Who Was Lucas Cranach the Elder?

Self-portrait of Lucas Cranach the Elder near the end of his career, several years before his death in 1553.

Lucas Cranach the Elder was a sixteenth-century German painter who was deeply embedded within the Reformation movement that swirled around him. He was born the son of a painter in 1472, and followed in his father’s footsteps as a young man.  In 1505, he was appointed court painter in Wittenberg by the Elector of Saxony, a position he held until his retirement in 1552, dying shortly thereafter in 1553.

While court painter, Cranach the Elder became a close confidante of Martin Luther, the head of the Lutheran Church, and participated enthusiastically in the German Reformation, using his art as a tool of the new and controversial religion.

His primary media were oil paintings, woodcuts, and engravings, and outside of his Lutheran evangelism, he dealt primarily with portraits of his patrons and works of classical mythology. 

.