Lucas Cranach the Younger

Art market, Munich, 1959;
Anonymous sale, Cologne, Lempertz, 19 November 2005, lot 1024;
Art market, Paris, where acquired by the present owner.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting in on a panel, probably pine, with one central joint, which has only a narrow line of retouching through the figure itself widening out near the base edge. There is a recent wooden supporting structure behind, with cross bars regularly spaced horizontally and a wider backing bar across the top where more small cracks have occurred running down from the top edge. Only one of these generally brief cracks is rather longer almost reaching the shoulder on the right, and crosses the N in VINEA. The two top corners have some fairly small damages. One vertical bar behind supports the lower part of the joint, and various cracks can be found rising from the base also, with one crossing the inscription, another rising up to the hand on the other side, and wider retouching at the base of the joint and just touching the lower line of the inscription, and below the hand, just touching the little finger. Apart from this wider retouching along the base and along parts of the upper edge with narrow touches at the extreme side edges, the main body of the painting is remarkably free of damage. There is a beautiful fine craquelure and well preserved enamelled surface, and the delicate detailed brushwork is crisply intact almost throughout. Only a few thinner places can be seen in the more vulnerable films of paint behind the curls of the beard and in the neck. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Single panels depicting Christ as the man of sorrows became popular in the Cranach workshop after 1537 and indeed the only example of either Cranach producing such an image prior to that date is on the reverse of a wing of an altarpiece by the elder Cranach in 1520 (Berlin, Bode Museum).¹ The best known treatment of the theme in Dresden² was dated by Friedländer and Rosenberg to circa 1540 and the present lot is likely to have been executed shortly afterwards, at a time when the younger Cranach had taken over the running of the workshop; a view supported by the form of the signature lower left. As Friedländer and Rosenberg proposed, and as the vast majority of subsequent scholars agree, it is likely that it was the younger Cranach who introduced this particularly Protestant theme to the Cranach family repertoire and who continued to develop it thereafter.  

Cranach's various versions of the subject differ from each other principally in the position of Christ's hands and the tilt of His head (notwithstanding the subsidiary putti or figures in some versions). The present design, in which Christ raises his hand humbly to his chest, appears to be unique, at least amongst the autograph versions. In all other versions his hands and arms are crossed, either down by his waist or across his torso. The head of Christ is painted with exquisite attention to detail and its tilt resembles that found in the majority of versions; compare, for example, those in the Von Watzdorff-Lindenau collection, and the Historical society, Regensburg.³ For a detailed discussion of Cranach the Younger's treatment of this theme see B. Bushart et al., Altdeutsche Bilder der Sammlung Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt, exhibition catalogue, 1985, pp. 78-9, no. 13.

We are grateful to Dr. Dieter Koepplin for endorsing the attribution to Lucas Cranach the Younger on the basis of photographs.

1.  M.J. Friedländer & J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, London 1978, p. 89, no. 99, reproduced.
2.  Friedländer & Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 146, no. 382, reproduced.
3.  Ibid., p. 146, nos. 381 and 383 respectively, both reproduced