Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation

Lucas Cranach the Elder Art and Devotion of the German Reformation

Bonnie Noble

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA,® INC.

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Copyright © 2009 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2008943387 ISBN: 978-0-7618-4337-5 (clothbound : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7618-4338-2 (paperback : alk. paper) eISBN: 978-0-7618-4339-9

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Contents

List of Illustrations

v

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

1

1

Law and Gospel and the Strategies of Pictorial Rhetoric

27

2

The Schneeberg Altarpiece and the Structure of Worship

67

3

The Wittenberg Altarpiece: Communal Devotion and Identity

97

4

Holy Visions and Pious Testimony: Weimar Altarpiece

138

5

Public Worship to Private Devotion: Cranach’s Reformation Madonna Panels

163

Conclusion

197

Bibliography

201

Index

219

iii

Illustrations

1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6.

Cranach, Law and Gospel, Gotha version Cranach, Law and Gospel, Prague version Cranach, copy of Law and Gospel, Prague version Cranach, The Dying Man Cranach, Hercules at the Crossroads Cranach, Passional Christi et Antichristi, Entry into Jerusalem/ Pope and Entourage entering Hell 2.1. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, rear panels 2.2. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, closed position 2.3. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, opened position 2.4. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, detail, Last Supper 2.5. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, detail, Crucifixion 2.6. Cranach, Altarpiece of George the Bearded 2.7. Cranach, Albrecht of Brandenburg with a Crucifix 2.8. Cranach, Amsterdam Crucifixion Triptych 3.1. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, exterior panels 3.2. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, front panels 3.3. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, Last Supper 3.4. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, predella 3.5. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments 3.6. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, detail of elevation 3.7. Cranach, Luther as Junker Jörg 3.8. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, detail of confession

v

30 31 33 39 45 51 68 69 70 71 72 80 82 86 99 100 101 102 107 108 112 123

vi

4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9.

Illustrations

Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, closed position Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, opened position Cranach, Altarpiece of the Princes Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, detail of blood Rogier van der Weyden, Vienna Crucifixion Cranach, Berlin Madonna Cranach, Hague Madonna Cranach, Munich Madonna Cranach, Frederick the Wise Venerating the Virgin Cranach, Holy Kinship Michael Ostendorfer, Fair Mary of Regensburg Peter Koellin, Mary of Mercy Cranach, Law and Gospel, woodcut Cranach, Saint Jerome in His Study

139 140 145 150 152 167 168 169 171 172 175 176 180 185

Acknowledgments

I can never hope to thank all the people who have supported me, emotionally and intellectually, since Lucas Cranach the Elder first crossed my path in an undergraduate class at Northwestern University. My mother, Ruth Simonson Noble, and my sisters, Wynne Noble and Adrienne Noble-Nacev, saw me through this project with unwavering support. My stepdaughters, Hannah McNeil and Kelsey McNeil, made room for my work no matter how absurd it seemed and walked patiently through endless museums. My esteemed teachers and colleagues, Charles Minot, Donald McColl, Shelia ffolliott, and Jeffrey Chipps Smith deserve more credit than a few lines of acknowledgment can begin to convey. Professor Larry Silver, who introduced me to the wonders of the Northern Renaissance and who supervised the dissertation that paved the way for this book, deserves special, heartfelt thanks for two decades of friendship and support. I also owe a very special thank you to my adopted German families, Familie Eitner and Familie Finkenstaedt, who helped me make a new home in Germany, and to Miss Helen Ruhren, who accidentally led me to a love of the German language. I also wish to thank the anonymous readers from University Press for their insights, and my copyeditor, Kathy Delfosse, for her swift and competent cleanup of an unruly manuscript. I am grateful to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for funding travel and study in Germany and eastern Europe. I also wish to thank the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for funding research travel to Germany, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for a year of research and writing that allowed me to transform a dissertation into a book. Finally, I dedicate this book to my past, present, and future: to the memory of my father, Dr. Jerome Noble; to my twins, Cole Hembree McNeil and vii

viii

Acknowledgments

Sophia Noble McNeil, who waited good-naturedly for me to emerge from my study; and to my beloved husband, Jeff McNeil, who saw me through this often tortured project with gentle encouragement and saintly patience. My love and gratitude are boundless. Parts of this book have been previously published in the following sources: “From Vision to Testimony: Cranach’s Weimar Altarpiece.” Reformation and Renaissance Review 5, no. 2 (2003): 135–65 (Equinox Publishing Ltd 2003). “‘[A] Work in Which the Angels Are Wont to Rejoice’: Lucas Cranach’s Schneeberg Altarpiece.” Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 3 (2003): 1011–37. “A Virgin’s Work Is Never Done: The Madonna Panels of the Cranach Workshop.” Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies 3, no. 2 (2003): 168–200. “Law and Gospel: Scripture, Truth, and Pictorial Rhetoric.” Southeastern College Art Conference Review 14, no 4 (2004): 314–32. “The Wittenberg Altarpiece and the Image of Identity.” Reformation 11 (2006): 79–129.

Introduction

The subject of this book is a group of paintings from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1572–53) that both perpetuate and interpret ideas based in Lutheran (evangelical) theology.1 Cranach produced images, many in direct collaboration with Martin Luther (1483–46),2 that not only inspired artists throughout the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, but also made the reformer’s complex ideas intelligible to a wide range of viewers. Despite Cranach’s crucial role as an interpreter of Lutheran thought, many of his Reformation paintings, especially the monumental retables in Schneeberg, Wittenberg, and Weimar, remain unfamiliar to many American and European scholars. One of my primary objectives in this study, then, is to present these major works of art as a thematic group to a broader audience. I will treat this objective in two ways: I will illustrate how these images can be distinguished from art produced for Catholic patrons and viewers in the later Middle Ages and during the Reformation. I will also explicate the pictorial strategies employed in the production of these images to show how they were used to clarify and interpret Lutheran thought.3 The pictures whose production Cranach oversaw, not the ones he actually physically painted from beginning to end, are my concern. For the purposes of this study, tracing the hand of the master is less important than understanding the conceptual underpinnings of these pictures. Cranach the Elder’s first and last Lutheran paintings mark the chronological parameters of this study. I begin in 1529, the year Cranach painted Law and Gospel (figs. 1.1–1.3, and 5.8), the first clearly identifiable Lutheran painting. (Lutheran prints had appeared far earlier.)4 The Schneeberg Altarpiece (figs. 2.1–2.3), Cranach’s first Lutheran retable, was completed in 1539, and the Wittenberg Altarpiece (figs. 3.1–3.4) was installed on the high altar in 1

2

Introduction

1547. The Weimar Altarpiece (figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.4), the workshop’s last major commission during Cranach the Elder’s lifetime, was placed on the high altar of the City Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Weimar in 1555, two years after the artist’s death. Its completion represents Cranach the Elder’s final enterprise and the conclusion of the initial phase of Lutheran art production. In the final chapter of this study, my focus will shift from Cranach’s large, public altarpieces to his smaller Madonna paintings, which supported the private devotion of viewers with Lutheran sympathies. It is important to note that the confessional boundaries in the mid-sixteenth century were blurry and inchoate. It would perhaps be more appropriate to refer to viewers with Catholic or Lutheran sympathies, rather than to “Catholics” and “Lutherans”; however, to avoid clumsy locutions throughout this study, I will use the terms “Catholic” and “Lutheran.” These terms should be understood as shorthand for those still-forming confessional categories rather than as an assertion of clear denominational boundaries (see note 1). The fundamental assumption of this discussion, an assumption more essential than the specific claims I will make about particular paintings, is that images play a role in the formation of religious identity. Religious art mediates the relationship between humanity and divinity. One basic purpose of any religion is to create a foundation upon which to build a relationship with the divine.5 Many mechanisms and tools help nurture and define this relationship: the interpretation of holy texts, individual and communal rituals, and practices of discipline, prayer, and meditation. One of the most important intermediaries between humanity and divinity is art. The changes in Western Christianity, which the Lutheran Reformation either originated or aggravated, caused a dramatic shift in the ways that people viewed the basis of the relationship between believers and God, and thus in the ways that art functioned within this new relationship. The duties of religious art within the new system necessitated a functional definition of Lutheran art. In fact, Luther himself put forward the idea that function determines whether a work of art is acceptable or unacceptable. In his flagship discussion of religious pictures, the subchapter “On Images” from the Lenten sermons of 1522, Luther explained that images themselves are neither good nor bad; rather, their value is determined by their use. “Here we must admit that we may have images and make images, but we must not worship them, and if they are worshipped, they should be put away and destroyed.”6 In keeping with Luther’s own stipulations, I am insisting on an approach to the study of Reformation art that focuses on changes in specific pictorial functions. Other scholars, both art historians and Reformation scholars, have observed the role of function in distinguishing between Catholic and Lutheran art, but none has systematically applied this approach to the pictures

Introduction

3

at issue in this study. Art historians have long observed the importance of pictorial function, and my approach is indebted to the fine work of other scholars. Christiane Andersson has observed that in Lutheran art, artists adapted familiar forms by redefining their purpose and role.7 In his response to Erwin Panofsky’s iconographic approach to art history, James Marrow has questioned the value of interpreting hidden symbolism as a method of understanding northern art. Marrow’s objection to the iconographic method is that it overemphasizes the question of what is depicted to the detriment of the critical matter of how the work of art actually functioned, particularly in its role as an aid in the beholder’s visionary experience.8 In addition to closely examining images with a view to understanding their relevance to Reformation theological and social concerns, this study will demonstrate the heuristic, devotional, and ritual adaptations of Cranach’s Lutheran paintings. These adaptations occasionally lie concealed under a surface of traditional iconography and format. Some of Cranach’s Reformation paintings appear in formats or contain motifs that at first seem indistinguishable from their Catholic counterparts.9 Yet behind this apparent continuity lie subtle yet powerful revisions and reworkings that can be revealed by considering the shifting function of art within the context of Reform. The content of the lessons the pictures taught, the tasks the images performed, and the pictorial strategies that determined the range and nature of their use reveal the innovations of Lutheran art. The retable was the defining type of public religious painting in Germany and other parts of northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Traditionally found on the high altar or on a side altar, the altarpiece marked the holiest parts of the sacred space, forming a backdrop for celebration of the Mass and frequently marking the site of a holy relic, such as the bodily remains of a saint. I am most concerned with the continued production of the polyptych (many-paneled altarpiece) during this period of theological change. Cranach shifted the function of the retable from being a marker of explicitly Catholic ritual to being a tool of religious instruction, transforming a familiar form to suit the devotional, theological, and didactic practices of a new faith. In other words, despite the apparent continuity suggested by the continued use of the polyptych format, Cranach’s altarpieces functioned differently than did their Catholic counterparts. Appropriating and transforming this essential type of religious picture redefined the nature of public devotional art in the period of the Reformation. The fact that “Lutheran” and “art” are not mutually exclusive terms, that such a thing as “Lutheran art” exists, testifies to Luther’s moderate attitude toward images. The sheer number and variety of images Cranach produced for viewers with Lutheran sympathies contradicts the charge that the Reformation

4

Introduction

was by definition hostile to art10 and demonstrates that Lutheran Christianity was supportive of the invention and development of new types of pictures.11 Unlike Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, a reformer and leader of iconoclasm in Wittenberg, Luther saw a specific and defined role that religious art could play within the new faith.12 With the exception of his categorical rejection of representations of the saints, the issue was not whether religious images should be permitted or forbidden but, instead, how they should be used.13 As noted, for Luther, images were adiaphora, matters of indifference, neither explicitly forbidden nor accepted. They could signify Christian freedom and express confessional or cultural identity, but they did not necessarily have religious meaning.14 My insistence on putting forward a functional definition of Lutheran art does not mean that I deny that there was visual innovation in Cranach’s production. Law and Gospel, the single most influential Lutheran image, is a brand-new type of picture. However, multiple panels of the Virgin Mary, which Cranach continued to produce for viewers with a range of confessional sympathies, could not be Lutheran unless they could work in new ways. Between these two extremes are altarpieces, traditional triptychs (three-paneled altarpieces) and polyptychs, which were objects familiar from Catholic devotion and practice, but whose manipulated iconography point in a new direction. Only through an examination of their iconography in conjunction with their freshly assigned intermediary tasks can the confessional identity of these pictures become fully clear. The conclusions presented here do not only deal with changing pictorial function. I will also put forward here the notion that an image may be seen as a primary text rather than as a secondary vehicle of expression for written ideas. To this end I question the way some other scholars have applied textual evidence to Cranach’s art. Once again, my approach is indebted to the work of other scholars. Craig Harbison has warned against seeing late-medieval art either as overtly liturgical or as pertaining only to liturgical texts, when other kinds of religious writing, including more personal devotional writings, may be more germane.15 Scholars of the Reformation often see pictures as directly illustrative of official theological texts, when in fact a given picture’s relationship to theological ideas is usually more complex. Furthermore, while it is true that images may be derived from written sources, they are not simply illustrative of those sources. An image may also be envisioned as a response to ideas presented in written sources, or as a way of deviating from or arguing with them. Even if scholars of the Reformation identify the correct texts needed to decipher Cranach’s paintings, they tend to oversimplify their relationship to these sources. The idea that art bears a complex relationship to the

