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Since his marriage, indeed, his parents had come to visit him at Wittenberg; and the town accounts for 1527 contain an item of expense for a gallon of wine, given as a vin d'honneur to old Luther on that occasion. It was then that Cranach painted the portraits of Luther's parents which are now to be seen at the Wartburg.
Their subjects are entirely Scriptural; and perhaps old John Holbein, the father of the famous Hans Holbein, might have had a share in some of them. Perhaps they may come down to the time of Lucas Cranach. Wherever, or by whomsoever executed, this series of paintings, upon the high altar of the Cathedral of Ulm, can not be viewed without considerable satisfaction.
But on the evening of June 13, on the Tuesday after the feast of the Trinity, he invited to his house his friends Bugenhagen, the parish priest of the town, Jonas, the professor and provost of the church of All Saints, Lucas Cranach with his wife, and the juristic professor Apel, formerly a dean of the Cathedral at Bamberg, who himself had married a nun, and in their presence was married to Catharine.
Quitting this hall, my guide led me through a gallery richly painted in compartments, with a barbaric mixture of gold in the colours, like pictures by Louis Cranach. The subjects described on these walls appeared to my glance as intended to illustrate events in the history of the race amidst which I was admitted.
On the other side, Luther is preaching, and opposite, foremost of his audience are, Catharine and her little son. Every thing shows how strictly intimate were Luther, Melanchthon, and Cranach; good sociable times they had together. A slab elaborately carved, in the side of the church, marks the last rest of Lucas and Magdalen Cranach.
Up these stairs come Philip Melanchthon, Lucas Cranach, and their wives, to see how fares Luther after some short journey, or some new movement. Now, all past, all solitary; the stairs dirty, the windows dim. And this is Luther's room. It was a fine one in its day, that is plain.
Here, also, that voice of his, which rose above the choir and organ, sang the alto in those chorals which he gave to the world. Monmouth, sung in this great church by five thousand voices, must needs have a magnificent sound. The altar-piece is a Lord's Supper, by Louis Cranach, who appears in the foreground as a servant. On each side are the pictures of the Sacraments.
He used to say in jest that he was descended from Lucas Cranach, but that the second vowel had dropped out. He cared as little for the fashions as poets and artists commonly do, but there was no dandy in Boston who appeared so well in a full dress suit. In 1873 the Velasquez method of painting was in full vogue at Boston.
Then we go north again, to Dürer's Adoration of the Magi, a picture full of pleasant detail a little mountain town here, a knight in difficulties with his horse there, two butterflies close to the Madonna and interesting also for the treatment of the main theme in Dürer's masterly careful way; and then to Spain to Spagnoletto's "S. Jerome" in sombre chiaroscuro; then north again to a painfully real Christ crowned with thorns, by Lucas van Leyden, and the mousy, Reynoldsy, first wife of Peter Paul Rubens, while a Van Dyck portrait under a superb Domenichino and an "Adam and Eve" by Lucas Cranach complete the northern group.
Some inlaid work and some kinds of porcelain will never be made again, just as there will never be another Raphael, nor Titian, nor Rembrandt, nor Van Eyck, nor Cranach. . . . Well, now! there are the Chinese; they are very ingenious, very clever; they make modern copies of their 'grand mandarin' porcelain, as it is called.
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