Lucas Cranach the Elder, towards the end…
1532 CE
Lucas Cranach the Elder, towards the end of his life, after Luther's initial hostility to large public religious images had softened, paints a number of "Lutheran altarpieces" of the Last Supper and other subjects, in which Christ is shown in a traditional manner, including a halo, but the apostles, without halos, are portraits of leading reformers.
He also produces a number of violent anti-Catholic propaganda prints, in a cruder style, directed against the Papacy and the Catholic clergy.
His best known work in this vein is a series of prints for the pamphlet Passional Christi und Antichristi, where scenes from the Passion of Christ are matched by a print mocking practices of the Catholic clergy, so that Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple is matched by the Pope, or Antichrist, signing indulgences over a table spread with cash.
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 are mostly in narrow upright formats; examples are several of Venus, alone or with Cupid, who has sometimes stolen a honeycomb, and complains to Venus that he has been stung by a bee (Weimar, 1530; Berlin, 1534).
Diana with Apollo, shooting a bow, and Hercules sitting at the spinning-wheel mocked by Omphale and her maids are other such subjects.
A similar approach was taken with the biblical subjects of Salome and Adam and Eve.
These subjects were produced early in his career, when they show Italian influences including that of Jacopo de' Barberi, who was at the court of Saxony for a period up to 1505.
They then become rare until after the death of Frederick the Wise.
The later nudes are in a distinctive mannerist-derived delicate, curvilinear style that abandons Italian influence for a revival of Late Gothic style, with small heads, narrow shoulders, high breasts and waists.
The poses become more frankly seductive and even exhibitionist.
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Central Europe
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