Introduction

5

written word is of course a truism in the current practice of art history, yet it is oddly overlooked by many scholars in the study of Cranach’s Reformation art.16 The fundamental question is how images may both be extrapolated from textual concepts and yet create a distinct visual language. Scholars of Cranach’s art, who are often Reformation scholars and not art historians, tend to assume Cranach’s pictures seamlessly reconstitute Luther’s ideas in visual form. My approach also concedes a measure of authority to the beholder in the construction of meaning, a notion based in part on reception theory or viewerresponse theory.17 Though I would not contend that the beholder’s interpretation is the sole source of meaning, I do suggest that viewer response activates the implicit content in Cranach’s Reformation period altarpieces. (This is in fact true for all images and objects.) Once it is agreed that the possible ranges of responses to a work of art is unique to each community of viewers (and of course to each individual viewer, though that meaning is enormously difficult to recover), the meaning of any given image or set of images becomes varied and changing rather than fixed and static. Unlike an iconographic method— which assigns a stable meaning, usually based on a specific text or texts, to an image or object—the approach taken here allows for a variety of viewer responses.18 These ideas are of course widely accepted, yet art historians tend to set them aside when they begin to parse Cranach’s pictures. In short, the three axes of this study are the analysis of adaptations in pictorial function, nuanced examination of the dynamic relationship between text and image, and consideration of viewer response in constructing meaning.

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CRANACH AND HIS WORKSHOP In Cranach’s times the German must have been a knotty, uncouth, gnarled, unkempt creature. All you have to do is look at the woodcuts by the minor German masters . . . to get the idea of the limping hunch-backed idiots, hangmen, pilgrims, charlatans, quack doctors, bagpipe players, [and] indulgence merchants . . . that populated Germany in those times. Richard Muther, Lucas Cranach19

The current study responds to Cranach’s extensive historiography, which is as vast as it is repetitive.20 Each of the following chapters will deal with the relevant historiography of specific works of art, but in general, five aspects and phases of Cranach scholarship are of particular interest.

6

Introduction

Writing about Cranach before the Nineteenth Century Some of the oldest proclamations concerning Cranach and German art of the sixteenth century include the comments of Philip Melanchthon and those of the Nuremberg humanist Christoph Scheurl, who honored Cranach’s achievements as court painter to Frederick the Wise of Saxony, calling Cranach the first painter after Albrecht Dürer.21 An early biographical source on Cranach is Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie der edler Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (1675),22 which positioned Cranach among other artists considered important in the seventeenth century. Sandrart’s purpose was to celebrate things German, and to this end he wrote in German rather than in Latin.23 Sandrart contributed to a trend in which Cranach and German art in general were celebrated as worthy rivals to the traditions of Italian painting. Another interpretation of Cranach’s art in terms of civic and national identity is a history dating from 1684 of the city of Schneeberg, home of Cranach’s Schneeberg Altarpiece.24 Cranach monographs also appeared in the eighteenth century, for example, the work by C. E. Richter, written in 1761.25

Cranach Scholarship of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries The foundation of Cranach scholarship to this day is Christian Schuchardt’s three-volume magnum opus.26 Schuchardt categorized and described images and reproduced primary-source documents comprehensively. Though it is replete with detailed description and archival data, Schuchardt’s work offers little genuine analysis or interpretation of images and documents. This kind of concern with description rather than interpretation is characteristic of art-historical scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cranach scholarship of this period also tends to be self-referential, with every monograph reiterating almost ad nauseam the basic events of Cranach’s life.27 Much of the nineteenth—and early-twentieth-century scholarship on Cranach takes up the subject of Cranach’s “greatness” and weaves it into an overarching narrative of nationalism and national identity.28 Hans Preuß was fascinated by the “Germanness” of Luther’s theology and the art with which it was associated. For Preuß, Lutheran art was “freedom, bravery, the heroic, the clear, the conquering beauty, the direct, freshness that speaks to the soul,” and this art served a piety that was “clear and from the heart.”29 Writing in 1928, Friedrich Buchholz attempted to describe and analyze the relationship between the Reformation and art making. He noted some elements of content, such as the depiction of strictly biblical subject matter and representations of the Lutheran concept of grace, but his first priority was to isolate a clearly

Introduction

7

German, Lutheran style. Buchholz’s celebration of a truly Lutheran, German style of art seems somewhat at odds with his apparent dislike of Cranach, but, as we see from the prefatory material to this section, other German scholars have also simultaneously expressed pride and embarrassment when discussing German art and culture.30 Mid-Twentieth-Century Cranach Scholarship In addition to several dissertations,31 the most significant contributions to twentieth-century monographic literature on Cranach include Max Friedländer and Jacob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, and Werner Schade, Lucas Cranach: A Family of Master Painters.32 Schade’s work provides an overview of the events of Cranach’s life, while that of Friedländer and Rosenberg categorizes and systematizes the art of Cranach and his sons. Schade’s greatest contribution is an appendix that reproduces much archival information pertinent to Cranach’s life. The documents in this appendix paint a picture of Cranach not only as an artist but also as a businessman and politician.33 Oskar Thulin’s brief but important study, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, focuses on the Law and Gospel and the other altarpieces at issue in the present study.34 Thulin’s brief chapters take Cranach’s images as pictorial articulations of written ideas rather than as primary texts themselves, the exact opposite of the approach taken here. Throughout this study I will challenge Thulin’s basic assumption, so typical of Cranach scholarship, of perfect reciprocity between Luther’s ideas and Cranach’s images. A major Cranach exhibition in 1972 commemorated the 500th anniversary of Cranach’s birth. The exhibition catalog by Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk assembles information on Cranach and his workshop in two dense tomes. The brief sections on Cranach’s Reformation art present tidy summaries of pertinent historical information and descriptions of pictures, but they offer little actual pictorial interpretation of Cranach’s art; rather, the value of this catalog is the variety of information it offers within one work.35 East German scholarship has tended to see Cranach’s work through the lens of Marxism, occasionally distorting the art-historical record in favor of an interpretation of Cranach as a proto-Marxist.36 However, a particularly strong contribution to Cranach scholarship can be found in an East German exhibition catalog, Kunst der Reformationszeit, which, despite its political stance, presents Reformation period art of various media in a balanced overview.37 Some of the best East German scholarship consists of painstaking studies of individual cities in Saxony and Thuringia from the beginning of their history until the late 1970s. These studies can provide a great deal of data about Cranach and Reformation history, and they often contain reprinted

8

Introduction

archival documents. One example is a study of the history of Wittenberg written in 1979, which describes in great detail the objects in the churches in Wittenberg. For instance, one can find here information on Cranach’s payment for the 1547 Wittenberg Altarpiece. The record of this payment was discovered in 1884 but has been lost since 1967.38 Luther Scholars on Cranach Significantly, much scholarship on Cranach consists of work by Reformation scholars. Carl C. Christensen’s Art and the Reformation in Germany is the most fundamental work in English on Cranach’s Lutheran painting, providing a basic, brief, iconographic reading of Cranach’s Reformation pictures with reference to Lutheran theology and texts.39 Christensen’s attention to the theology of Cranach’s art is simultaneously the book’s strength and its weakness, epitomizing the scholarly tendency to approach Cranach’s paintings as vehicles for the expression of theological ideas rather than considering them in the context of art-historical change. Sergiusz Michalksi compiled and anthologized the writings of reformers about art, analyzing theology but addressing no specific works of art.40 Margarete Stirm’s book Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation also contains chapters on the theology of all the major reformers’ views on religious art.41 Though the theologies are different, the theoretical concerns run parallel to one another, and the same fundamental questions must be asked: On what basis does one assign a confessional identity to art? How does art serve a new faith? These issues were also addressed in many of the historical exhibitions dedicated to Luther and marking his 500th birthday in 1983.42 A more recent collection of essays, edited by Paul Corby Finney, analyzes the relationship between Calvinism and art.43 Cranach Research Post 1989 Among the most noteworthy contributions to twentieth-century Cranach scholarship are the more recent historical Cranach exhibitions and their catalogs. In the 1994 exhibition Lucas Cranach: Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken, Cranach is treated as a historical figure, a businessman, and a politician as well as an artist. His output of pictures is the focus of an inquiry that is primarily economic and historical. The exhibition Gotteswort und Menschenbild: Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen is also historically oriented and treats not only paintings but also prints, book illustrations, and medals by Cranach and his contemporaries.44 Any study of Cranach and Reformation art must contend with the provocative works of Joseph Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art and The Refor-

Introduction

9

mation of the Image. Koerner’s arguments about specific Cranach paintings will receive full attention, especially in the third and fourth chapters.45

THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION John Dillenberger introduces his anthology of Luther’s writings with the following sage observation: “It would be as wrong to attribute the breakup of the medieval world and its consequent course to the genius of Luther as it would be to interpret Luther himself as just a product of the forces then bringing a new world into being.”46 The state of Latin Christianity in the decades before the Reformation is extraordinarily difficult to characterize. Scholars disagree about whether positioning the Reformation in the context of the late Middle Ages is productive or merely complicating.47 Nonetheless, most would agree that in theory and in practice, Christianity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was neither consistent nor uniform.48An exhaustive study of the causes of the Lutheran Reformation cannot be attempted in an introduction to a study on Cranach. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I will very briefly outline some of the critical events and important ideas from the decades preceding Luther’s reform that I believe are relevant to the changes evident in Cranach’s art, even if these conditions do not constitute a direct cause for this innovation. The following chapters will focus more specifically on the relationship between Cranach’s art and particular ideas and events of the Reformation. With the purported posting of the famous Ninety-five Theses, or issues for debate, on the doors of the castle church in Wittenberg, Luther initiated, perhaps inadvertently, a chain reaction of theological and institutional changes that challenged Catholic authority in all its manifestations in western Europe. Though scholars debate whether Luther actually posted his Ninety-five Theses, the date of October 31, 1517, is a useful, conventional point for the beginning of the Reformation. Luther’s call for reform in Wittenberg led to the development of a Christian theology with radically changed theological underpinnings. Most significantly for this discussion, Luther’s reform questioned and reconfigured the nature and function of religious art. As stated above, the literature about the causes of the Lutheran Reformation is vast. Still, it will be helpful to identify here some scholars whose work addresses issues specifically related to the influence of theological change on artistic production. Steven Ozment has formulated one of the most provocative theories to explain why the Reformation happened. According to Ozment, Luther’s ideas of divine mercy and salvation offered comfort and relief from prevalent anxieties about damnation. Ozment paints a bleak picture of

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Christian worship at the end of the Middle Ages. He describes a world of intense religious anxiety, of frightened Christians happily parting with their money and submitting to humiliating acts of penance to spare themselves the torments of divine rage.49 According to Ozment’s theory, the Reformation progressed as a popular movement because it relieved these anxieties. It relocated the hope for salvation in the grace of God and away from the guilty believer. No longer did salvation depend on the capacity of the Christian to repent for, and the institutional church to forgive, sins.50 If salvation descends purely from God’s grace, and good works are to no avail, then the fearful Christian could have a reprieve from her or his trepidation. One virtue of Ozment’s analysis of the Reformation as a theological movement and as a popular phenomenon is that it describes the Reformation from the point of view of the believer, not the church leaders, and explains how people could vehemently and completely reject the church into which they were born. However, other scholars, for instance Euan Cameron, reject Ozment’s anxiety theory, arguing that most people probably did not experience the anxiety Ozment says they did; the church offered sufficient relief from anxiety by providing opportunities to counterbalance sin with Confession and penance.51 Still, even if the anxiety thesis does not apply to society as a whole, it may nonetheless explain Luther’s own mental state in his years as an Augustinian monk.52 Even if anxiety did not cause the Reformation, it surely motivated the performance of good works, including patronizing the arts. But in Lutheran theology, good works were no longer rewarded with spiritual merit, and it was no longer appropriate to commission art to serve such a purpose. What, then, motivated patronage of Lutheran art?53 Patrons undoubtedly still wanted to memorialize themselves and showcase their piety, but more fundamentally, under Lutheran influence, the purpose of art shifted. Broadly speaking, art functioned to instruct believers in theology and grace and helped define the theological parameters of religious communities. As we will see throughout this study, art in a Lutheran context also performed several specific tasks. First, Cranach’s paintings are didactic, instructing believers in the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith without works. It can be argued that all religious art of the sixteenth century (or earlier) is didactic in one form or another. However, much Lutheran art, particularly the Law and Gospel panels, had as its first priority educating followers of the new faith in theological basics. Second, Lutheran art redirected worship back to the Bible by limiting itself to subjects derived directly from scripture. By restricting subject matter in this way, Lutheran art guided the attention of viewers back to Christ and away from the colorful cast of saints venerated in the late-medieval church. Third, Lutheran art redefined sacraments and other rituals and helped believers un-

Introduction

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derstand and establish ways to follow these practices, especially Baptism and the lay Eucharist in both kinds (both the bread and the wine). Fourth, by including portraits of religious and political leaders, including the artist himself, Cranach’s Lutheran paintings memorialized illustrious members of the community as paragons of explicitly Lutheran salvation. Again, earlier portraits, including donor portraits within public works of art, also showcased piety, but in Cranach’s altarpieces these human figures are not celebrated for their good works. Indeed, as we will see, such a motivation would have been anathema in a Lutheran context. Rather, these altarpieces depicted believers exemplifying a specifically Lutheran path to salvation through grace without works and thus served as models for the community. Interestingly, art’s function of exemplifying models for ideal piety and faith legitimated the continued production of Madonna pictures for a clientele with Lutheran sympathies. The Virgin Mary became a paragon of Lutheran virtue rather than a worker of miracles or guarantor of salvation. No longer an intercessor, the Virgin became the quintessential, ideal model of perfect grace.

