Lucas Cranach the Elder, born in Kronach (from which his surname is derived) and a probable student of his father Hans, an engraver, had begun in 1500 to paint portraits for academic patrons in Vienna.
His work had then drawn the attention of Duke Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, known as Frederick the Wise, who attaches Cranach to his court in 1504.
Cranach is to remain in the service of the Elector and his successors for the rest of his life, although he will be able to undertake other work.
The first evidence of Cranach's skill as an artist comes in a picture dated 1504.
Early in his career he is active in several branches of his profession: sometimes a decorative painter, more frequently producing portraits and altarpieces, woodcuts, engravings, and designing the coins for the electorate.
Early in the days of his official employment he startles his master's courtiers by the realism with which he paints still life, game and antlers on the walls of the country palaces at Coburg and Locha; his pictures of deer and wild boar are considered striking, and the duke fosters his passion for this form of art by taking him out to the hunting field, where he sketches "his grace" running the stag, or Duke John sticking a boar.
Before 1508 he had painted several altarpieces for the Castle Church at Wittenberg in competition with Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair and others; the duke and his brother John were portrayed in various attitudes and a number of his best woodcuts and copperplates were published.
Cranach is equally successful in somewhat naive mythological scenes, in which at least one slim female figure, naked except for a transparent drape, and perhaps for a large hat, nearly always features.
These subjects show Italian influences including that of Jacopo de' Barberi, who is at the court of Saxony for a period up to 1505.
They then become rare until after the death of Frederick the Wise.
