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3 Preview of the Old Master Paintings auction on 31 March 2023 Cranach: innovator in turbulent times FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OLD MASTER PAINTINGS Karoline Weser weser@kollerauctions.com ONLINE CATALOGUES www.kollerauctions.com Lucas Cranach the Elder, born in 1472, lived during an important historical period. In the years around 1500 he witnessed the rise of Humanism, and helped to shape it through his own art, his new conception of man. Cranach was one of the most important art- ists of his time, in contact with Albrecht Dürer, Philipp Melanchthon, and later Titian. After his beginnings in Vienna, an important cultural centre of the time with the imperial court of Maximilian I, his mature artistic work took place in the Saxon-Anhalt town of Wit- tenberg. There, from 1505, he was in the service of the Saxon Elector Frederick III and remained as court painter under his successors, John the Steadfast and John Frederick the Magnanimous. During those dec­ ades he established a flourishing workshop, and de- veloped a close friendship with Martin Luther, whose public image was decisively influenced by Cranach’s portraits of him. Just as Luther stands for the Refor- mation of faith, Cranach is regarded as the innovator of the image.. The Cranach triptych offered in our March auction is a rarity, and very likely one of the last surviving altar- pieces of the German Renaissance on the art market. It last came up for sale in Bern in 1972. Now, after half a century in private hands, this monumental, muse- um-quality work with luminous, well-preserved co- louring has resurfaced in a Swiss private collection. The painted wings on each side of the central panel – with the outer side for weekdays and the inner side for feast days – suggest that this work, which dates from circa 1515, was created for liturgical use. In its closed state, which served for everyday devotion, Cranach’s composition shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows and Mary as the Mother of Sorrows (ill. left). In the centre of the feast-day side is the Annunciation scene with Mary and Gabriel, flanked by two representations of saints: St Catherine on the left, and St Barbara on the right, each identified by their attributes (ill. 1). St Catherine’s sword and wheel refer to the saint’s mar- tyrdom by torture. The tower behind St Barbara rep- resents her nine-year imprisonment, while the gold- en chalice recalls her last rites. The placement of the figures as well as the treatment of the haloes are not unusual for Lucas Cranach the Elder. Catherine as a healer of the sick, and Barbara as the patron saint of the dying belong to the familiar imagery of that era. Together with Saints Dorothea and Margaret, they comprise the four ‘Virgines capitales’, female martyrs designated by the Church as ‘main virgins’. The central panel of the feast-day view depicts one of the most widespread motifs of Christian art, espe- cially of the Renaissance period: the Annunciation as recorded in the Gospel of Luke. Archangel Gabriel tells Mary that she has conceived the Son of God from the Holy Spirit and will give birth to him: ‘You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High’. The depiction of the event in an interior space (hortus conclusus) refers to Mary’s protected virgini- ty. Cranach rarely employed this thoroughly Catholic motif, even if his friend Luther had embraced the old church doctrine of the virgin birth. Stylistically, Cra- nach and his workshop borrowed from Italian models in this pre-Reformation depiction, which is most evi- dent in the rendering of the figures and their hair. At the same time, the composition of the picture with the elaborately detailed fabrics and the view of the landscape in the background refer to Dutch paint- ing. The spatial design of the palatial, courtly-looking bedchamber with tiled floor and velvet canopy merits particular attention. 1