Lucas Cranach the Elder Kronach 1472 - 1553 Weimar

Cranach entered the service of Duke Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, at his court in Wittemberg in the spring of 1505. Thereafter he would retain an unshakeable loyalty to the ruling House of Saxony, working for almost half a century for three successive Electors. In 1508 the Duke conferred on him the coat-of-arms with the winged serpent that became the basis of his standard signature, as in the present work.

This is one of a number of portraits painted by Cranach of his most important early patron. The earliest dated example of this particular type is that of 1522 formerly in Gotha, Schlossmuseum, now lost, which shows the Elector before his beard turned grey (reproduced in M.J. Friedländer and J. Rosenberg, The paintings of Lucas Cranach, London 1978, p. 100, no. 151). The present work dates from 1525, the year of the Elector's death, or shortly thereafter. It is one of approximately ten posthumous autograph portraits of the Elector from this period. Another such, signed and dated 1525, was sold in these Rooms, 7 December 2005, lot 30. The demand for repetitions of this particular portrait type persisted well into the 1530s when they were often combined with portraits of Johann Frederick the Magnanimous and Johann the Steadfast. These images were often accompanied by laudatory verses glued to the panels as here.

Duke Frederick was a patron of some importance. Jacopo de Barbari (who preceded Cranach as court painter) and Conrad Meit also worked for him, and he was the first important noble patron of Albrecht Dürer, who painted seven pictures for him, including his portrait (1496, Berlin) and the great Martyrdom of the ten thousand of 1508 now in Vienna. As the label on the painting records, in 1502 he founded the Univeristy of Wittemberg at which in 1512, Martin Luther became Professor of Theology. Though he protected Luther as the Protestant Reformation grew and was also a patron of Erasmus, the Elector himself always remained a Catholic.