CRANACH AND HIS PATRONS Cranach, Luther, and their employers and supporters, the Saxon electors, were lifelong colleagues.53 After the 1521 Diet of Worms, when Luther’s life was in danger, Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, placed the reformer in protective custody at the Wartburg.55 As a measure of extra protection against his enemies, Luther disguised himself as Junker Jörg, or Squire George.56 A letter Luther wrote to Cranach on April 28, 1521, testifies to the friendship between artist and theologian. The letter states in part: I shall submit to being “imprisoned” and hidden away, though as yet I do not know where. I would have preferred to suffer death at the hands of the tyrants, . . . but I must not disregard the council of good men; . . . My arrival at Worms was not expected. You can all see from the mandate with which I was suddenly confronted on my way, just how the safe-conduct was kept. I thought His Imperial Majesty would have assembled one or fifty scholars and overcome this monk in a straightforward manner. But nothing else was done there than this: Are these your books? Yes. Do you want to renounce them or not? No. Then go away. O we blind Germans, how childishly we act and allow the Romanists to mock and fool us in such a pitiful way! Give my greeting to . . . your dear wife. . . . Good bye. With this I commend you all to God. May he protect in Christ the minds and faith of all of you from the Roman wolves and dragons, and their followers. Amen.57

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The contents of this letter, as well as its conspiratorial tone, indicate the friendship between Luther and Cranach. In addition to this letter, other evidence testifies to the enduring friendship between Luther and Cranach. In 1521, the same year that Cranach painted his first portraits of Luther, Luther became godfather to Cranach’s daughter Anna.58 Cranach was one of five witnesses (Trauzeugen) at Luther’s wedding in 1525,59 and in 1526 he was godfather to Luther’s first-born son.60 Luther’s likely visit to Cranach on the occasion of the death of his son Hans further demonstrates the intimacy between the two men.61 Because textual sources substantiate the closeness between Cranach and Luther, scholars have attempted to find similar evidence of friendship in the sum total of the artist’s work, or even in details within specific paintings. However, the diversity of Cranach’s oeuvre and the range of his patrons’ political and theological sympathies make it nearly impossible to tease information about Cranach’s personal views and loyalties out of his pictures. In the context of Luther’s vulnerable situation, in hiding and in disguise, the Junker Jörg portraits may express solidarity. On the other hand, Cranach had an enduring and complex professional association with Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, defender of the Catholic faith, and the very person against whom the Ninety-five Theses were directed.62 Cranach’s association with Albrecht of Brandenburg began before the full force of Luther’s reform was evident in painting, and it continued intermittently throughout the tumultuous years of the Reformation. The Cranach workshop produced a cycle of paintings for the Stiftskirche in Halle. Beginning work in 1520 and completing the project in 1525, Cranach’s workshop produced at least 142 paintings for the project.63 Cranach also fulfilled a number of single-panel commissions for Albrecht.64 Though Luther and Albrecht represented opposing confessional viewpoints, the relationship between them was not a matter of simple enmity but, rather, involved compromise, diplomacy, and occasional reconciliation.65 In 1517 Luther wrote Albrecht to ask him to stop his indulgence sellers and sent him a copy of the Ninety-five Theses. When Luther wrote an attack from the Wartburg on Albrecht’s Halle collection of relics and their indulgences in 1521, Albrecht replied that he had already stopped selling indulgences, calling himself a sinner. Luther was placated, and there were no more attacks for six years. On the occasion of Luther’s wedding, Albrecht sent twenty gulden as a gift (which Luther refused but which his wife accepted). In 1526 Luther sent Albrecht an open letter, telling him to marry and make his bishopric a secular territory. Luther also published an open letter in mid-1530 asking Albrecht to maintain some semblance of harmony among Catholics so Protestants could follow their beliefs in peace.66 By 1531 diplomacy was at an end, and by 1539 Luther was on the offensive when he published Against the

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Bishop of Brandenburg, Cardinal Albrecht.67 This pattern of condemnation and reconciliation indicates the complex nature of the context into which scholars must place the artist. Cranach’s affiliations are difficult to detect in part because the relationship between Luther and Albrecht was constantly shifting.68 Some scholars have attempted to see in Cranach’s paintings for Albrecht details that covertly disclose his personal bias,69 while others argue that Cranach delegated to assistants work for patrons whose religious views he could not support.70 This scholarly debate, however, obfuscates the issue under discussion here, which concerns the content and function of the pictures, not the personal commitments of the artist. There is no question about Cranach’s personal sympathies with the reformer and his cause, nor is there any question that this artist helped establish a pictorial vocabulary for the interpretation and perpetuation of Lutheran ideas. Leaving aside questions of identity and selfhood,71 Cranach the Christian held certain beliefs, while Cranach the artist supplied goods to his customers. Some of those goods, for instance the Law and Gospel panels and the altarpieces under consideration here, dovetailed with his personal beliefs, while others did not. Questions about Cranach’s spirituality and the consistency of his personal beliefs may not be entirely relevant to the discussion of pictures produced by him or under his direction. Two other explanations that take into account the complexity of Cranach’s position offer more practical explanations for Cranach’s service to both Cardinal Albrecht and Luther. First, some scholars have rightly suggested that Cranach may have rendered his services to Albrecht as part of a diplomatic effort, as well as for the obvious financial gain.72 Given the ups and downs of the relationship between Luther and Albrecht, diplomacy is a reasonable explanation for Cranach’s service. The second explanation is related to chronology. Cranach’s major work for the cardinal predates the invention of anything like “Lutheran” painting—in other words, it comes before Law and Gospel and the altarpieces at issue in this study. Before trying to rationalize Cranach’s service to Catholic and Lutheran opponents, it is worth remembering, as noted above, that in the 1520s confessional distinctions were unclear. As we will see, Cranach did adjust his production later in his career. While still supplying images to Catholic patrons, he curtailed or omitted many of the subjects Luther found most objectionable, specifically subjects relating directly to the cult of the saints. Thus, on the one hand, Cranach cannot be said to have used his art to express his own spiritual beliefs. Such an idea derives from nineteenth-century romanticism and has little to do with the realities of patronage and payment in the production of art in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, Cranach did adapt his output so he could

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continue to serve a heterogeneous clientele without reverting to pictorial types that those who sympathized with Luther, and surely some Catholics as well, found superstitious. It is worth reiterating the basic point, a cliché of art history, that a painting is never a transparent revelation of an artist’s beliefs, especially at a time when artists such as Cranach manufactured images for patrons, following their demands and desires. A chorus of intermediary voices, including those of the patrons, various kinds of advisers, and theologians, determined what went into a work of art. The artist’s job was to fulfill his contract, not to express his personal beliefs. Earlier scholars of Reformation art especially tend to conflate the artist’s identity and pictorial content. An extreme but illustrative example of this kind of scholarship is in the work of Hans Preuß, who defined Lutheran art as art that a Lutheran artist produced.73 This kind of definition assumes the artist’s complete autonomy and disallows other factors and influences in artistic production. No image is ever a direct map of intent. As Reindert Falkenburg rightly observes, It appears that painters only rarely felt that their denomination urged them to paint exclusively “religiously correct” subjects. . . . Generally, Protestant artists worked equally for a Catholic audience and vice versa, and were willing to depict subjects which were frowned on in their own denominational iconography. Protestant artists illustrated Catholic Bibles, just as Catholics produced illustrations for Protestant Bibles.74

Cranach’s work for both Luther and Cardinal Albrecht may reveal the artist’s pragmatic concerns as a businessman, independent of his Lutheran sympathies. His activities as a politician, wine merchant, book dealer, publisher, and pharmacist illustrate the diversity of his business activities.75 The detailed records of his real estate holdings and the taxes he paid demonstrate his wealth and status.76 The vast output of the Cranach workshop also reveals his success as a businessman. The exact number of images Cranach painted in the course of his career is not known, but approximately one thousand survive.77 The number of assistants and apprentices Cranach employed indicates the size and productive capacity of his workshop. Cranach simplified and streamlined his workshop practices through efficient repetition and reinterpretation of basic models. For instance, all of the sixty documented portraits of Frederick the Wise and John the Constant follow a basic prototype.78 Cranach’s work as a pharmacist in particular supported his work as an artist. In the sixteenth century, pharmacies sold art supplies. Cranach could therefore provide his own paint, oils, and sealing wax, as well as ink for one of his other endeavors, his publishing business.79 His publishing and book-selling busi-

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nesses gave him a market for the production and sale of his prints and illustrated books. Cranach disseminated his pictorial inventions though print and book illustration, making his designs familiar and increasing the chances that he would secure further commissions. Cranach also illustrated, published, and sold Luther’s writings, most famously the first translation of the Bible from the original languages into German, the September Testament.80 Cranach was a politician, serving as Ratsherr (member of the town council) twelve times between 1519 and 1544–45. He also served several terms as mayor of Wittenberg, in 1537, 1540, and 1543. Just as the pharmacy, publishing, and book-selling enterprises enhanced the artist’s workshop, other enterprises supplemented his career as a politician and fortified his connections to the court and its resources of potential patrons. For example, his wine and beer business provided contact with customers who might also be a source of patronage for his paintings.81 Though much archival information survives, any study of Cranach is made more difficult by the paucity of documentation related to specific pictures and their patronage, ownership, and display. The exception is the major, monumental altarpieces, whose patronage may be confirmed by the presence of donor portraits. Receipts and tax records may mention that Cranach received a sum of money for an Adam and Eve panel, a Judgment of Paris, or a Madonna, but the exact image is rarely identifiable.82

CHAPTER OVERVIEW Chapter 1, “Law and Gospel and the Strategies of Pictorial Rhetoric,” examines the Allegory of Law and Gospel (circa 1529), the first definitively Lutheran painting (figs. 1.1, 1.2, and 5.8). On the left side of a divided composition appear motifs that epitomize medieval Catholic belief, specifically Christ in Judgment, and Jewish Law, personified, for example, by Moses holding the tablets. The opposite side of the image exemplifies Lutheran faith, as an anonymous nude figure, encouraged by John the Baptist, stands before Christ on the Cross and the Risen Christ. The dichotomous composition obliges the viewer to choose between inevitable damnation, as the figure on the “Law” side is chased into hell or receives salvation on the Gospel side. The individual motifs within the image relate to one another conceptually, signifying a set of relationships between Old and New Testament ideas. The separate motifs do not add up to create the illusion of a world seemingly contiguous with the viewer’s space. By denying the illusion of reality, Law and Gospel circumvents the temptation to venerate the work of art itself. Instead, Law and Gospel instructs the beholder in the basics of Lutheran thought.

