Cyberbrethren: A Lutheran Blog

Lucas Cranach: A Master of Irony and Ambiguity

By Souren Melikian

International Herald Tribune

Friday, April 25, 2008

LONDON: Five hundred years ago, Europe lost its innocence and discovered ambiguity. From north to south, its painters gave their female sitters expressions of laughing irony. In Germany, Lucas Cranach the Elder was the first to break with the past by portraying lovely princesses and saints with the same indescribable glint of amusement.

Smiling skepticism may have come naturally to Leonardo, a man of science, but Cranach's laughter that comes across some of his most admirable pictures in the retrospective on view at the Royal Academy until June 8 is more intriguing.

What little is known about his early years sheds no light on the matter. Bodo Brinkmann, the curator from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt who masterminded the show, found little to say apart from the fact that the artist, born Hans Maler in Kronach around 1472 was apparently the son of a painter, as indicated by the noun following the name Hans. No work by the artist can be dated prior to the early 1500s, by which time he was living in Vienna. In 1505, he moved to Wittenberg and became court artist to the Saxon Electors under three successive rulers. This would appear to suggest a smooth character nimbly working his way through the difficult times of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, an assumption borne out by his oeuvre.

Record Setting Cranach

Do you remember a month ago when I mentioned that this Cranach painting was going up for auction? Well, it did and it sold for ... ready for this? ... over $7.6 million dollars. Here's the story.

Helvetica: A Documentary for Type Geeks and Interested Bystanders

I'm a typography geek. Always have been. Always will be. I love not only words, but the way words are put onto a page. And I discovered an abolute delight of a documentary: Helvetica. Yes, a documentary devoted to a typeface. Sounds boring, I know. But, it is not.

If you enjoy the art of typography, then you must see this documentary on the world's most ubiquitous typeface: Helvetica. It is one of the most legible typefaces ever created, arguably the most legible. You probably don't even notice it, but it is everywhere. Some find its ominipresence distressing, others regard it as comforting.

This documentary tells the story of the typeface and how it has been received, used, and either accepted or rejected. I've decided to switch this blog site over to Helvetica, and I like what I see.

Years ago I chose two main faces for as much of my work as possible: Optima and Minion. They are still two of my favorites, but press me on my favorite typeface of all time and it will always be Helvetica. I never knew why. Now I do. And, if you watch this documentary, just count how many times a certain brand of computer appears.

Cranach Portrait to Sell for $4-$6 million dollars

More evidence that Lucas Cranach is being rediscovered. I wonder what old Master Cranach would think of this bit of news? Christie's is holding an auction in April and among the items for sale are:

Beautiful portraits of the Princess Sybille of Cleves (estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000) by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the Important Old Master Paintings sale Source

But here's the question I had. Will the people paying millions for a portrait of Sybille have even the slightest clue about who she was and what she believed and what she did? I was delighted to read the following auction description:

This portrait of Princess Sybille of Cleves (1512-1554) was painted when she was fourteen years old and newly betrothed to Johann Friedrich I (1503-1554), the future Elector of Saxony. The oldest daughter of Johann III, Duke of Cleves, and Maria of Jülich-Berg, Sybille grew up at court in Düsseldorf with her sister Anne, one of the future wives of Henry VIII. Her marriage into the House of Saxony placed Sybille in the middle of the greatest ideological struggle of the sixteenth century, a reformation not only of the church but also of the state. A committed friend and supporter of Martin Luther, Johann Friedrich was actively engaged in the Reformation and took dramatic political and military risks to protect the reformatory movement. Sybille conducted a correspondence of her own with Martin Luther and actively supported her husband's many campaigns, defending Wittenberg in his absence during Emperor Charles V's siege of the city in 1546.

