Lucas Cranach, Court Artist of Electoral Saxony for 50 years

Lucas Cranach at 77 courtesy RasMarley

Franconian painter Lucas Cranach, born in 1472 and raised near Coburg, would serve the Saxon court for 50 years. Cranach between 1495 and 1500 may have worked at Coburg, the southernmost residence of importance for Frederick the Wise. Cranach refined his art in Vienna from 1500 to 1504. By 1505 he was in Frederick’s court. From Cranach’s home base in Wittenberg Frederick sent him all over the empire. In 1508 he was in the Netherlands painting portraits of emperor Maximilian and the future emperor Karl V. Cranach worked with lightning speed. He did anything Frederick asked. He painted carriages. He painted Prince Johann’s 1513 wedding bed. He painted altarpieces. Frederick the Wise rewarded him well for his skill and willingness.

Cranach engraving of Frederick the Wise 1509

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When Luther arrived in Wittenberg in 1512 to replace his mentor Staupitz as professor of the Bible at the university Lucas Cranach was a real presence in the town. Frederick the Wise had granted him his own crest. He had married well. Just off the town square he had built a house with at least 84 heated rooms! In the future he would prosper even more. Anyone at the university had to know about Cranach, if for no other reason than his apprentices in his expanding workshop constantly clashed with university students.

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A quirk in the law allowed Cranach’s students to arm themselves; university students could not. Yet they swilled beer in the same establishments, pursued the same women. Of course there was a blowup. Wise heads wanted to disarm the apprentices; fools wanted to arm the students. Luther was enraged at the violence and lack of cooperation all around. It climaxed in 1520. Numerous fights brought soldiers from Frederick the Wise. Frederick issued an ordinance for ‘peaceful behavior’, prohibited weapons and set a curfew.

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The tumult did not affect Luther’s relationship with Cranach. That very year of 1520 Cranach etched a copperplate of the bony-faced, tonsured monk. It would be naïve not to think Frederick the Wise approved it. When Luther departed Worms in April 1521 after appearing before the emperor Luther sent a very personal letter to “his dear fellow-godfather and friend” Cranach. Their friendship strengthened over the years. Cranach attended Luther’s wedding with Katherina von Bora and later painted their portraits as well as portraits of Luther’s parents.

References: Ingetraut Ludolphy, Friedrich der Weise: Kurfürst von Sachsen, 1463-1525 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 1984) and Gottfried G. Krodel, ed., Letters I, volume 48 in Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963).

Albrecht Dürer's 1524 portrayal of Frederick the Wise (FOLLOWUP)

The 7.4 x 5.0 inch print from the 1524 copper etching of Frederick the Wise by Albrecht Dürer offered by Galerie Bessenge in Berlin may have attracted attention but no one was willing to bid the minimum of €4000. The auction is closed for that item but it is now for sale at that price (about $4900). When Dürer engraved the Archbishop of Mainz in 1523 he sent the archbishop the copper plate itself with 500 prints. That is almost the life of a copper plate with the fine detail that Dürer used. Probably Dürer also sent Frederick the Wise the 1524 copper plate with several hundred prints. To evaluate its worth a collector would have to know how many prints still exist as well as the degree of perfection of this particular print in the auction. It appears to me the Berlin print is a slightly finer printing than the print from the Dresden collection that Ingetraut Ludolphy used in her definitive 1984 biography of Frederick the Wise. On the other hand the Dresden print is not marred as the Berlin print is by a ‘small speck [‘kleines Fleckchen’] in the shadow beside the nose’, a not-so-small post-printing alteration.

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I repeat my suspicion that because the bubbly lower lip is asymmetrical this lip was actually disfigured, probably from a jousting injury in Frederick’s youth. I see the same asymmetry on his chin in the 1496 portrait by Albrecht Dürer. Frederick the Wise was 33 in 1496, 61 in 1524. Dürer very appropriately added the acronym BMFVV (for Bene Merenti Fecit Vivus Vivo or ‘worthy of high praise even while still alive’). The ever innovative Dürer showed the spyglass windows reflecting in the pupils, an effect not appreciated by all art historians.

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The auction by Bassenge Gallerie in Berlin offered 18 prints of this kind by Albrecht Dürer. Four (including of course the Frederick the Wise portrait) did not get bids. The top amount paid for one of the 14 that received bids was €18,000 (about $22,000) for ‘Das große Pferd’.

This 1505 engraving is probably the knight’s ‘Schlachtross’ or warhorse; it is too robust to be his everyday palfrey and it is receiving too much attention from the knight to be one of his packhorses (Saumtier or Klepper). Dürer foreshortened the great horse and elevated the hind legs higher than the front to make it appear even more massive.