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The second chapter, “The Schneeberg Altarpiece and the Structure of Worship” explains how this altarpiece from 1539 (figs. 2.1–2.5) elaborates on Law and Gospel by including a version of the subject on the outer panels. Traditional Catholic subjects, including the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, appear on the predella and central panel, respectively. Placed within a polyptych, Law and Gospel pulls these conventional subjects into its orbit and influences a rearrangement of motifs. For example, in the Crucifixion, the bisected arrangement of familiar motifs parallels the composition of Law and Gospel, transforming the central panel into a didactic reinterpretation of an older, familiar subject. Cranach’s single-panel Crucifixions with motifs reordered according to the composition of Law and Gospel appear only after 1529. The Law and Gospel panels on the exterior, and the redeployment of motifs within the central panel, make the entire retable Lutheran. The Schneeberg Altarpiece expands Law and Gospel into a format that explores the pictorial potential of new Lutheran iconography and theology while maintaining traditional form. Each of the three front panels in the Wittenberg Altarpiece of 1547 (fig. 3.2) corresponds to one of the three Lutheran sacraments: Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and a modified version of Confession. Taken together, these three panels implicitly question the seven Catholic sacraments portrayed in earlier paintings, most famously Rogier van der Weyden’s Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments (circa 1455; fig. 3.5). In the third chapter, “The Wittenberg Altarpiece: Communal Devotion and Identity,” I argue that the Wittenberg Altarpiece is a large, public visual proclamation and defense of the new Lutheran sacraments. The Wittenberg Altarpiece appeared at a time when the basic tenets of Lutheran Christianity were already in place, and its purpose was to ensure the proper administration of the sacraments. The fourth chapter, “Holy Visions and Pious Testimony: The Weimar Altarpiece,” describes how the Weimar Altarpiece, completed by Cranach the Younger, transforms the traditional retable into an epitaph (figs. 4.1, 4.2). Luther, who died in 1546, and Cranach the Elder, who died in the middle of the project in 1553, appear posthumously in the central panel, attending the Crucifixion against a background of Law and Gospel. The Weimar Altarpiece is the most complex and sophisticated rethinking of Law and Gospel. This retable uses the iconography of Law and Gospel to demonstrate not only Lutheran salvation in general, but the particular salvation of Cranach and Luther and the promise of the salvation of the Ernestine patrons. Unlike many earlier images depicting donors experiencing a holy vision, this retable/epitaph is primarily intended to bear witness to the faith of its patrons. Chapter 5, “Public Worship to Private Devotion: Cranach’s Reformation Madonna Panels,” explores Cranach’s ongoing production of Madonna pan-

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els (figs. 5.1–5.3), probably for a clientele with apparent Lutheran sympathies, into the mid-sixteenth century. Cranach’s Madonna panels display the private side of image-based piety. These pictures would not necessarily have appeared polemical to either Catholic or Lutheran beholders; rather, they were basic enough to satisfy a diverse group of viewers. Cranach’s Madonnas demonstrate the versatility and refinement of Cranach’s production: Alongside sharply polemical public panels, he also produced subtle, intimate pictures. The Catholic world into which Cranach was born in Franconia in 1472 was radically different from the world he left in 1553. The manner in which Cranach’s paintings both respond to and perpetuate theological and social change is a vital piece of history. This book seeks to further our knowledge of the world Cranach’s images helped to transform.

NOTES 1. As I will note several times in this study, the terms “evangelical,” “Lutheran,” and “Catholic” are themselves problematic, referring to denominational distinctions that were by no means clear in the infancy of the Reformation. Both “Lutheran” and “Catholic” are anachronistic, and “evangelical” bears overtones of the politico-religious debate in our own age. All these terms appear in the historical literature with various rationales to defend their use. Mindful of these complications, I have decided to use the term “Catholic” to refer to the Church of Rome. I use the terms “Lutheran” and “evangelical” interchangeably to refer to the theologies, rituals, and communities based in Lutheran thought. 2. Cranach painted the Law and Gospel panels and the Schneeberg Altarpiece during Luther’s lifetime. The Wittenberg Altarpiece was completed just after Luther’s death in 1547, though it had been begun years earlier. The Weimar Altarpiece functions in part as Luther’s epitaph, and the Madonna panels were produced throughout Cranach’s career. 3. The vast literature on Cranach as a Reformation artist will be addressed throughout this study. For comparison, some other studies of artists’ relationship to the Reformation include Andrew Morrall, Jörg Breu the Elder: Art, Culture, and Belief in Reformation Augsburg, Histories of Vision (Aldershot, Hants, England, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001), and Rainer Marquard, “Philip Melanchthon und Mathias Grünewald,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 3 (1997): 295–308. 4. On Cranach’s prints, see Johannes Jahn, introduction to Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Das gesamte graphische Werk, ed. Johannes Jahn (Munich: Rogner & Bernhard, 1972). 5. John Dillenberger, introduction to Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961). Dillenberger states this point eloquently.

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6. Martin Luther, “On Images,” in the Lenten Sermons (Invocavitpredigten), March 9–17, 1522, LW 51:81–86 (WA, vol. 10, part 3, pp. 26–36); quoted here is the Third Sermon, Tuesday after Invocavit, March 11, 1522, LW 51:82. In the interest of making this study more accessible, I have cited the English edition of Luther’s works wherever possible. For the English, see Martin Luther, Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Hilton C. Oswald, 55 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–86) (hereafter cited as LW). For the German, see Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesammtausgabe, 65 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883– ) (hereafter cited as WA). Translations of the German are my own unless otherwise stated. The Lenten sermons were printed a year after they were delivered, but the subchapter “On Images” was published immediately and appeared in seven subsequent editions within a year. These immediate and multiple editions demonstrate the importance of Luther’s opinions on art, especially during the crisis of iconoclasm in Wittenberg. On this, see Sergiusz Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe, trans. Chester Kisiel (London: Routledge, 1993), 3, 13–18. See also Luther’s Against the Heavenly Prophets, December 1524–January 1525, LW 40:79–223, especially the discussion of pictures, 84–117. Against the Heavenly Prophets devotes seventeen pages to religious images and is Luther’s longest single discussion of art. This work and the Lenten sermons contain Luther’s most concentrated discussion of images. The majority of Luther’s opinions about art are scattered throughout the corpus of his works; cf. Michalski, Visual Arts, 3, 25. According to Günther Wartenberg, “Bilder in den Kirchen der Wittenberger Reformation,” in Die bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums—Mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen, ed. Johann Michael Fritz (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1997), 24, Luther first put forward his opinions on the subject of art in 1515–16 in his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 14, followed by his exegesis (Auslegung) on the Ten Commandments, WA, vol. 1, p. 399, lines 10–27. 7. See Christiane Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienst der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 43–79. See also Brigitte Riese, “Der Einfluß der Reformation auf Malerei und Graphik in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, dargestellt am Beispiel der Wittenberger Reformation” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Leipzig, 1983), 87. See also Jérôme Cottin, Le regard et la parole: Une théologie protestante de l’image, Lieux théologiques, no. 25 (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1994), especially the chapter “L’image sans l’esthétique,” 259–83. On specifically pedagogical function in a Lutheran context, see Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Bilderfrage im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder, ed. Peter Blickle, Historische Zeitschrift, new series, vol. 33 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), 416. Kaufmann also points out (409) that evangelical art contains and reconfigures traditional art. On the role of pictorial function in Reformation period art in Augsburg, see Freya Strecker, Augsburger Altäre zwischen Reformation (1537) und 1635: Bildkritik, Repräsentation, und Konfessionalisierung (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1998), 1, 4, 20–26. 8. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1972); James Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69.

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9. On the continuity of traditional forms in a Lutheran context, see Wartenberg, “Bilder,” 24–30. On the idea that Protestant identity carries with it aspects of the medieval world from which it departs, see Susan R. Boettcher, “Von der Trägheit der Memoria: Cranachs Lutheraltarbilder im Zusammenhang der evangelischen Luthermemoria im späten 16. Jahrhundert,” in Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, ed. Joachim Eibach et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 51. Michael Cole succinctly states in his review of Alexander Nagel’s Michelangelo and the Reform of Art that “media and formats have histories of their own, and . . . the relationship between these and the individual objects that belong to them may be anything but easy.” Art Bulletin 85 (2003): 194. 10. On the supposed decline of art under Luther, see Wilhelm Worringer, Lukas Cranach (Munich: R. Piper, 1908). Carl Christensen calls his last chapter in Art and the Reformation in Germany, “The Reformation and the Decline of German Art,” 164–80. He writes, “The demise of art in the German-speaking lands is agreed upon by all.” Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979), 164–65. Jeffrey Chipps Smith also observes a change in German art beginning in 1520, but he insists that although there was no “Teutonic Michelangelo, studying German art from 1520–1580 is a worthy pursuit.” Smith, German Sculpture of the Later Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 4–5. 11. In “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienst der Reformation,” Christiane Andersson observes that Cranach’s Lutheran art is about new functions for familiar motifs. Joseph Koerner asserts a tight connection between Lutheran ritual and art, explaining that the artist “restructured older visual forms to fit the rituals and beliefs of the new faith.” Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1993), 365 (hereafter cited as Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture). Christensen notes parenthetically that Lutheran art is not merely a pared-down version of what came before but a reconfiguration of traditional subjects that endows them with new meaning (Art and the Reformation, 161–62). 12. On December 13, 1521, students from Erfurt demolished a wooden altar in the Franciscan friary, a harbinger of later iconoclasm. See Michalski, Visual Arts, 10, and his chapters “The Iconophobes: Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Calvin,” 43–73, and “Iconoclasm: Rites of Destruction,” 75–99. See also Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 364; Oskar Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1955), 153–54 (hereafter cited as Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation); and Christensen, Art and the Reformation, 13–41, 66–109. 13. On Luther’s rejection of images of saints, see Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 43; Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk, Lukas Cranach: Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Druckgraphik, 2 vols. (Basel and Stuttgart: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1972–74), 2:507–9 (hereafter cited as Koepplin and Falk); and Walter Tappolet, Das Marienlob der Reformatoren (Tübingen: Katzmannverlag, 1962), 150. 14. Kaufmann, “Bilderfrage,” 410, 449; Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 363. 15. Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–119.

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16. See Strecker, Augsburg Altäre, 4, on the tendency to see Protestant art as directly expressing the wishes of theologians. 17. A classic example is Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). 18. For a concise historiography and application of this approach, see Reindert L. Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emergence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Landscape Art—A Critical Evaluation,” in Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, ed. Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 343–68, esp. 352–56. On the flexibility of symbols in rituals for different beholders, see Susan Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 3. 19. My translation of “Der Deutsche muß ja in Cranachs Tagen ein seltsam verzwickter, derber, knorrig struppiger Kerl gewesen sein. Man braucht nur die Holzschnitte der deutschen Kleinmeister . . . zu betrachten, da gewinnt man eine Vorstellung von der Zeit, als Hinkende, Bucklige, Blöde; Henker, Pilger, Gaukler und Quacksalber; Sackpfeifer, Ablassverkäufer und Wallfahrer . . . Deutschland bevölkerten.” Richard Muther, Lucas Cranach, 2d ed. (Berlin: Julius Band Verlag, 1902), 20–21. He goes on to say, “One searches in vain for any kind of ‘beauty’ in Cranachs oevre” (Indwelche “Schönheit” wird man in Cranachs Oeuvre vergeblich suchen) (16). 20. Two useful attempts to evaluate the state of Cranach research are Campbell Dodgson, Lukas Cranach, Critical Bibliography (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1900), and Suzanne Heiland, “Cranach im Urteil der Kunstgeschichte,” in Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Der Künstler und seine Zeit, ed. Heinz Lüdecke (Berlin: Herschelverlag, 1953), 140–54. 21. On Melanchthon’s evaluation of Cranach compared to Albrecht Dürer and Matthias Grünewald, see Marquard, “Philip Melanchthon,” 295–99, and Heiland, “Urteil,” 77. On Christoph Scheurl’s 1509 Oratio attingens Litterarum praestantiam necnon laudem ecclesiae collegiatae Vittenburgensis, or Speach of Praise, see Heiland, “Urteil,” 140–41. See also Karlheinz Blaschke, Sachsen im Zeitalter der Reformation, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, no. 185, vols. 75–76, issue 1 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1970). 22. Joachim Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Bildmeister, ed. A. R. Pelzer (Munich: G. Hirths Verlag, 1925); Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der edler Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste. Nuremberg, 1675–80. Cf. Jahn, Graphische Werk, 657. 23. See Heiland, “Urteil,” 143. 24. Christian Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk (Schneeberg, 1684). 25. C. E. Richter, Historisch-kritisch Abhandlung über das Leben und die Kunstwerke des berühmten deutschen Malers Lucas Cranach (Hamburg and Leipzig: Bey Grunds Witwe & Holle, 1761). Also from the eighteenth century, though not fully devoted to Cranach, is Johann Friedrich Christ’s monograph Fränkische Acta erudita et curiosa (Nuremberg, 1726).