This portrait of Sybille was painted sometime after her betrothal to Johann Friedrich in September 1526 and before their marriage on 3 June 1527. Emperor Charles V and Johann Friedrich's uncle, the Elector Friedrich III (called the Wise), had arranged a marriage between the future Elector and the Emperor's youngest sister Katharina in 1521. With no wedding having materialized by February 1524 and the marriage of Katharina to her cousin, King John III of Portugal, taking place in February 1525, the Elector began searching for another bride for his nephew. Johann Friedrich's betrothal to Sybille of Cleves took place at Burg on the Wupper on 8 September 1526 and the wedding ceremony followed on 3 June 1527 at Torgau. Lucas Cranach provided the lavish decorations.

The jeweled and feathered wreath, the object most associated with the bride in sixteenth-century Germany, is the most obvious indication that this portrait was painted after Sybille's betrothal in September 1526. The wreath was linked symbolically to the bride's virginity, and she presented it to the groom at the engagement and wedding ceremonies as both a testament to and an offering of her virtue. The procession to the church was an important part of the wedding ceremony on all societal levels and at this time the bride would wear her hair loose or uncovered apart from the wreath, as Sybille appears here. In her procession into Saxony, Sybille was accompanied by two hundred horses ridden by the nobility of Jülich and Cleves.

Apart from the wreath, symbols of her betrothal to Johann Friedrich are literally woven into the fabric of Sybille's dress. The House of Saxony is symbolized by the pattern in the gold fabric of her sleeves and around her waist and the three large interconnected chains around her chest. The pendant hanging from her neck announces the joining of the two families and suggests that this portrait was commissioned by her father. The letters on the pendant, 'i/j b c s', indicate both her lineage and the family she is soon to join - her father's full title was Duke of Iülich/Jülich, Berg and Cleves, and the dynasty she is joining is that of Saxony.

A second betrothal portrait of Sybille of Cleves by Cranach appears together with a pendant of Johann Friedrich in Weimar (fig. 1; Schlossmuseum, oil on panel, 55 x 36 cm.). Both panels, signed with the artist's mark and dated 1526, are taller and slightly narrower than the present portrait. Sybille wears the same dress with the Saxon pattern woven into the gold fabric and the three large chains around her chest. Her hair is similarly worn down and the wedding wreath likewise sits at an angle on her head. Subtle changes in her pose and appearance, however, suggest a slightly different moment and, perhaps, the passage of time.

The Weimar painting shows Sybille in a similar three-quarter-length pose against a dark background and her hands, rather than clasping one another at her waist, are held one over the other in a slightly lower position. Her hair has been pulled behind her shoulders and her face has taken on a more mature aspect. Her features and bone structure are more defined and her gaze appears to be more purposeful as she looks in the direction of her husband. Two changes in Sybille's dress are significant: her dress is red, the color of the dynasty of Cleves, and the pendant bearing her father's initials has been replaced with a jeweled cross.

While Friedländer dated the present painting to 1525 largely due to the sitter's more youthful appearance, the details of Sybille's dress confirm that both this portrait and the Weimar pendant were painted during her nine-month betrothal to Johann Friedrich. Every aspect of these portraits, from the fabrics and jewels to her hair and her pose, had some significance to the contemporary viewer and while not all of the iconography is decipherable today, the differences between the Weimar painting and the present portrait may explain something about the circumstances in which they were created. As a pendant, the Weimar portrait served as a visual record of the formal joining of the houses of Saxony and Cleves. As with the divisions of a coat of arms, she represented her family by wearing the colors of her dynasty but the replacement of the more personal pendant bearing her father's initials may be an acknowledgment of the necessary shift of her loyalties from her own family to that of her husband.

No pendant to our portrait is known and the green fabric of Sybille's dress has no connection with either house. It could have been a color that she particularly liked or carried some general association, as in previous centuries, with hope. There is no question that the pendant in this painting emphasizes her own lineage and it is possible that this portrait was made for Sybille's family in Cleves while the one in Weimar was an official portrait documenting the match. Cranach's linear style and his abstract sense of volume indicated by the concentric bands around Sybille's chest and arms lends itself to the use of the portrait medium as a way of signaling status. In court portraiture of this period the signaling of status was the goal.

