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Updated: May 4, 2025
I should have to account for whatever may have survived of orthodoxy in Germany after the Reformation; to mention, at any rate, from the Lutheran point of view, that extraordinary painter, Cranach, whose Adams are bearded Apollos of the complexion of a Red Indian, and his Eves slender, chubby-faced courtesans, with bullet heads, little shrimps' eyes, lips moulded out of red pomatum, breasts like apples close under the neck, long, slim legs, elegantly formed, with the calf high up, and large, flat feet with thick ankles.
The lower panes of the windows of this room were of stained glass, of vivid tints; but the upper panes were untinged, in order that the light should not be disturbed which fell through them upon two magnificent pictures; one a hunting-piece, by Schneiders, and the other a portrait of an armed chieftain on horseback, by Lucas Cranach.
I decided the question in the affirmative; that they are, if from the dust of the present we can recreate the past, and bring again before us the forms as they then lived, moved, and had their being. For me, I seem to have seen Luther, Cranach, Melanchthon, and all the rest of them to have talked with them.
We have this to ask, even granting that our "burlesque picture" is a natural, almost a necessary, accompaniment of human life, was found, we may quite safely assume, in the cave-dwelling of primitive man, who probably satirised with a flint upon its walls those troublesome neighbours of his, the mammoth and the megatherium, peers out upon us from the complex culture of the Roman world in the clumsy graffito of the Crucifixion, emerges in the Middle Ages in a turbulent growth of grotesque, wherein those grim figures of Death or Devil move through a maze of imagery often quaint and fantastic, sometimes obscene or terrible takes a fresh start in the Passionals of Lucas Cranach, and can be traced in England through her Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth century.
The crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art, and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the great Italian masters which ensued. LUCAS CRANACH, born in 1472, received his first instructions in art from his father, his later teaching probably from Matthew Grunewald.
The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths, must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be made accessible to all without distinction. Luther is represented as its foremost champion, and a true man of the people, whose testimony penetrated to the heart. His portrait, as painted by Cranach, was circulated together with his small tracts.
"That is to say, you prefer to believe that Holbein, and Lucas Cranach, and Sir Antonio More, and all their school, were mannerists. Nonsense, my dear fellow nonsense! It is Nature who is the mannerist. She loves to turn out a certain generation after a particular pattern; and when she is tired of that pattern, she invents another. Her fancies last, on the average about, a hundred years.
His favourite child was little Lena, a pious, gentle, affectionate little girl, and devoted to him with her whole heart. A charming picture of her remains, by Cranach, a friend of the family. But she died in the bloom of early youth, on September 20, 1542, after a long and severe illness. The grief he had felt at the loss of his daughter Elizabeth was now renewed and intensified.
When the Elector John Frederick of Saxony met with his reverses in 1547, was driven from his palace, and was imprisoned for five years, the painter Lucas Cranach, whom he had patronised in his days of prosperity, shared his adversity and his prison with him, giving up his liberty to console his prince by his cheerful society, and diverting his mind by painting pictures in his company.
There is another similar group, quite as graceful, by David Hopfer. In another singular and charming Riposo by Lucas Cranach, the Virgin and Child are seated under a tree; to the left of the group is a fountain, where a number of little angels appear to be washing linen; to the right, Joseph approaches leading the ass, and in the act of reverently removing his cap.
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