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26. Christian Schuchardt, Lucas Cranach des Aeltern Leben und Werke, 3 vols. (Leipzig: J. U. Brodhaus, 1851–71) (hereafter cited as Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern). 27. Some examples include Hubert Schrade, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst: Die Auferstehung Christi (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1932); E. Flechsig, Tafelbilder Lucas Cranachs der Ältere und seiner Werkstatt (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1900); Curt Glaser, Lukas Cranach, 2d printing, Gesellschaft für Zeichende. Kunst. (Munich: O. C. Recht Verlag, 1922); Joseph Heller, Verzeichnis sämtlicher Kupferstiche und Holzschnitte von und nach Lucas Cranach dem Älteren (Bamberg: Verlag der CF Kunz’schen Buchhandlung, 1821). 28. For a recent and interesting discussion of German art and identity, see Keith Moxey, “Impossible Distance: Past and Present in the Study of Dürer and Grünewald,” Art Bulletin 86 (2004): 750–63. 29. “Freidigkeit, Kühnheit, das heroische, das Klare, das beherrschte Schöne, die unmittelbare Frische des in die Seele Sprechens . . . Klar und herzlich.” Hans Preuß, Die deutsche Frömmigkeit im Spiegel der bildenden Kunst (Berlin: Furche-Kunstverlag, 1928), 168. See also Karl Ernst Meier, “Fortleben der religiös-dogmatischen Kompositionen Cranachs in der Kunst des Protestantismus,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 32 (1909): 415–35. Cranach scholarship may in fact follow a pattern similar to that on other German artists. According to Morrall, Jörg Breu, 2–7, Jörg Breu’s historiography describes scholarly concerns with Germanness and cultural identity, and unfavorably compares Breu’s art with that of the Italian Renaissance. 30. Friedrich Buchholz, Protestantismus und Kunst (Leipzig: Dieterich Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1928), esp. 62–63 and 158–88. Buchholz surveys briefly and generally art of all media, including architecture, produced during the Reformation, with particular attention to works by Dürer and Cranach. 31. Paul Goldberg, “Die Darstellung der Erlösung durch Christus und sein Blut und der hl. Eucharistie in der protestantischen Kunst des Reformationszeitalters” (Ph.D. diss., Philipps-Universität, Marburg, 1925); Ulrich Gertz, Die Bedeutung der Malerei für die Evangeliumsverkündigung in der evangelischen Kirche des XVI Jahrhunderts (Berlin: R. Pfau, 1936); Sigfried Scharfe, “Die Bildpropaganda der Reformationzeit” (diss., Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 1944). 32. Max Friedländer and Jacob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, trans. Heinz Norden, 2d ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978), Cat. 16–17 (hereafter cited as FR); Werner Schade, Maler Familie Cranach (Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1974). Subsequent references will be to the English translation: Werner Schade, Lucas Cranach: A Family of Master Painters, trans. Helen Sebba (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1980) (hereafter cited as Schade, Family). 33. The time span of the documents in Schade, Family, ranges from 1492, the year of the death of the wife of Hans Maler, Cranach’s father, to 1607, with records of property claims of Cranach’s heirs. References to “Documents” in Schade, Family, refer to the materials listed and numbered in this appendix. Archival material on Cranach is stored in Königsberg, Weimar (the archives of the Ernestine family, who were Cranach’s primary employers, are collected in the Ernestinischen Gesamtarchiv

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in the Thüringischer Hauptstaatsarchiv in Weimar; see Monica Lücke and Dietrich Lücke, “Lucas Cranach in Wittenberg,” in Lucas Cranach: Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken, ed. Claus Grimm, Johannes Erichsen, and Evemaria Brockhoff [Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1994], 59) as well as in Coburg, Augsburg, Wittenberg, Gotha, Kronach, Beustadt, Dresden, Magdeburg, Nuremberg, and Schwerin. See “Documents” (Dokumente), in Allmuth Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen (Gotha: Schlossmuseum Gotha, 1994), 202–7, where five documents from archives in Gotha and Coburg (Staatsarchiv Gotha and Coburger Festungsarchiv) are reproduced and excerpts are translated into modern German. Unfortunately, none of these pertain to the commissioning of works of art. Other published sources of archival information include Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern; Gustav Sommerfeldt, “Über Cranachs Anteil am Altarschmuck der Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg,” Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 51 (1930): 171–72; and Cornelius Gurlitt, Die Kunst unter Kurfürst Friedrich dem Weisen, Archivalische Forschungen, 2 (Dresden, 1897). Walter Scheidig has reproduced documents from the Weimar Archiv and from other primary sources in “Urkunden zu Cranachs Leben und Schaffen,” in Lüdecke, Kunstler und seine Zeit, 156–77. Subsequent references to Scheidig’s compilation of documents are by document number, not page number. See also Rainer Hambrecht, “Die Kursächsischen Rechnungsbücher im Staatsarchiv Coburg und ihr Quellenswert für die Person Lukas Cranachs,” Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung 32 (1987): 53–96. This work contains reproductions and analyses of 182 billing records (Rechnungseinträge) from the Coburg Archives. One of the earliest secondary sources that includes published archival materials on the city of Schneeberg is Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk. 34. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation. See also Oskar Thulin, Die Lutherstadt Wittenberg und ihre reformatorischen Gedenkstätten (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1960). Both these books briefly examine the Wittenberg Altarpiece. 35. Koepplin and Falk, the sections “Reformatorische Themen,” 2:498–521, and “Maria,” 2:522–41. Curiously, Koepplin and Falk identify a distinctly evangelical art even before 1517, when Luther was still an Augustinian monk. They also describe Cranach’s Lutheran art as mannerist, an odd designation indeed for a German artist of that period, since mannerism is generally held to be a style in Italy beginning in the 1520s. 36. For example, Bernhard Kummer, “Reformatorische Motive in der Kunst Cranachs, seines Sohnes, und seiner Schule” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Jena, 1958). See also Moxey, “Impossible Distance.” 37. Günter Schade and Klaus-Peter Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR: Ausstellung im Alten Museum vom 26. August bis 13. November 1983 (Berlin [West]: Elefanten Press, 1983), esp. 13–23. 38. Fritz Bellmann, Marie-Louise Harksen, and Roland Werner, Die Denkmale der Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1979). Other city histories include the following: for Weimar, Hans Eberhardt, ed., Übersicht über Bestände des Thüringischer Landesarchivs Weimar, Veröfentlichungen des Thüringischen Landesarchivs Weimar, vol. 2 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1959), and Eva Schmidt, ed.,

Introduction

23

Die Stadtkirche zu Peter und Paul in Weimar (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1955); for Torgau, Peter Findeisen and Heinrich Magirius, Die Denkmale der Stadt Torgau (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1976); and for Schneeberg, Sommerfeldt, “Über Cranachs Anteil,” 171–72. 39. Christensen, Art and the Reformation. On Law and Gospel, see 124–30; on the Reformation altarpieces, see 136–54. 40. Michalski, Visual Arts. For broader discussion of Reformation art, see Keith Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and Carlos Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 41. Margarete Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 45 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1977), esp. 59–88. Other studies that emphasize the theology of Lutheran art rather than the art itself include Preuß, Deutsche Frömmigkeit, discussed above; Paul Lehfeldt, Luthers Verhältniss zu Kunst und Künstlern (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, 1892); and Christian Rogge, Luther und die Kirchenbilder seiner Zeit, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 108 (Leipzig: Im Kommissionsverlag v. Rudolf Haupt, 1912), 1–29. 42. Christiane D. Andersson and Charles Talbot, From a Mighty Fortress: Prints, Drawings, and Books in the Age of Luther (Detroit, Mich.: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1983); Werner Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst (München: Prestel-Verlag, 1983); Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland: Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983); Heimo Reinitzer, Biblia deutsch: Luthers Bibelübersetzung und ihre Tradition, Ausstellunskataloge der Herzog-August-Bibliothek, no. 40 (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek; Hamburg: Wittig Verlag 1983). For an overview of the many exhibitions in honor of Luther’s 500th birthday, see Rainer Haussherr, “Jubiliäumsmaßnahmen: Rückblick auf einige Ausstellungen des LutherJahres 1983,” Kunstchronik 37 (1984): 421–37. See also Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern, and Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, Reformationin Nürnberg Umbruch und Bewahrung: [Ausstellung im German. Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, 12. Juni-2. September 1979 zum 18. Dt. Evang. Kirchentag] (Nuremberg: Verlag Medien & Kultur, 1979). 43. Finney, Seeing beyond the Word. 44. Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, and Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild. See also Jutta Krauss und Günter Schuchardt, Aller Knecht und Christi Untertan: Der Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld; Katalog der Ausstellungen zum 450 Todesjahr 1996, Wartburg und Eisenach (Eisenach: Die Stiftung, 1996); Ernst Badstübner and Günter Schuchardt, Gesetz und Gnade: Cranach, Luther, und die Bilder: Ausstellung im Cranach-Jahr 1994; Eisenach Museum der Wartburg 4. Mai-31. Juli; Torgau Schloss Hartenfels 25. August-6. November (Eisenach: Museum der Wartburg, 1994), 10. See also FR, Cat. 182. Lucas Cranach and Hanne Kolind Poulsen, Cranach (Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 2002), is a more traditionally art-historical show.

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45. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture and The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 46. Dillenberger, Selections, xi. 47. Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 19; Cameron, European Reformation, 19. 48. On the state of late-medieval Christianity and theories about the causes of the Reformation, see several works by Steven E. Ozment: The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), esp. 1–14; and The Age of Reform, 1250–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). See also McGrath, Reformation Thought; Cameron, European Reformation, esp. 293–313; Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), and The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, trans. Andrew Colin Gow (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1994); Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Sein Weg zur Reformation, 1483–1521, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1981); and R. Po-Chia Hsia, introduction to The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (1988; paperback ed., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 1–9. 49. Ozment, Reformation in the Cities, 138–45. 50. Ozment, Reformation in the Cities, esp. 22–32 and 47–56. See also Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning”; Jacques Toussaert, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du Moyen-Age (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1963); and Harbison, “Visions and Meditations.” 51. Cameron, European Reformation, 305–8. 52. The most famous (though surely not the most scholarly) psychological discussion of Luther is Erik Erikson, Psychohistory and Religion: The Case of Young Man Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). 53. On Luther’s rejection of art patronage as a good work, see Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 43. Cf. Koepplin and Falk, 2:507–9; Tappolet, Marienlob, 150. 54. Cranach’s presence in Wittenberg is first recorded in the spring of 1505. See Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59, which records the artist’s first payment. See also FR, Cat. 16–17. 55. LW 48:201. On the Wartburg and the Diet of Worms, see Cameron, Reformation, 102–3. 56. Cranach recorded Luther’s disguise in portraits. One version is in Leipzig circa 1521, and another in Weimar circa 1521, FR, Cat. 148 and Cat. 149, respectively. See also Martin Warnke, Cranachs Luther: Entwürfe für ein Image (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1984), and Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, 134–35. 57. LW 48:201–3. 58. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 44; Schade, Family, 72; M. B. Lindau, Lucas Cranach: Ein Bild aus dem Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit, 1883), 158ff. 59. Two guests at Luther’s wedding and engagement celebrations record Cranach’s attendance in their written descriptions. See Jahn, Graphische Werk, 613. 60. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 44.

