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Lucas Cranach the Elder


Birth Year : 1472
Death Year : 1553
Country : Germany

Lucas Cranach was born in northern Franconia, and it is probable that he received his first art lessons from his father.

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He went to Vienna in 1503 and then to Wittenberg in 1505 where he became court painter to the Elector of Saxony. Cranach remained in Wittenberg for the rest of his life as painter to the Elector and to his two successors. Cranach, his two sons Hans and Lucas, and Cranach's many pupils painted a succession of portraits of the three Electors, who were all good friends as well as patrons. Cranach was a staunch adherent of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation and his portraits of Luther and his wife are among the finest in the world. He also tried to embody the ideas of the Reformation in his works, but religious leaders were almost completely indifferent and often hostile to art and he had as little success in this area as did Dürer.

Today Cranach is remembered for his late Gothic mythological scenes and landscapes with figures. The latter display a precision of technique that combines details of German costume and landscape. His typically lithe Saxon figures add an incongruous yet amusing aspect to his northern adaptation of ancient tales. These paintings, all quite small in size, are decorative and jewel-like in quality. Cranach died at the age of eighty-one after having spent two years in prison with the Elector Johann Friedrich after the defeat of Muhlberg in 1547.


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