The union between Sybille of Cleves and Johann Friedrich of Saxony was a successful one and seems to have been genuinely affectionate. They had four sons, three of whom lived to adulthood to become Dukes of Saxony, Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Gotha. Johann Friedrich conceded the capital city of Wittenberg to Charles V in 1547 in order to save the lives of his wife and sons and Luther's letter to Sybille of 30 March 1544 reflects her feelings of loss when he was away:

That your Electoral Princessly Grace is unhappy because Our Most Gracious Lord, Your Electoral Princessly Grace's husband, is away, I can well believe. But because it is necessary, and because his absence is in the service and for the good of Christianity and the German nation, we must bear it patiently in accordance with God's will. If the devil were able to keep the peace, then we would have more peace and less to do, and especially less unpleasantness to bear.

The present work was part of the superb collection of old master paintings formed by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred W. Erickson. Alfred Erickson (1876-1936) was of Swedish descent but was born at Farmers Mill, New York. He was educated at Brooklyn and at the age of twenty-four began a long association with the advertising business that culminated in the establishment of the Erickson Advertising Agency, later to become McCann-Erickson, Inc. In the 1920s he and his wife, Anna, began to assemble a collection of paintings that would represent the development of European art from the quattrocento to the end of the eighteenth century. His widow continued to add selectively to the collection after her husband's death in 1936. The collection was dispersed in a ground-breaking sale at Parke-Bernet Galleries on 15 November 1961 where 24 lots fetched a total of $4,679,250. The portrait of Princess Sybille of Cleves by Cranach was lot 6 in that sale and was purchased for $105,000 by Agnew's, the London dealers, on behalf of the late Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. It was the preceding lot to Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer purchased for the world record price of $2,300,000 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. held an avid interest in literature and the English language since his undergraduate years at Harvard, and he focused his early energies on the collection of manuscripts and first edition books by renowned English authors, including Milton, Pepys, Shakespeare, Spenser, Keats, and Lewis Carroll, later extending these to include landmark literary objects that eventually embraced two Gutenberg Bibles and the unparalleled Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (folios of which were offered by Christie's in 1976 and 1988). He formed an outstanding collection of miniature books, became an experienced amateur in English Silver, which he collected into the 1950s, and acquired over time a small but exquisite number of paintings, including the Cranach offered here. Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and numerous other institutions are today the beneficiaries of donations made by Mr. Houghton from the various collections he formed during his lifetime.

We would like to thank Maike Vogt-Lüerssen for her generous help in cataloguing this note. We are further grateful to Dr. Werner Schade for confirming the attribution to Lucas Cranach the Elder on the basis of photographs (private communication, 22 February 2008).

Oh, by the way, Christie's is also selling Picasso's take on this portrait. He did this one based on Cranach's portraits. I say without an ounce of hesitation that Picasso's work is garbage. Yes, I've studied art history. Yes, I've seen a lot of Picasso's work. Yes, I know all about modern art. And, for the most part, it is, and remains, garbage.

Lucas Cranach Being Rediscovered

Here's an interesting story from the Times Online. Cranach is suddenly the subject of newfound interest in the art world. Of course, we Lutherans love him because he is one of our own, friend of Luther, painter of the Reformation extraordinary. He and his son produced masterworks like this one. But it is nice to see old Lucas finally getting the attention he deserves.

Why the sudden interest in Lucas Cranach? Having successfully avoided most people’s attention for half a millennium, he seems to be popping up all over the shop. Switch on the television drama Desperate Housewives, for instance, and the first image in the opening credits is an animated version of his Adam and Eve, successfully setting the slyly sexy tone for the suburban shenanigans ahead. Then there was that amusing squall in a teapot recently about a Cranach Venus that Transport for London refused to display on Underground platforms because the poster was deemed inappropriate. This cretinous decision, now reversed, was prompted by a shoddy piece of printing that made it appear as if Venus was showing off her pubic hair and a sexy cleft. She wasn’t. Her see-through veil had merely cast a suggestive shadow. You need to wait until the middle of the 19th century, and Courbet, before art dared to confront you with realistically painted pudenda.