Introduction

25

61. According to Table Talk (Tischreden), a collection of secondhand accounts of Luther’s conversations with friends and students, Luther visited Cranach to express his sympathy. Schade, Family, Document 308. The virtues and weaknesses of Table Talk as a source will be addressed in chapter 5. 62. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 22. Proceeds from indulgence sales went to the reconstruction of Saint Peter’s Cathedral and to Albrecht personally. See John Dillenberger, Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in SixteenthCentury Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 86. 63. Andreas Tacke, Der katholische Cranach (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1992), 44. An inventory from the Stiftskirche records show that the commission was completed in 1525. Dürer and Grünewald, who also participated in the project, completed their contributions in 1522–23. See Tacke, Katholische Cranach, 44–45. 64. Cranach painted multiple portraits of Albrecht of Brandenburg (FR, Cat. 182, Cat. 183) and of Albrecht in the guise of Saint Jerome (FR, Cat. 184, Cat. 185, Cat. 186). 65. On Luther and Albrecht, see Mark Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 165–72. See also Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 86–88. 66. “As late as 1530 the cardinal was still enjoying a reputation for moderation among the Protestants, who hoped he might play a mediating role at the Diet of Augsburg” (Edwards, Last Battles, 165). 67. Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 86. 68. Moreover, “Lutheran” and “Catholic” were hardly discrete categories in the mid-sixteenth century for individual believers, and these distinctions in painting were still emerging. David Hotchkiss Price argues that pictorial, confessional declarations in the Reformation were “blatant,” a statement that may hold true for certain printed works, such as the Passional Christi et Antichristi, but does not hold true for the subtler adaptations of Cranach’s painted altarpieces and Madonna panels. Price, “Albrecht Dürer’s Last Supper (1523) and the Septembertestament,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59 (1996): 580. In contrast, see Günter Schuchardt, “Cranach, Luther, und die Bilder,” in Badstübner and Schuchardt, Gesetz und Gnade, esp. 10, on the relatively nonpolemical iconography of Reformation painting. 69. Warnke, Cranachs Luther, 23, and Schuchardt, “Cranach, Luther, und die Bilder,” 10. See also FR, Cat. 182. 70. See FR, sup. 6–18. Friedländer and Rosenberg suggest that Cranach delegated work to his “disciple,” whom they call the Master of the Mass of Pope Gregory. 71. The concerns in the classic study by Stephan Greenblatt, Renaissance SelfFashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), are an example. 72. Koepplin and Falk, 2:450; cf. Tacke, Katholische Cranach, 45. 73. Preuß, Deutsche Frömmigkeit, 168–82. Friedrich Buchholz, in Protestantismus und Kunst, also claims that the criterion for calling art “Lutheran” or “Protestant” is the confessional identity of the artist rather than the content of the pictures. 74. Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emergence,” 357. On the complexity of denominational responses to works of art and the persistence of traditional forms in

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Protestant contexts, see Kaufmann, “Bilderfrage,” 409. On art and confessional affiliation in Augsburg, see Morrall, Jörg Breu, 151ff. 75. Source documents reveal Cranach’s varied enterprises. See Claus Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 19–43, esp. 20, 25, 29; Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59–65; and the appendix of Schade, Family. 76. Cranach’s impressive real estate holdings included two houses he owned in 1512; see Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59. Cranach’s taxes were the highest on any “Wohn- und Geschäftshaus” (living and business house) in the whole city. By 1528 Cranach owned five houses, according to tax records (Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 60–64). 77. Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 19. 78. Cranach began 1510 with four assistants (Gesellen), and by the end of the year he had six. By 1535 he had eleven, in addition to apprentices (Lehrknaben) and helpers especially for the grinding of pigments (Helfern für die Farbenreiberei). The increase in apprentices and assistants indicates the growth of the workshop. See Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 20, 27; Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59; and Andreas Tacke, Cranach Meisterwerke auf Vorrat: Die Erlanger Handzeichnungen der Universitätsbibliothek (Munich: Form Druck, 1994). 79. Cranach’s apothecary was a monopoly in Wittenberg. On December 8, 1520, he received his official apothecary’s license (Apothekenprivileg). The apothecary supplied the court with sealing wax, ink, medicines, and spices; see Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 62; Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 20, 25; “Cranachs Apotheke” catalog entry in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 220–21; Bernhard Müller-Wirthman, “Der Unternehmer Cranach,” in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 221. Schade, Family, Document 166, states that December 6, 1520, was the date Elector Frederick granted Cranach his apothecary privilege. On Cranach’s publishing business, see Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 3:67–72. 80. Christian Döring, the publisher of Luther’s books from 1519, also owned a bookstore. Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 21–22, 25. 81. Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 27. 82. For instance, the data reproduced or summarized in Schade, Family, 401–52, and Scheidig, “Urkunden zu Cranachs Leben und Schaffen,” 156–77, disclose only the most general references to pictures.

Chapter One

Law and Gospel and the Strategies of Pictorial Rhetoric

One has to instruct ordinary people simply and childishly, as much as one can. Otherwise, one of two things will happen: They will neither learn nor understand, or else they will want to be clever, and use their reason to enter into high thoughts, so they move away from belief. Martin Luther, Third Easter Sermon1

INTRODUCTION Cranach’s identity as a Reformation artist is linked inextricably to a pictorial type known as Law and Gospel (figs. 1.1–1.3 and 5.8). Law and Gospel does more than merely reiterate key notions of Lutheran theology. In its form, iconography, and function it differs markedly from art of the preceding period. Yet much of the scholarship on Law and Gospel treats it as little more than an extension of a Lutheran theological treatise.2 In the early twentieth century Wilhelm Worringer declared, “Instead of works of art we have mere theological tracts.”3 In the 1970s Carl Christensen stated that after consulting Luther’s writings, only “a minimum of commentary should suffice to explain the significance of the symbolism of the panel.”4 And in Joseph Koerner’s memorable formulation, the painting becomes “as interesting as a solved crossword puzzle” once the theological code is deciphered.5 It is certainly true that all these scholars’ statements are consistent with the intended meaning of the image, that is, to reiterate some of the defining ideas of Lutheran salvation. In fact, as Paolo Berdini rightly asserted, one objective of German Reformation art was to limit the expansive potential of pictures.6 Art historians have long acknowledged that the relationship between text and image is 27

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a complex dynamic, not a question of written ideas precisely reflected in different media.7 Nonetheless, scholarship devoted to Law and Gospel has tended to set aside the complexities of the text/image relationship, asserting that the intended meaning is the only possible meaning. Without denying the plausibility of a direct Lutheran interpretation, in this chapter I will examine the nature of the relationship between Law and Gospel and Lutheran theology and propose that this important pictorial type is more multivalent than many previous scholars have allowed. Despite the almost certain intention of artist and theologian to relay a direct message, it is worth reiterating the obvious truth, curiously overlooked by many scholars, that the painting remains a translation of ideas expressed verbally into an alternative, visual language. This shift from word to image creates a space for uncertainty. Berdini makes the important observation that for Luther, pictures were meant to illustrate texts, not to replace them.8 Law and Gospel could only make the sense its creator intended for a beholder already trained in Lutheran thought. It therefore may only supplement a text or ideas expressed in written form. The image is not an interchangeable substitute for a written idea. This Lutheran idea of image as supplement differs pointedly from the traditional justification of religious art associated with Pope Gregory the Great. According to the accepted interpretation of Gregory, images may offer scripture to the unlettered in an alternative, visual form.9 L. G. Duggan, in his discussion of Gregory the Great’s famous and far-reaching defense of images as “books of the unlettered,” asks, “Can ‘reading’ pictures only remind one of what one already knows or can it also, like the reading of books, convey essentially new information?” Duggan concludes that pictures may only remind the beholder of what is already known; they cannot impart fresh information. In this sense, reading pictures is fundamentally unlike reading books.10 What I am asserting here is that Law and Gospel does not replicate the precise meaning of its textual sources; rather, it appropriates meanings of its own based on the properties of its own medium. And even if Law and Gospel did somehow perfectly reflect Luther’s ideas, those ideas themselves inevitably contained some ambiguity. An analogy illustrates the hazards of looking at an image as a footnote to written ideas rather than a concoction of motifs with their own semantic possibilities: An author might recognize her or his own words in a translation into a foreign language, but taking the translated text in isolation and retranslating it back into the original language would never precisely replicate the original. This discussion will proceed in three stages. First, I will present and discuss those interpretations of the picture that are most broadly accepted, namely, those that are rooted in Lutheran theology. Second, I will trace some of the alternative, less rigidly Lutheran interpretations of the pictures that a

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smaller number of scholars have proposed. Though these interpretations are not consistent with strict Lutheran thought, the picture does provide sufficient formal evidence to support some of them. I will also propose my own reading of some of the picture’s motifs. Finally, I will analyze the didactic and rhetorical strategies of Law and Gospel and explain how form and function, as well as iconography, define the parameters not only of Law and Gospel but also of Lutheran art more broadly. Though scholars have approached Law and Gospel with reference to Lutheran ideas, many have not explicitly considered the striking similarities between the rhetorical strategies of Luther’s writing and the pictorial strategies of the image.11

CRANACH, LUTHER, AND THE JOURNEY FROM LAW TO GOSPEL It is necessary to distinguish most clearly between the power of God and our own, between God’s works and ours, if we are to live a godly life. Luther, The Bondage of the Will 12 It is much more certain and much safer to stay with the words and the simple meaning, for this is the true pasture and home of all the spirits. Martin Luther, “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit”13

Cranach created and produced Law and Gospel in consultation with Luther around 1529.14 Law and Gospel is frequently called Law and Grace, a title that derives from a version of the painting in Prague (fig. 1.2) in which the terms “Gesecz” (Law) and “Gnad” (Grace) were plainly visible.15 Cranach’s earliest paintings of Law and Gospel, both from circa 1529, include the panel in Gotha (fig. 1.1) and the version in Prague. Though Law and Gospel has been translated into every imaginable medium, from relief sculptures to book illustrations to stove tops, all the variations derive from these two prototypical versions.16 In the Gotha panel, two nude male figures appear, one on either side of a tree that is green and living on the gospel side, to the viewer’s right, but barren and dying on the law side, to the viewer’s left. The Old Testament stories of the Brazen Serpent and the Fall of Humanity appear in the background on the law side, while in the foreground a skeleton and a demon force a frightened nude man into hell, as a group of prophets, including Moses, point to the tablets of the law. On the gospel side of the image, John the Baptist directs the figure to both Christ on the cross in front of the tomb and to the risen Christ, who appears on top of the tomb. Six columns of Bible

Figure 1.1. Cranach, Law and Gospel, Gotha version, c. 1529, panel. Photo credit: Stiftung Schloß Friedenstein Gotha.

30 Chapter One

Figure 1.2. Prague.

Cranach, Law and Gospel, Prague version, c. 1529, panel. Photo credit: National Gallery in

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citations appear at the bottom of the panel.17 The Gotha version formed the prototype for later paintings in Cranach’s production, including panels in Weimar and Nuremberg, the outer panels of the Schneeberg Altarpiece, and the central panel of the Weimar Altarpiece.18 In the Prague version, a single naked man, rather than one on either side, sits at the base of the bisecting tree, the lower half of his body facing law and his upper body turned toward the gospel side. On his immediate right, a prophet bends over him, pointing ardently to Christ on the opposite side with a gesture that echoes both that of Christ and that of John the Baptist. The Brazen Serpent appears in the background on the left.19 Above this scene, Moses receives the tablets of the law. Farther down along the left edge a serpent presides over the Fall of Humanity, while in the foreground a corpse lies in an open coffin. On the right side of the image the risen Christ stands on top of a skeleton. Next to the tree, John the Baptist, also pointing with his right hand, looks over his right shoulder at a naked figure. Above the Crucifix, in the upper-right corner, stands the Virgin on a steep hill, with her hands folded in prayer. Besides “Gesecz” and “Gnad,” the Prague panel originally contained labels within the painting itemizing individual motifs. The inscriptions on the Prague panel are now lost, due to a cleaning earlier this century. They are, however, preserved in a copy (fig. 1.3), probably from the seventeenth century, held in the restoration studio of the National Gallery in Prague. At the base of the Prague panel appeared four columns of text from the German Bible.20 The Prague Law and Gospel resembles versions of this subject produced outside Germany, including a print by Geoffrey Tory and a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, currently in Schotland. Variations of the Prague composition also appear as title pages for Luther Bibles.21 The function and significance of Law and Gospel as a pictorial type derives from Luther’s understanding of scripture and its relationship to art. The Lutheran Reformation, like many earlier religious schisms, turned on the interpretation of scripture.22 Luther, however, contended that it was possible “to stay with the words and the simple meaning,” as the epigraph above from “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit” declares. As long as devotional practice and theological doctrine were grounded in right understanding of scripture, the believer would surely worship according to God’s wishes. Luther’s efforts to reform the church aimed in part to recover scripture’s pure meaning, which he believed the Catholic establishment had obfuscated, and which he thought all Christians desperately needed to hear. Luther coached his followers to understand scripture “correctly” so that they would arrive at its “true” meaning, that is, a reading consistent with his theology. Another passage in “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit” epitomizes Luther’s beliefs about the lucidity of scripture:

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Figure 1.3. Cranach, copy of Law and Gospel, Prague version, sixteenth or seventeenth century, panel. Photo credit: National Gallery in Prague.

