Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472–1553), court painter to the Electors of Saxony in Wittenberg and portraitist of Martin Luther, was one of the most unusual and astonishing figures of sixteenth-century Europe. This catalog accompanied the exhibition with which the Musée du Luxembourg reopened, launching its program devoted to the Renaissance.
The exhibition set out the European dimension of Cranach’s art. Paintings, drawings and prints by Cranach are shown beside works by the artists who shaped him, from Albrecht Dürer, whose engravings circulated widely, to Flemish and Italian masters he encountered in 1508 on a diplomatic mission to the court of Margaret of Austria in Mechelen. Further chapters are devoted to the nude, so central to his work, and to the portraits that give us the faces of the leading figures of his age.
Edited by Guido Messling, the volume is the French edition of the catalog first published for The World of Lucas Cranach at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (2010–2011).
A fine introduction to the German Renaissance for collectors and students of Northern European art.
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