It isn’t only into cheap media spotlights that Cranach has been thrust. The serious art institutions are also fascinated by him. Last year, the Courtauld Institute organised a wonderful little display devoted to his naughty Adam and Eve. Now a full career overview at the Royal Academy seeks to correct the two misconceptions that continue to circulate about our man: that slyly sexy Venuses were his main subject; and that he was a greedy churner-out of popular formats.

Max Friedländer, a regularly impressive German art historian who was rarely wrong about anything, supplied the most withering assessment of Cranach as far back as the 1930s, when he concluded, in his definitive tome on the artist: “Had Cranach died in 1505, he would have lived in our memory as an artist charged with dynamite. But he did not die until 1553, and instead of watching his powers explode, we see them fizzle out.” Ever since Friedländer wrote that, the rest of us have believed it.

The Academy, in a terrific display of art-historical chutzpah, begs to differ. And, because its show is arranged more or less chronologically, yet arrives at Cranach’s Venuses only in its final room, the first misconception, that sly nudes were his speciality, is easily corrected. The next accusation, that he spent two-thirds of his career phoning it in, is so deeply embedded that challenging it takes the length of the show.

Although Cranach was born in 1472, the earliest works we know by him were not painted until he was about 30 years old. So, the first decade of his output is still out there waiting to be discovered. Which means the opening sighting we have of him here, a gory Crucifixion attended by a band of voyeuristic Franconian nobles who’ve ridden in from the castle at the back, is already the work of a thoroughly accomplished artist. No build-up. No foreplay. And, just five years later, in 1505, he painted what many consider his masterpiece: an action-packed imagining of The Martyrdom of St Catherine.

Because we live in godless times, I cannot assume you know the story. If you don’t, this fireworks display of a painting may strike you as confusing. There’s so much going on in it. Catherine was a beautiful princess from Alexandria whose crime was to persuade 50 heathen philosophers to convert to Christianity. She was sentenced to torture on a wheel studded with spikes, but God destroyed this murderous wheel with a lightning bolt. There it is in the background of Cranach’s frantic crowd scene, being blown apart by a celestial bomb attack. The emperor Maxentius then ordered that Catherine be beheaded instead. And that is the moment we are witnessing: her imminent decapitation.

But look how inventively, and in how many happy directions, Cranach’s exciting painting strays off its narrative path. What is that executioner wearing? One of his legs sports a thigh-length boot, but the other does not. Half his outfit is white, while the other half is covered in multicoloured stripes. Look, too, at the mass of heaving bodies being blown up by the lightning. What impossible positions they adopt. With a colour scheme unlike any other of its times, and a cast of contortionists taking the bit parts, this great and mysterious painting makes instantly clear that we are in the presence of a Renaissance master with a spectacularly unique vision.

Cranach was from Kronach, in Franconia - a loaded stretch of Germany with Nuremburg in it, and Bayreuth, that nowadays constitutes northern Bavaria. This was also where his friend Martin Luther started Christianity’s big civil war, and the region has never since been able to decide if it is Catholic or Protestant. So it has zigzagged between the two positions, as, indeed, did the art of Cranach.

The fantastical religious paintings that surround The Martyrdom of St Catherine in the first outburst of his career confirm the impression that a momentous and unruly talent has been unleashed. Familiar subjects - the Crucifixion, the stigmatisation of St Francis - are reinvented outrageously by an artist determined not to do anything the way others did it. If the religious convolutions in the foregrounds are too complex for you, there are always the backgrounds to enjoy. Cranach was a superb landscapist who always set his biblical duels in recognisable stretches of Upper Franconia, where tottering Harry Potter castles wobble atop mysterious riverside crags.