Q. Why do you think ‘Das große Pferd’ was so desired among the 18 prints available? Do you agree that Frederick the Wise is disfigured?

Frederick the Wise's 'Luther Bible'

One ‘Luther Bible’ recently made the news (NY Times, 11 June 2010). Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, purchased the 1522 New Testament from Dr. Jörn Günther in Switzerland. Cost was about $400,000. The Bible is lavish, with 44 full-page, illuminated woodcuts. The 330 pages are 169 x 119 mm (6.7 x 4.7 inches). According to Günther the Bible was printed by Melchior Lotter of Wittenberg in 1524. The NY Times speculates the Bible is so lavish that it may have been intended for royalty, perhaps for none other than Martin Luther’s protector Frederick the Wise.

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A romantic notion. There are 12 copies of the ‘September Bible of 1522’ known but many thousands were printed. How many were so lavishly illustrated is not known but the Swiss copy is not unique. In the 21st century there is much interest in the dazzle of the vivid-colored illustrations. The woodcuts were almost certainly done first by Frederick the Wise’s court artist Lucas Cranach. Some illuminated pages of this version bear the initials of Georg Lemberger, an artist of the so-called ‘Danube School’. Lemberger is today recognized as one of the early modern period’s finest book illuminators. It seems Lemberger modified some or all of Cranach’s woodcuts and illuminated them with brilliant golds and pastels as only those from the Danube School could. It’s possible the two artists even collaborated. If so, Frederick the Wise was directly involved in at least the planning of the product. Later editions had modified the serpent’s papal tiara to a simple crown, supposedly making Luther’s New Testament less offensive to those who followed the Old Religion.

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The New Testament itself was translated from Erasmus’ Greek standard to High German by Martin Luther at the legendary Wartburg castle in 1521 and 1522. After he returned to Wittenberg he polished it with the help of others, notably including Greek scholar Philipp Melanchthon. There was no standard German. Luther intended to conform to the German spoken by the Saxon chancellery. It was less flowery than the actual court German. According to Luther expert Martin Brecht, Germans from north to south could understand 80 to 90 percent of the words.

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Thanks to Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521-1532 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) and the 14 September 2009 BibliOdyssey blog of ‘peacay’ for insights. The latter noted one can view an entire version at the site of Sweden’s Mälardalen University at http://www.mdh.se/hst/forskning/HAS/digitbooks.

Frederick the Wise refuses Martin Luther one thing to the everlasting good of the Reformation.

No one -- not the emperor, not the pope – could lead Frederick the Wise by the nose. As Martin Luther himself noted in Table Talk: “Duke Frederick seated himself, asked for counsel, closed his eyes, made note of what was said by one after another, and finally he spoke, saying, 'This or that won't stand up,' `This or that will be the consequence.'”
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In early 1518 Martin Luther began pushing for professors in Greek and Hebrew, so the university at Wittenberg could study the classics and the Bible properly. The Greek professor at Leipzig, Petrus Mosellanus, let it be known he might be available. Luther but especially Spalatin, the trusted adviser of Frederick the Wise, began quietly promoting Mosellanus. Did Frederick the Wise accept this? No, he sought advice from Reuchlin, one of the great Hebrew (and Greek) scholars of the empire.
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Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach
courtesy johnhanscom

For Greek, Reuchlin recommended only one man: his own grandnephew, whom he had personally taught. Later, while Frederick the Wise was in Augsburg for the 1518 Reichstag, the staunch defender of Rome Johann Eck sought an audience with him six times. Frederick refused every time. Frederick did however see 20-year-old Philipp Melanchthon, Reuchlin’s grandnephew and his new professor of Greek.
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Melanchthon, similar to Spalatin in his retiring manner, was (also like Spalatin) soon completely won over by Martin Luther and his ideas. Melanchthon was complex. He was more savagely reformist than Luther but much milder in his public discourse. Unlike Luther, who wrote prolifically but with little framework, Melanchthon was less the writer and more the organizer. He organized the new theology into a coherent whole. In only three years he published his classic synthesis Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae (Wittenberg and Basel, 1521).

References: Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483-1521 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985); Irmgard Höß, Georg Spalatin: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation, 2nd edition 1989 (Weimar, 1956); and Theodore G. Tappert, ed., Table Talk, volume 54 in Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967).

Q. What would the Reformation have been like without Melanchthon?

Frederick the Wise thrashed by the ‘persistent widow’ Anna of Mecklenburg

At the Reichstag in Nürnberg in 1487 Frederick the Wise, then only 24, negotiated a renewed ‘inheritance protectorate’ for electoral Saxony with Brandenburg and Hesse. It differed this time only in that the newly created ‘albertine’ Saxony was also a partner. This kind of agreement among upper nobility dynasties was popular. It served to define boundaries, protect inheritance and determine succession if a family died out. Implied also was some degree of mutual assistance in military difficulties. Such protectorates were only as dependable as the integrity and willingness of the parties involved but German nobles took these very seriously indeed. In detail, the two Saxonys were responsible for the inheritance rights in Hesse. The parties would renew the inheritance pact periodically.