The Holy Spirit is the simplest writer and adviser in heaven and on earth. That is why his words could have no more than the one simplest meaning which we call the written one, or the literal meaning of the tongue. But [written] words and [spoken] language cease to have meaning when the things which have a simple meaning through interpretation by a simple word are given further meanings and thus become different things.23

Luther’s convictions about the meaning of scripture determined his qualified acceptance of religious art. For Luther, art was a heuristic tool to aid the viewer in the correct understanding of the Bible. The purpose and function of religious art was to lead the beholder to scripture’s “true” and “simple” meaning, or to a fundamental theological point supportive of that meaning. Lutheran paintings are Merckbilder, pictures meant to remind the beholder of

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the Word and to teach the fundamentals of Lutheran thought.24 This concrete and narrow role for images is clearly in contrast with the varied functions of much fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century art. Earlier art originated from nonscriptural sources and performed nebulous functions, such as to inspire pious meditations or even private visions. Pre-Reformation images could bestow merit upon the beholder and frequently became the objects of veneration themselves. The varied origins and functions of art before the Reformation offered a considerable amount of interpretive freedom to the beholder, a freedom that Lutheran views on images vehemently endeavored to curtail.25 Luther’s insistence on the reciprocity of pictorial content and scriptural meaning asserted the primacy of function in art. This is the key difference that distinguishes Lutheran views of art from other reform views. Unlike reformers such as Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, who condoned iconoclasm, Luther believed that religious art was acceptable as long as it was not misused.26 A brief explication of some of the crucial points of Luther’s theology, as well as of the reformer’s relationship to Cranach, will situate Law and Gospel historically and theologically.27 As we saw in the introduction, for Cranach the reform of the church was as much a personal experience as a political and religious event. Cranach and Luther both lived in Wittenberg, ruled by the electors of Saxony. As noted in the introduction, Cranach and Luther were lifelong friends, even standing as godparents to one another’s children. In addition, Cranach and Luther collaborated professionally to produce prints and book illustrations as well as paintings. From the very beginning of Lutheran reform, Cranach made pictures to promote religious change. A famous and early Cranach-Luther collaboration is the Passional Christi et Antichristi, an acerbic, propagandistic, illustrated book of 1521 that contrasts Christ with the pope in the role of the antiChrist.28 According to a statement by an employee in the Wittenberg shop of Hans Lufft, who printed the book, Luther supplied the text for the project: “The honorable doctor recommended some of the figures himself, how one should sketch or paint them, how one was supposed to paint according to the text and did not want any extra, unnecessary things that did not serve the text.”29 This quotation is intriguing for at least two reasons. First, it highlights the priority of aligning pictorial and textual meaning, of creating a limited, reciprocal relationship between word and image, to the exclusion of “unnecessary things that did not serve the text.” Second, it indicates that Luther at least advised on the production of the image, exercising influence on its content. The contrast between Christ and the pope makes the Lutheran agenda unmistakable. Law and Gospel, the most notable result of the alliance between Cranach and Luther, established Cranach as the premier maker of images in the ser-

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vice of Lutheran theology. Law and Gospel explicates the defining point of Luther’s theology, the idea of salvation by faith alone. This understanding of salvation exploded the theological bases of many Catholic practices, especially the idea that human action or “good works” could help move the believer closer to salvation. Catholic good works are predicated on the assumption that believers may play some active role in their own salvation. This is not to say that people may actually earn salvation or save themselves, but rather that God may recognize and reward human effort, no matter how miniscule it may be compared to divine action. Instead, Luther insisted that salvation is possible only through undeserved grace freely bestowed by a benevolent God. The foundation of the Law and Gospel panels are Luther’s famous Reformation slogans: sola gratia, sola fides, and sola scriptura. Sola gratia refers to salvation by “grace alone,” bestowed upon humanity as an act of pure divine mercy. This concept interlocks with sola fides, “faith alone.” John Dillenberger calls the idea of “justification by faith” the “central Christian reality”; it is the idea that faith, which itself comes from God, brings a sinful human being into a relationship with God.30 The dual gifts of faith and grace make salvation possible. Sola fides and sola gratia reject Catholic theology of good works, in which the believer attempts to do good deeds and expiate sin. The disagreement about good works or the place of human action in salvation, schematically outlined in Law and Gospel, in large measure defines the source of Luther’s objections to and conflict with Catholic theology and practice. Simply stated, Lutheran salvation is a pure act of undeserved divine mercy. Therefore, for Luther and his followers, the acts of penance demanded by the Catholic Church and the forgiveness it bestowed did not possess the power to lead believers to salvation. For Luther, good works do not yield divine blessings; instead, they evince divine mercy, in that they reveal that God has already moved the believer to do good.31 The third Reformation slogan, sola scriptura, affirms the centrality of scripture as the place where God’s word, that is, his mercy, is revealed. Scripture is the way “faith becomes a reality.”32 Though Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular and was prepared to proclaim the “priesthood of all believers,” he did not trust his followers to understand scripture correctly without his guidance. For this reason, much of his writing, notably the fundamental Small Catechism of 1529, was designed to make sure everyone understood the Bible as he wished them to.33 Clearly he preferred ordinary believers not to worry themselves over the nuances of Exodus 20:4–5: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.”34

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Sola gratia, sola fides, and sola scriptura epitomize Lutheran theology, as in the famous slogan “Justification by faith through grace.” Luther’s theological universe rested upon this idea, which he explored for approximately twenty-five years, from the writing of his groundbreaking treatises beginning in 1520 to his death in 1546.35 This theological background is the point of departure for Law and Gospel, which was meant to summarize, in visual form, the Lutheran notion of salvation by faith through grace. Though Lutheran thought underpins the meaning of the painting, no single text acts as a script for Law and Gospel or any other Lutheran image. Instead, the conceptual foundations of Luther’s theology serve as a broad foundation.36 Interpreted as an exponent of Lutheran theology, Law and Gospel clearly concerns two fundamental aspects, the judgmental and the merciful, of God’s relationship to humanity. God judges and condemns human sin, as the scenes on the left testify. Yet God also shows mercy and forgiveness, granting unearned salvation to sinful believers, as the scenes on the right demonstrate.37 If Law and Gospel simply distinguished between the Old and New Testaments, or even more broadly between Judaism and Christianity, then it would not be specifically Lutheran, or in any way innovative, either art historically or theologically. Moreover, the arrangement of motifs belies any correlation of the separate sides to the Old and New Testaments.38 On the law side appear Adam and Eve and Moses, but also Christ in Judgment. On the gospel side two representations of Christ, crucified and risen, inhabit the landscape. Each side depicts a naked figure that has no obvious place anywhere in scripture. Law and Gospel interprets the roles of law, faith, and grace in the human relationship to God. Friedrich Ohly interprets Law and Gospel as typology, the form of scriptural interpretation that stresses the correspondences between the events of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The central tenet of typology is that the events described in the New Testament are foreshadowed in or fulfill the prophecies of the Old.39 For example, the type of Isaac’s near death at the hand of his father foreshadows Christ’s death and resurrection. Thus, Christ’s death and resurrection is the antitype of the sacrifice of Isaac. Law and Gospel, however, resists a typological reading because it does not concern events foreshadowing or fulfilling one another in time. Rather, Law and Gospel describes events throughout the Bible that reveal the dual aspect of God’s relationship to people, both judging and merciful. Luther’s idea of law was multifaceted and bore a complex relationship to his idea of gospel. In How Christians should Regard Moses, Luther succinctly defined the importance of law for Christians. First, Mosaic law is the basis for natural law, and as such may be useful for secular rulers.40 Second, the Books

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of Moses contain “promises and pledges of God about Christ. This is the best thing. It is something that is not written naturally into the heart, but comes from heaven.”41 In other words, law encloses the promise of the gospel. And third, law contains within it “beautiful examples of faith, of love, and of the cross.”42 Yet even though the law includes natural law, the promise of gospel, and examples of faith, Luther makes it clear that it is still by its nature condemnatory: “In turn there are also examples of the Godless, how God does not pardon the unfaith of the unbelieving.”43 Most important, law makes it possible to identify sin and the necessity of grace. Though law alone will never make salvation possible, it remains indispensable as it enables the believer to recognize sin, the impossibility of achieving salvation by good works, and the necessity of grace for true salvation. Law enables salvation by preparing the way for the apprehension of grace. In the Gotha Law and Gospel, the motifs on the left side of the composition are meant to exemplify the idea that law alone, without gospel, will never secure salvation. Christ sits in judgment as Adam and Eve eat the fruit and fall from grace and as a skeleton and a demon pursue a desperate man into eternal damnation. Moses beholds these events from his vantage point toward the center of the picture, his starkly white tablets leaping out against the saturated orange robe and the deep green tree behind him, literally highlighting the association of law, death, and damnation. Taken together, these motifs demonstrate that law leads inescapably to damnation when mistaken for a path to salvation, as the damned naked man demonstrates.44 Though gospel and law are indeed distinct, their relationship in Lutheran thought transcends simple contrast. Two motifs in particular, Christ in Judgment and the Brazen Serpent, mitigate the strict bisection suggested by the composition of Law and Gospel. Christ in Judgment is the only New Testament motif on the law side of the equation.45 In proximity to Old Testament figures and removed from the gospel side by the dividing tree, Christ as judge becomes an element of law. In Cranach’s Lutheran images, including all versions of Law and Gospel, Christ as Judge appears only in association with the law.46 Christ in Judgment warns that human action cannot bring the believer to God.47 The motif reiterates the Lutheran idea that active righteousness, whether performing good works or fulfilling the obligations of a covenant, can never by themselves lead to salvation. Rather than ensuring salvation— and this idea is key—good works reveal that God has already moved the believer to do good.48 Judgment and law become means to an end, the way the believer learns the truth about human nature and action. Law becomes the inspiration to abandon action and obedience in favor of faith and grace. The placement of Christ as Judge on the law side tells us that Law and Gospel presents not Old Testament against New Testament, or type against antitype,

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or even law against gospel but, rather, the distinct and simultaneous relationships, both judging and merciful, of God to humanity. Christ in Judgment reveals the presence of law and gospel as counterpoints, albeit in differing measure, throughout scripture. The Brazen Serpent (Num. 21:6–9), which appears on the law side of the Gotha panel, complicates the division between law and gospel in a way similar to the way Christ in Judgment does. Although the Brazen Serpent appears on the law side in the Gotha panel, in subsequent versions of Law and Gospel, it consistently appears on the gospel side. In the story of the Brazen Serpent, God sends serpents to punish the Israelites fleeing from Egypt for their aspersions against God. To be rescued from this plague of serpents, the Israelites need only look at the serpent that Moses has elevated on a T-shaped cross. Luther interprets this looking as the key to salvation for those who simply believe. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15). Because the Brazen Serpent exemplifies faith, it belongs more properly with Christ than with Moses, even though it is an Old Testament story.49 The inclusion of the story on the gospel side in post-1529 versions of Law and Gospel emphasizes that grace exists in both the Old and New Testaments, just as judgment exists in both Testaments. Moreover, because it appears on the grace side of the composition, it demonstrates that the law and gospel coexist throughout scripture, even as they remain distinct. Cranach was following the familiar typological tradition, in which the Brazen Serpent signified a type and the Crucifixion an antitype, when he placed the Brazen Serpent on the law side of the earliest versions of Law and Gospel. In Cranach’s later variations of Law and Gospel, however, the motif migrated to the gospel side in accordance with the new model of salvation. The inclusion of the Brazen Serpent on the gospel side of Law and Gospel indicates the way familiar motifs evolved under new theological circumstances. The Brazen Serpent changed from a type to a symbol of Lutheran grace. The uniquely Lutheran meaning and function of Law and Gospel becomes especially clear in comparison with one of Cranach’s late-medieval paintings, Der Sterbende (The Dying Man, 1518; fig. 1.4).50 This comparison elaborates on the ways familiar motifs adapt under changed theological conditions. In both Law and Gospel and The Dying Man, a human figure in a bisected composition faces the eternal consequences of his earthly life. In the earlier panel, the protagonist lies on his death bed in the company of his wife, who kneels and prays beside him.51 An inscription identifies the dying man as the donor, Heinrich Schmitburg, a doctor of law from Leipzig.52 To his right, a priest holds a crucifix, and angels and saints beckon and pray, while on his left, demons, a hippopotamus-like hellmouth, and a doctor proffering a beaker of

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Figure 1.4. Cranach, The Dying Man, 1518, panel. Photo credit: Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Foto: Ursula Gerstenberger.