Because his imagination darted about so much, there wasn’t much he didn’t try. There are portraits, altarpieces, bits of contemporary genre pictures that tug your heartstrings and ones that make you laugh. His woodcuts throb and squirm with events, like an angler’s worm tin. And a gorgeous nocturnal Nativity sets him the tough task of painting candlelit reflections at night. Nowhere does his art settle on a standard look.

I enjoyed, too, his sudden lurch into grotesqueness with a set of cruel paintings mocking the union first of toothless old men with young girls, then of toothless old women with young boys. Just when you think too many tankards of sarcasm are being emptied into Cranach’s art, he switches tack again with a series of noble portrait heads, produced in the unusual medium of oil on paper, that prove what an astute recorder of character he was. The young Luther, for one, stops being a famous name in a textbook and becomes a strange-looking fellow with high cheekbones, tiny eyes and a fierce Oriental cast to his features that promises lots of belligerence. Cranach never gives you what you think you are going to get. Even as mundane a subject as a twin portrayal of the apostles Peter and Paul turns into a battle of hairy eccentrics, won easily by an unlikely St Peter, whose combed-over receding hairline and scruffily twisted moustache give him the air of a recently widowed pudding salesman.

Lots of Cranach’s art has a smile on its face. But it’s never a kind smile, always a sarcastic and bitter one. The final room, where the Venuses are gathered, and around which I urge the officials of Transport for London to skulk with their magnifying glasses aloft, searching for clefts and pubic hair - because they won’t find any - is as full of weird surprises as any room that precedes it. By this time, Cranach is the head of a large and successful studio. In worldly terms, he was among the most successful of all Renaissance artists. Yet, even when his art appears to be mass-producing sexy Venuses, it never actually repeats itself. Every Venus is different. True, the surfaces are harder and slicker - Friedländer complained that the late paintings made him think of chestnuts at conker time - but the unexpected leaps of imagination continue to bring joy.

Look at the extraordinary figure of Mercury presiding over The Judgment of Paris. Gnarled, grey-haired, bearded: he must be 70 if he’s a day. Where else in art is Mercury a creaky 70-year-old?

Thus, a successfully revisionist show proves Cranach’s fizzling-out was actually a redirection of his efforts. And that a giant has been mistaken for a tiddler.

Cranach, Royal Academy, W1, until June 8

Lutheran Art Gallery Now Open

Concordia Publishing House is pleased to announce the opening of its on-line virtual art gallery.

Adoration of Christ

As frequent readers of this blog site know, I really love fine art, and most particularly, fine art depicting Christian themes. While preparing our family's Christmas newsletter, I came across this striking painting: The Nativity by Federico Fiori Barocci (1597, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain). What I find unique about this painting is that it sets the birth of Christ in quite a realistic setting, unlike many depictions from the 16th century. Most interesting to me is how Joseph is opening the door of the stable to the shepherds, who are coming to see this great thing that has come to pass, as the angels had told them. You can almost hear St. Joseph saying, "Yes, he is right here, come in and see!"

Web Gallery of Art

I stumbled across a site I had not been to before the other day. And, it really amazed me. It is the "Web Gallery of Art" and has a huge collection. The feature I enjoy the most is the fact that they allow you to expand the image to fill your computer screen and so, you can really study the paintings they have on display. I highly recommend it!

More Photos from the Magdeburg Cathedral

Here are some more photos I took in the Magdeburg Cathedral along with additional information. I've put this post in an extended entry. First is the text explaining the photos, then the photos following. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Please know that all the photos are in lower resolution than the original, but if you click on the screen shot you'll get a better and larger photo behind it. I hope they don't make you as sad as the young lady to the left!

Warning: dial up users may experience significant download times. So, click through at your own risk. Ye be warned! 

 

 

Biblical Art on the WWW

A friend recently pointed a wonderful web site out to me. As most readers of this blog site know, I really love fine art and particularly art depicting Christian/Biblical themes. What a gold mine! Thanks Joe!  Biblical Art on the WWW.

