Kronach 1472-Weimar 1553 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,   Related Paintings of Lucas Cranach :. | Portrait Supposed to Be of Magdalena Luther (mk05) | Portrat des Dr. Johannes Cuspinian | The Three Graces | Virgin and Child under an Apple Tree | Portrait of Martin Luther. |
Related Artists:
Franz Ludwig Catel
German Painter, 1778-1856,German painter. As a child, Catel helped carve small wooden figures in the toyshop owned by his father. With the encouragement of the printmaker Daniel Chodowiecki, Catel enrolled at the Berlin Kunstakademie, becoming a full member in 1806. In 1807, after already making a name for himself as a watercolourist and book illustrator, he began several years of study at the Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his main subject was oil painting. In 1811 he moved to Italy, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Initially he wavered between Joseph Anton Koch's classically heroic style of landscape painting and the Romantic lyricism of the Nazarenes. Eventually he found that he could best exercise his technical ability, and most quickly achieve fame and fortune, by producing Italian landscapes. He specialized in Neapolitan scenes depicting festive folk customs; and such paintings proved popular with the mass of wealthy travellers who came to Italy after the Napoleonic Wars.
Georg Caspar Prenner
painted The children of Count Vorontsov in 1755
Gerolamo Dai Libri
Italian Painter, ca.1474-1555