Sabbatical with Pastor Curtis: Lucas Cranach the Elder

We were blessed to see the house and artwork of the internationally known painter from Wittenberg, named Lucas Cranach. It is the elder of the two Cranach painters who actually owned the house that directly faced the market place and city hall. The building he purchased also housed the town's only apothecary (pharmacy) shop. He decided that he wanted to operate the shop himself and so he applied for the privelege to operate the shop whast was granted to him in 1520. With this permission, Lucas was also garaunteed the corner on the market in "ground spices, confectioneries, sugar and coloured was, among other things...He also treaded in pigments, such as lapis blue, lead white, read lead and ochre yellow." These were used in creating his different colored paints for his famous artwork.

He attained the office of Court Painter which offered a good salary. Not only did he receive a healthy salary, but he was paid handsomely for each of his peices of art and often reimbursed for the cost of his paint and canvas supplies. He painted a series of portraits of Melanchthon, Luther and Katherina as they continued to age. He even painted a picture of Luther when he was desguised as Knight Gorge. Our image of Luther is most likely his artwork. His art peices are in famous art museums aroung the world. One of those paintings is on permanent display at the J. and M. Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. It is a painting entitled Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg as St. Jerome. You can see it in the pictures below.

Cranach was also a property investor and owned a number of homes throughout the town of Wittenberg. The Elector of Saxony, Frederich the Wise was a big collector of relics (tokens such as a splinter from the cross of Christ, or a thorn for Jesus crown, or a hair from the head of a saint, etc.) He commissioned Lucas Cranach to created woodcuts of his relics that were linked to the topic of remittance of the punishment for sins. He created 119 woodcuts just for this collection alone. There is so much rich history connecting Lucas Cranach with several areas where he served as Court Painter, plus his connection to so many famous people back in his day. You can see them all in his paintings.

Lucas had two sons who were also successful painters, learning the art of painting from their father. The one died young and the other, Lucas Cranach the Younger went on to be a great painter in his own right. There is a whole history of how to tell which Cranach's painted the different peices that are out on the market. Each had their own unique symbolic signature and personal brushstroke.

In one of the pictures sent yesterday, you probably recognized the printing press and may have guessed that we were in the house of Johannes Gutenberg. It is a printing press, but it was one of a number of presses at that time. This one was used by Cranach for his woodprint copies. They also used it to print documents as well. I'm still looking into how many documents the Cranach printers may have printed legally for Luther. There were many printers at the time copying documents without any permission from the authors. Enjoy today's pictures.