Christian Art and the Proclamation of Christ

I was reflecting on a recent blog post, mentioned here and elsewhere, in which a person takes a stab at providing "essential" paintings for theologians, a very well done post indeed. I recalled that at some point I had blogged on one of my favorite posts: Lucas Cranach's marvelous altar painting for the Lutheran church of St. Peter and Paul, in Weimar, Germany. I did a bit of a search and discovered, ironically, that I had blogged on this very subject, about this very painting, on ... Jan. 15, 2005, just one year ago. How many American churches feature a painting on the altar like this one? What a painting! Christ and Him crucified, with blood spurting out on to the head of a man standing in the painting. Powerful stuff! This is a painting that preaches Christ! I've been in far too many churches that look not much more like big lecture halls. Somehow there arose in some Reformation churches the idea that sterile design and undecorated worship spaces is better than richly ornamented and decorated churches. That's a real shame. Of course there is no sin in simplicity but the opposite is also true, there is no sin in beautiful art adorning a house of God. God Himself thought it a wonderful thing, for in the Old Testament, in the tabernacle and temple both, He commanded that His people use the finest building materials available to them. He directed them to decorate and paint and prepare beautiful sculpture for the interiors of these places of worship.

I would love a chance to meditate on a painting such as this one every Sunday, wouldn't you?

This painting is was painted by Lucas Cranach and completed by his son Lucas Cranach, Jr.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Self Portrait

Lucas Cranach was a contemporary of Martin Luther. He lived and worked for much of his life in Wittenberg, Germany. He was a prosperous member of the community, serving as mayor of the city for a period of time. He owned the local pharmacy. He ran a painting business and also opened a publishing house. All said, Lucas was a wealthy man. He was also a faithful Lutheran Christian who later in his life walked away from his businesses and position to join his prince in captivity.

Lucas Cranach is most well known for his paintings. Though not as refined or skilled as other German Renaissance painters, such as Albrecht Durer, he did a good job of capturing facial features, etc. He is the painter of record for the Reformation, painting numerous portraits of Luther and other significant Lutheran figures. When his prince, John Frederick the Magnanimous was taken captive in 1547 by the Roman Catholic Emperor Charles V, Lucas Cranach followed his prince into captivity in the city of Weimar, dying there in 1553. His last painting, actually completed by his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, is a a beautiful and powerful confession of Lucas' faith. Here is an explanation of the painting.

There is a wonderful interactive description of the painting provided by the church where the painting is found, St. Peter and Paul, in Weimar, Germany which is still to this day an active Lutheran congregation. The downside is that it is in German. Here is a link to that site. Read further for an discussion in English about the painting.

A Painting that Preaches Christ

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true of the center panel of the altar painting in the church of Sts Peters and Paul, Weimar, Germany. It was begun by Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) and was completed by his son, also of the same name, in 1555. (To distinguish them, they are called Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger.)

The heart of the 16th century Reformation and indeed of the Christian faith, is the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ. This is how Luther expresses it in part 2 of the Smalcald Articles.

“The first and chief article is this, that Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, “was put to death for our trespasses and raised again for our justification” (Rom 4:25). He alone is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “God has laid upon him the iniquities of us all” (Isa.53:6). Moreover, “all have sinned,” and “they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, by his blood” (Rom. 3:23-25).

Inasmuch as this must be believed and cannot be obtained or apprehended by any work, law, or merit, it is clear and certain that such faith alone justifies us, as St Paul says in Romans 3, “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law” (Rom. 3:28), and again, “that he [God] himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).”

If the doctrine of justification is to be properly taught, law and gospel must be properly distinguished. The Formula of Concord of 1577 says (Article 5),

“We must … observe this distinction with particular diligence lest we confuse the two doctrines and change the Gospel into law. This would darken the merit of Christ and rob disturbed consciences of the comfort which they would otherwise have in the holy Gospel …”

That Lucas Cranach clearly understood the central teaching of the Lutheran reformation and the proper distinction between Law and Gospel is illustrated by his altar painting at Weimar.

