Broadening its Renaissance programme to the whole of Europe, the Musée du Luxembourg will host an exhibition on Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), one of the major figures in the German Renaissance. This prolific, versatile artist, active throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, is still little known to the French public, who have not recently had an opportunity to appreciate the extent of his work. The exhibition will help understand Cranach’s place in the history of art and his involvement in the political and religious upheavals of his time.
It opens with the European dimension of Lucas Cranach’s art, which not only shows the influence of Dürer, whose engravings were widely circulated, but looks towards Flanders and Italy. To make these influences clear, a selection of his paintings, drawings and engravings will be displayed alongside the work of other artists. An important place will be given to Cranach’s travels, which were favoured by his official position from 1505 in the court of Frederick the Wise, Prince Elector of Saxony, in Wittenberg. Apart from commissions from his patron, Cranach was entrusted with diplomatic missions, which helped forge his personality.
In 1508, Frederick the Wise sent Cranach to Mechelen in Flanders as an emissary to Margaret of Austria, the governor of the Hapsburg Netherlands, whose court seethed with artists and humanists of various origins. In contact with this brilliant society, he perfected his art. His works took on a more refined elegance but, more importantly, he explored new themes which were then very popular in aristocratic circles, such as half-length portraits of strong, virtuous women.
A section of the exhibition will be devoted to nudes, another important theme in Cranach’s work. His very sensuous female figures, taken sometimes from the antique repertoire (Venus, Diana…), sometimes from Christian culture (Eve), are disconcertingly beautiful, obeying conventions very different from the ideal proportions appreciated during the Renaissance. These ambiguous images, mingling eroticism and morality and often complex in their allusions, were highly prized in their time, so Cranach produced many variations on the theme. His astute business sense prompted him to reorganise his studio to keep up with the demand.
The exhibition emphasises the wealth and originality of Cranach’s career, marked by decisive encounters with important political and religious leaders in a society buffeted by the winds of the Protestant Reformation. In Wittenberg he met Martin Luther, who was under Frederick the Wise’s protection. He was a talented portraitist and has left likenesses of the key figures in this crucial time in the history of Christianity. Cranach also helped spread the new doctrine, putting his art at the service of visual propaganda which made extensive use of engravings. He thus contributed to a new Protestant iconography, but did not give up commissions from the Catholic Church for all that.
His reputation as a painter, his position among the powerful and his familiarity with the intellectual circles of his time made Lucas Cranach one of the most original and astonishing personalities in sixteenth-century Europe.
- Open
every day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. late night until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
