurial skills thus constitute yet another aspect that make him stand out against his contemporary fellow artists. We know quite a lot about the most prolific German painter of early modern times — but certainly not everything. We know that he came from Kronach in Franconia (and had himself named “Cranach” after his native town) and that his father was likewise a painter. But where he learned his profession, and where his travels as a journeyman took him, are as deeply shrouded in mystery as ever. In any case, shortly after 1500, at the age of 30, he comes into view in Vienna with stunning works that combine invention, painterly verve, and meticulous technique.. He was active in Humanist circles as a portraitist capable of uniting suspenseful renditions of persons with atmospherically charged landscape depictions executed in a manner that would soon be adopted by painters of the “Danube School.” Other works of his early Viennese period are likewise distinguished by a frenetic expressive will in which form and color mutually enhance one another to brilliant effect. This phase was followed in 1505 by a decisive career move: entry into employment at an electoral court. For in that year Luther’s regional sovereign Frederick the Wise appointed Cranach as his court painter. The latter would hold this position for the rest of his life, even under Frederick’s successors John the Steadfast and Frederick the Magnanimous. Only a small number or works have survived from the initial years of this activity, but Cranach’s painting style changes radically. His investigation of Dürer as well as Italian and Dutch influences leave their mark and reveal an artist in search of “his” style. Cranach establishes himself quickly in Wittenberg and organizes a workshop that soon leads the market for altarpieces and wall paintings in the eastern part of the imperial realm. It is the serpent signet — the shield figure of the coat of arms awarded him by the elector — which serves him as a signature and becomes his trademark. Moreover, Cranach succeeded in developing a style that lends itself to imitation by his employees with such perfection that in most cases it is impossible to distinguish between the hands that participated. Individual motifs were "recycled" and recomposed in new variations, as seen, for example, in the many versions of the ill-matched couple, several of are assembled in the exhibition. Other pictorial themes are also executed repeatedly with slight deviations. The workshop’s output was enormous: Paintings on wood of the type presented by the show represent only a small fraction of the production. Cranach also supplied his employer with decorations for festivities, room furnishings, wall paintings, painted cloths and the like, most of which have been lost. Yet the conditions under which he worked were anything but favorable: A notoriously empty imperial treasury, the Reformation and witch-hunting, the Peasants’ War, and iconoclasm formed the historical parameters which drove many another fellow artist of the period, for example Hans Holbein the Younger, from the land. The quality already revealed by the portraits of the early period in Vienna applies as well to Cranach’s later likenesses: In his best works, his achievements as a portrait painter are equal to those of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. At the same time, it is not so much a striving for strictly objective “photographic” rendition that distinguishes his likenesses, as the attempt to incorporate a psychological characterization into the depiction. Cranach’s significance as the “painter of the Reformation” is uncontested — his portraits of Martin Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora were produced serially in the artist’s workshop and used for the reformer within the framework of a veritable image campaign. In addition, Cranach makes a decisive contribution to the development of genuinely Protestant pictorial themes propagated by Luther’s doctrine and capable of surviving widespread iconoclasm. Yet he also remains loyal to a clientele of the old faith. By the end of his life, his workshop has produced a great number of pictures of the Virgin, of which several continue to be revered as miraculous images. He not only supplies Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg — Luther’s ‘opposite number’ — with designs for major church furnishings but also, and repeatedly, with portraits showing this patron in the role of the church father Jerome. Nevertheless, Cranach’s inexhaustible gift for pictorial innovation is apparent above all in the numerous extant secular and mythological themes he treated. Venus with and without Amor, Lucretia, the Silver Age, and the Golden Age, the Judgement of Paris and the deeds of Hercules are played through in any number of variations. A specialty crystallizes in this context — depictions of nudes cast in various roles. Unlike Dürer’s nudes, those by Cranach are not based on painstaking studies of human proportions. Instead, Cranach developed an idealized, elegant “child-woman” type that appears in his works again and again in ever different guises. Even if Cranach continued to take the brush in hand until he was well advanced in age, he got his sons Hans and Lucas the Younger involved in workshop activities early on. The two also remain fundamentally committed to the “workshop style”, and it is only Lucas the Younger who became tangible as an independent personality. As a result, the organized workshop production not only continued after the death of Cranach the Elder in 1553 under the direction of Lucas the Younger, but is even carried on by the latter’s son for yet another generation. Städel Musem has assembled more than 70 masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the great painter of the Reformation period. More popular and economically more successful than his contemporary Albrecht Dürer, it was Lucas Cranach who presumably exerted the longest-lasting influence on the world of German imagery. His early landscape depictions were trailblazing; he inspired old religious themes with completely new life, as well as inventing entirely new pictorial types for the reformed faith. His portraits of Martin Luther, Frederick the Wise, Philipp Melanchthon and others shaped our conception of them to this very day. Another of his specialties were exquisitely painted erotic depictions. In them he created a timeless ideal of female beauty, inspiring artists from Picasso to Giacometti in the early 20th century. In addition to offering a superb cross-section of Cranach’s oeuvre, the exhibition endeavors to shed light on the secret of his success. The lenders to this show include numerous national and international private collections and museums such as the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin — Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Dresden State Art Collections, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, National Gallery, Washington, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, National Gallery, London, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and others. Following its run in Frankfurt, this exhibition — a Städel Museum production — will be shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. |
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), Das Goldene Zeitalter, um 1530, Vorschau (auf Bild klicken). |