In the center background, Moses is shown teaching the ten commandments to the Old Testament prophets. They are standing on a circle of barren path, along with a figure representative of all human beings who are under the law’s condemnation. Man is shown here being chased into the fires of hell by death (pictured as a skeleton holding a spear) and the devil (in the form of a monster wielding a club). The prophets taught, as did Moses, “Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them” (Deut. 27:26 ESV, compare Jer. 11:13). Yet it’s not only our actual sins that condemn us, but also the prior sin that we inherit from our parents (original sin). To quote the Smalcald Articles once again,

“Here we must confess what St Paul says in Rom. 5:12, namely, that sin had its origin in one man, Adam, through whose disobedience all men were made sinners and became subject to death and the devil. … The fruits of this sin are all the subsequent evil deeds which are forbidden in the Ten Commandments …”

The good news is that God in mercy and compassion saves all who put their trust in His Son. When the people of Israel in the wilderness sinned and were bitten by snakes, God provided a way of escape that prefigured His Son’s death on a cross. All the Israelites had to do to be saved was look at the snake mounted on a pole (Num. 21:4-9). In Cranach’s painting, this is shown in the background on the painting’s left.

Directly in front, Martin Luther is standing with open Bible in hand. His feet and hands are positioned like those of Moses. His message, however, is one of gospel, not law. On his face is a look of steadfastness and serene confidence. He stands on lush grass in which flowers grow, unlike the bare, stony ground on which Moses stands. Of three passages written in German on the open Bible, the third one reads, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so also must the Son of man be lifted up, so that all [who believe] in [him may have eternal life]” (Jn 3:14).

Dominating the painting is Christ on a cross. The amazing message of the Gospel is that by his death, Christ takes away the world’s sin. The message written in Latin on the transparent banner held by the lamb in the center foreground declares that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). His outstretched arms and generous loincloth are also reminders that He is the world’s Savior. This was John the Baptist’s message, and John is shown standing underneath the crucified Christ on His left side. With right hand pointing up at Christ on the cross and left hand pointing at the lamb, John is shown proclaiming the meaning of Jesus’ death to Lucas Cranach, the painter. Cranach represents all who believe. A stream of blood from Christ’s pierced side splashes on to this head. It is as the first verse on Luther’s Bible says, “The blood of Jesus Christ purifies us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). Therefore like Luther, Cranach also stands confidently.

There is another verse on the open Bible, to which Luther’s finger points directly. It reads, “Therefore let us approach the seat of grace with joyousness, so that we may receive mercy within and find grace in the time when help is needed” (Heb. 4:16). Such approach is possible because Jesus is our victorious high priest. Having paid for sin, He has defeated death and the devil and now lives to intercede for us. Jesus is shown on the painting’s right as the risen One, youthful and full of life, standing on death and the devil, with the staff of his victory flag pushed in the monster’s throat. His gold-edged cloak flows toward the lamb’s banner and the cross. As a result it’s actually both banner and cloak that bear the words, “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

“Believe in God; believe also in me,” the Lord says (Jn 14:1). From this painting His eyes meet ours, inviting us to believe in Him. The other set of eyes that meet ours belong to Cranach, the painter. His feet face in the direction of Christ. But he has turned from his adoration of Christ to look at us also, inviting us to believe and be saved along with him.

Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession expresses the heart of Lutheran teaching this way:

“[W]e receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith, when we believe that Christ suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us.”

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). This, in summary, is the message of the Lutheran reformation and of its foremost artists, Lucas Cranach the Elder and the Younger.

--Pastor David Buck

Essential Paintings for Theologians?

What do you think of this list of essential paintings for theologians?

Link: Faith and Theology: Essential paintings for theologians.