German painter (b. 1472, Kronach, d. 1553, Weimar). German painter and engraver. The son of a painter, he settled in Wittenberg c.1504 and was court painter successively under three electors of Saxony. There he maintained a flourishing workshop and was twice burgomaster. Cranach was a close friend of Martin Luther, whose doctrine he upheld in numerous paintings and woodcuts, and he has been called the painter of the Reformation. He was a rapid and prolific painter, and the work turned out by his studio is uneven in quality. Naïve and fanciful, often awkward in draftsmanship, it has, nonetheless, freshness and originality and a warm, rich palette. His portraits are particularly successful. Among his best-known works are Repose in Egypt (Gemäldgalerie, Staatliche Mus., Berlin-Dahlem); Judgment of Paris (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe); Adam and Eve (Courtauld Inst., London); and Crucifixion (Weimar). The latter contains figures of Luther and Cranach. His many famous protraits include those of Elector John Frederick and Self-Portrait (Uffizi). Cranach was also an accomplished miniaturist. He produced a few copperplates and designs for woodcuts. His son and pupil Lucas Cranach, the Younger, 1515C86,   Related Paintings of CRANACH, Lucas the Elder :. | The Judgment of Paris fg | adam and eve | Cardinal Albrecht of Branden-burg before the Crucified Christ (mk08) | Venus and Cupid dfg | Charity fdgr |
Related Artists:
Lucas van Valckenborch
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, 1530-1597
Jakob Bjork
painted Portrait of Jacob Johan Anckarstrom the older in 1776(1776)
Francesco Albani
(March 17 or August 17, 1578 COctober 4, 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter. Born at Bologna, his father was a silk merchant who intended to instruct his son in the same trade; but by age twelve, Albani became an apprentice under the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, where he met Guido Reni. Soon he followed Reni to the so-called "Academy" run by the Carracci family: Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico. This studio fostered the careers of many painters of the Bolognese school, including Domenichino, Massari, Viola, Lanfranco, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Pietro Faccini, Remigio Cantagallina, and Reni. In the year 1600, Albani moved to Rome to work in the fresco decoration of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, being completed by the studio of Annibale Carracci. Rome, under Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592-1605) was exhibiting some degree of administrative stability and renewed artistic patronage. While pope Clement was born from a Florentine family residing in Urbino, his family was allied by marriage to the Emilia-Romagna and the Farnese, since Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma had married Margherita Aldobrandini. Parma, like Bologna, are part of the Region of Emilia-Romagna. Thus it was not surprise that Cardinal Odoarde Farnese, Ranuccio's brother, chose the Carraccis from Bologna for patronage, thereby establishing Bolognese predominance of Roman fresco painting for nearly two decades.