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Sovereign for Hesse in 1487 was Landgrave Wilhelm I. He however because of mental illness relinquished his reign in 1493 to his brother Wilhelm II (or ‘the Middle’). In 1500 Wilhelm II’s wife Yolande gave birth to the first male heir. Sadly both died within weeks. Wilhelm II at 31 married again within the year; his bride Anna of Mecklenburg had just turned 15 the month before. Frederick’s brother Johann (the Steadfast) had married Sophie, the sister of Anna, the same year. That seeming bond between electoral Saxony and Hesse vanished with the death of Sophie (also from childbirth) in 1503. Anna fared better. At only 17 she gave birth to her first child, Elizabeth. Two years later on November 13, 1504, Anna gave birth to a male heir: Philipp.

Young Philipp of Hesse

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Duke George (cousin of Frederick the Wise) now ruled albertine Saxony and he was no fool. Frederick the Wise had no children but George did. In 1505 George arranged a double marriage with Wilhelm II of Hesse. George’s son was to marry Wilhelm’s Elizabeth. His daughter was to marry Wilhelm’s Philipp. In reality then the bond between albertine Saxony and Hesse existed at that moment. In 1509 Wilhelm II died. At long last the inheritance pact between Hesse and the two Saxonys was relevant. The situation cried out for a regency. In 1506 Wilhelm, thought correctly to be dying of syphilis, set up a regency in his will: five Hessian knights led by aggressive Ludwig von Boyneburg. This will was common knowledge. But Anna produced a firestorm at the meeting of the Hessian Estates. She had a will dated 1508 that named her regent!

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The knights refused. Never would a woman rule Hesse! The Wettins were asked to mediate. Duke George supported Anna. Frederick the Wise supported the regency of Hessian knights. Frederick prevailed. The knights ended up ruling Hesse. When the parties met again twice it was only to discuss custody of Philipp. Naturally Anna refused to relinquish Philipp. The knights took him. The feisty 25-year-old Anna had been thwarted on every turn. The emperor Maximilian would not help her because that would aggravate Frederick the Wise. In 1510 the Wettins even got the Hessian knights to swear feudal allegiance to them as well as to little Philipp. Apparently George, realizing the emperor was backing Frederick, decided to go along. Was Anna defeated?

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The situation boiled on and on. At one point Saxony sent in 1200 knights and 3000 foot soldiers. This action by a ‘foreign’ state increased Anna’s popularity. In 1512 at the Cologne Reichstag Maximilian issued a half-hearted confirmation of Philip’s inheritance but no help to Anna. In Hesse however Boyneburg’s heavy-handed actions had turned many of his earlier supporters away from him. Emboldened, the tireless Anna pushed on. She kept meeting with Hessian estates demanding her regency. Frederick and his Saxons were tiring of the constant machinations. In early 1514 Anna claimed Philipp was mistreated by the knights, even herniated. His testicle was injured. Nine-year-old Philip was paraded out and poked and prodded. The knights claimed his father had the same defect. It meant nothing.

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Representatives of Frederick the Wise and Saxony acted. In the castle courtyard at Kassel young Philipp stood on a table. Frederick’s High Court Judge Thun gave a stirring speech and the citizenry paraded past Philipp to shake his hand and express their loyalty. Within months the influence of the heavy-handed council of knights over the citizens evaporated. Incredibly, that same year Anna called the Hessian estates together at Homburg and walked away from the meeting with the regency and Philipp! The Hessian knights still schemed however. It was not until the end of 1518 that the regency came to an end. Emperor Maximilian also was tired of the endless bickering from factions in Hesse. He declared 13-year-old Philipp ruler in his own right.

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Maximilian might have deferred earlier to the powerful Frederick the Wise but the Landgrave’s widow Anna had not. She delighted even afterwards in humiliating representatives from Frederick. Yet there was one who had no fear of feisty Anna or her 13-year-old boy ruler. The most dreaded knight in the empire smelled the weakness. In 1518 Franz von Sickingen with thousands of foot soldiers and knights on horse stormed over Hesse and extorted a fortune from Hesse. No one – not even Duke George -- came to help.

References for this blog were Ingetraut Ludolphy, Friedrich der Weise: Kurfürst von Sachsen, 1463-1525 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984) and Richard A. Cahill, Philipp of Hesse and the Reformation (Mainz: von Zabern, 2001).

Q. What other supposedly powerless women triumphed in early modern times?