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fluid vie for the dying man’s attention. Ernst Grohne identifies the nude figure floating above as a naked soul in a Last Judgment or perhaps the soul of the dying man.53 The Trinity appears in a mandorla, and above them the Virgin in a golden halo presides over five figures kneeling in prayer in front of a small brick church.54 Latin texts, including Psalm 144 in the Vulgate (145:9 in the Luther Bible), supplement and identify the pictorial motifs.55 Because Luther’s German translation of the Bible is one of the cornerstones of his theology and the basis of sola scriptura, the use of Latin text in the 1518 picture marks a critical difference between this painting and Law and Gospel, where the appended Bible verses and (in the Prague panel) the labels are in German. Both Law and Gospel and The Dying Man address the same fundamental problem: How does the Christian care for the soul? Both pictures depict conflict between good and evil and between salvation and damnation. Moreover, both present this dilemma in the form of tension between one path and another, even if the meaning or nature of the choices is different, and even if we accept that choice in Law and Gospel is merely rhetorical. Schmitburg, in the Leipzig panel, faces a more straightforward either-or proposition, between demons and a hellmouth on the one hand, and salvation on the other. He literally chooses between God and the devil, between scenarios that constitute a choice of pure good or pure evil. The differences between The Dying Man and Law and Gospel begin with what constitutes salvation or damnation and with what power a human being has over the fate of the soul. The practices recommended in Law and Gospel and The Dying Man differ emphatically. The antithetical construction of The Dying Man prescribes one course of action over another, both of which are anathema to Lutheran doctrine. An angel holds a sign reading “good works,” indicating that salvation for Schmitburg means to act, to do good, but this is precisely what Luther rejected. The text at the foot of the bed states, “You must despair, because you neglected God’s commandments, and fervently fulfilled mine [the devil’s] with the help of the woman [Eve].” The panel therefore distinguishes between good and bad works, right and wrong action. The Dying Man presents a choice to the viewer between one course of action and another; Law and Gospel more fundamentally reconfigures the very relationship between human action and salvation.

GOTHA AND PRAGUE: FRACTURING CONSISTENCY Melanchthon mentions in a letter that he suggested specific Bible citations to accompany Law and Gospel.56 Scholars have used this fact to infer that Melanchthon’s ideas, rather than Luther’s, were primary. However, Chris-

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tiane Andersson has cautioned that Luther typically left the selection of text to someone else, often Melanchthon. Luther and Melanchthon were in general accord in the 1520s and 1530s.57 The most important product of their theological collaboration was the famous Augsburg Confession of 1530.58 Bernhard Lohse proclaims the Augsburg Confession “the basic confessional writing of Lutheranism,” and according to Alister McGrath, it laid out “the main lines of Lutheran belief.”59 Melanchthon, not Luther, was the writer of the Confession. If Melanchthon supplied the text for Law and Gospel, it was almost surely with Luther’s blessing. The debate about whether Luther or Melanchthon inspired Law and Gospel is the first sign that the painting is not as obviously Lutheran as some scholars suggest.60 As we saw above, Lutheran theology mitigates any simple contrast that the bisected composition of Law and Gospel may propose. A Lutheran reading of this work would note that the motifs on either side of the dividing tree engage in a dialogue that modifies the visual dichotomy, suggesting concepts with dynamic, rather than strictly opposing, relationships.61 Still, Donald Ehresmann, whose highly regarded work on Law and Gospel is the most fundamental scholarship in English on the painting, presents Law and Gospel (which he calls Law and Grace) as a contrast, asserting that the divided composition presents “two opposing theologies.”62 Ehresmann declares, “The way to salvation set forth on the right side of the Allegory of Law and Grace panels is strikingly contrasted to the way to damnation on the left side.”63 Could the picture represent such a contrast and remain Lutheran nonetheless? Law as a concept in Law and Gospel disqualifies the notion that salvation calls for human action as a prerequisite for justification before a perfect deity. Visually, law is constrained to relate neatly to the opposite side of the composition. The formal effect of the picture seems to be to clarify the differences between active and passive righteousness rather than to demonstrate the more dynamic concept of God’s relationship with humanity, both judging and forgiving. Given the composition, Ehresmann’s interpretation of the picture as presenting “opposing theologies” makes some sense, even though this interpretation differs from the more dynamic relationship between gospel and law as Luther presented it. Though passive and active depend on one another for definition, they are nonetheless distinct. Taken this way, an interpretation of the painting as representing different and opposing ideas is not unreasonable The primary meaning of Law and Gospel is clearly the directly Lutheran interpretation presented above. The continued application and reinterpretation of Law and Gospel in Cranach’s paintings and prints of the 1530s-1550s further indicate its ongoing compatibility with Lutheran ideas, if not its genesis in Luther’s mind. Yet, without denying that Law and Gospel is Lutheran,

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I would argue that alternative interpretations also have plausibility. Scholars have long acknowledged the idea, a veritable truism of art history, that intended meaning, no matter how indisputable, is not the same as received meaning. Reindert Falkenburg offers a pellucid explication of this idea in his discussion of Dutch landscape prints of the seventeenth century. For Falkenburg, meaning is not something inherently fixed in the image but consists of a “field” of semantic potential which is “triggered” by the image as well as by the expectations and experiences of the audience. Depending on the cultural background and the experience of (looking at) art of the individual viewer, each “act” of reception and interpretation realizes only part of the total semantic potential of the image.64

With reference to the Reformation in particular, Mark Edwards criticizes scholarly analyses that “fail to consider the varying meanings a polemic may have had for different readers, such as Protestant rulers, Protestant laity, and opponents. Instead it is mistakenly assumed that the meaning of a polemic is determined by Luther’s explicit intentions and theological arguments.” Edwards writes further that Luther “could not (try as he might) control how he was interpreted by his readers.”65 In the present discussion, the different “readers” are the various viewers of the panel. The dynamic and delicate balance between gospel and law would probably be evident to a viewer already conversant in Lutheran thought through sermons, pamphlets, or Luther’s Catechism. However, for a beholder new to Lutheran thought, Law and Gospel does not communicate a singular and obvious message. Rather than encoding Lutheran theology in pristine form, the picture offers viewers a series of visual cues that become full-blown concepts only with the viewer’s active and informed contribution. Here it becomes imperative to remember that Merckbilder are meant to remind the beholder of what is already learned or read. A viewer cannot be reminded of something that is brand-new, and an ill-prepared or poorly informed beholder would be just as likely to draw conclusions that were at odds with those of Luther and Cranach yet consistent with the formal information in the picture. Unlike Cranach’s in situ pictures, whose audiences are somewhat easier to characterize (though only broadly), the small scale and relative portability of Law and Gospel make narrowing down a specific audience impossible. Despite all these provisos, most scholars accept that the compatibility of Law and Gospel with Lutheran thought, combined with Luther’s assertions about the reciprocity of word and image, override any potential ambiguity. However, the parallels between Law and Gospel and other types of pictures may have ultimately led to differing interpretations.

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The distance between word and image becomes clear when we begin to compare the subtle differences between the Prague and Gotha panels. Compositional elements of Law and Gospel depart from the intended meaning, leaving room for interpretive choices that may have been anathema to Luther, Cranach, and the pictures’ intended beholders. Specifically, the dichotomous composition and the use of one (Prague) or two (Gotha) human sinners have the potential to affect the meaning of the picture, leaving the beholder to cope with some measure of iconographic ambiguity. The dividing tree in Law and Gospel bears as much significance and symbolic valence as do the motifs it separates.66 The half-living and half-dead tree proposes a theology of opposites: life and death, old and new, passive and active, damnation and salvation. No matter how dynamic the relationship between these concepts was in Luther’s mind, their presentation in the picture suggests that they exist in opposition to one another. This apparent distinction moves the meaning of the picture away from the letter of Lutheran orthodoxy.67 The binary composition itself reduces Luther’s more nuanced ideas into a brittle, possibly misleading, contrast. Even though the Brazen Serpent, when it appears on the gospel side in the later versions of the picture, mitigates the contrast, the emphasis on death versus life and hell versus heaven threatens to overpower it. This ambiguity gives the lie to the idea that the picture is a mere reflection of Lutheran thought. Regardless of intention, Law and Gospel is an approximation, not a pristine reconstitution, of Lutheran theology. The single human figure in the Prague panel, like the tree, is a deeply ambiguous motif. It is ambivalent in the most literal sense, moving back and forth between the poles of synthesis and mutual exclusion. The single figure embodies two ideas, uniting the sides of the composition. His lower body, the source of visceral, animal drives, twists toward damnation. Yet, following the urgings of John the Baptist and an Old Testament figure, the man rotates his upper body, the civilizing site of thought and conscience, salvation-ward. Like a satyr, this human figure embodies the conflict of body and spirit. The depiction of the figure’s simultaneity of conscience and temptation is surely meant to recapitulate the quintessential Lutheran formulation of simul justus et peccator (at once justified and a sinner).68 Simul justus et peccator signifies God’s relationship to humanity, simultaneously judging and forgiving, so that people are at once both judged and saved. Lohse explains: The Word of God encounters people as law and as gospel, as a word of judgment and as a word of grace. . . . It is certainly true that there is more law than gospel in the Old Testament and more gospel than law in the New Testament. Luther’s distinction between law and gospel, however, referred to something

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other than the division of biblical statements into the two parts of the biblical canon. This distinction rather describes the fact that God both judges and is merciful.69

On the one hand, the human figure in the Prague panel synthesizes body and spirit and exemplifies simul justus et peccator. On the other hand, the Prague figure sits at the juncture of divergent paths and is exhorted to select one and to reject the other; he demonstrates the torture of indecision. The urgings of John and the prophet to choose gospel imply that the figure is to turn away from law, to forsake it in favor of the alternative. The figure’s motion toward gospel declares that we witness the resolution of a conflict, the choice of good over evil. The convention of reading left to right reinforces the trajectory of his decision.70 This moment of dawning recognition accords the beholder a variety of roles. The beholder may identify with the human figure’s predicament, stuck between the roads taken and not taken. A viewer familiar with Lutheran thought may sympathize with the task of John and the prophet, wishing to coax the figure to choose the path of salvation. A beholder more familiar with art than Lutheran theology may tend to see in the picture a different kind of dilemma entirely. A human figure deliberating at the juncture of two paths divided by a tree explicitly parallels Hercules at the Crossroads, the paradigmatic depiction of tortured decision in which the Greek hero chooses between virtue and vice.71 The single figure in the Prague panel, posed in a position of melancholy and vacillation, is caught between the two alternative paths, just like Hercules himself. In his 1537 version in Braunschweig on that theme (fig. 1.5), Cranach positioned a pondering Hercules looking toward a modestly dressed female figure with bound hair on his right, reaching for her hand as if to shake it. On the opposite side, an Eve-like figure, holding a translucent veil across her hips and cutting her eyes towards the viewer, points toward the staff positioned provocatively between Hercules’ legs. Hercules’ lower body pulls to his left as his upper body turns toward his right, indicating his conflict, much like the twisting figure in the Prague panel. Though he turns his head toward virtue, he raises his left arm and pulls his lower body in the opposite direction, his contrapuntal motion revealing his conflict. If we see the Prague panel in the tradition of Hercules, we may read gospel and law as separate paths, individual choices, rather than aspects of the same choice. Though this idea would be antithetical to Lutheran orthodoxy, the visual evidence supports it compellingly.72 Koerner rightly proclaims Hercules at the Crossroads to be the Renaissance humanist subject par excellence, signifying not just moral choice but interpretive freedom.73 He also sees Cranach’s Prague panel as the epitome of Lutheran theology, accepting only divine action in salvation. The Prague

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Figure 1. 5. Cranach, Hercules at the Crossroads, 1537, panel. Photo credit: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig.

panel rejects not just freedom of choice but, even more basically, the autonomous self. For Koerner, the Prague panel is not an exponent of Hercules but its inversion; formal parallels between the two pictures only heighten their opposite messages. Koerner defends this interpretation with reference to Luther’s disagreements with Erasmus of Rotterdam about free will. Erasmus’s famous defense of free will reaches all the way back to Adam and Eve, to whom God gave free choice to follow or not to follow his commandments, and of course they were punished accordingly.74 In the case of Law and Gospel, the point of representing choice is, paradoxically, to teach the impossibility of

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choice. Law is not a choice but a way to reveal human weakness; it “reverses the humanist’s exegesis.” The human figure in Law and Gospel becomes an inverted Hercules, an “antihero.”75 Against Koerner’s claim that Law and Gospel represents the annihilation of the self, I would contend that in Law and Gospel the self in fact stays both intact and in need of salvation. Law and Gospel does not dismantle the self but, rather, reconfigures its relationship to God by reducing its ability to secure salvation. Humankind’s inability to justify itself is not tantamount to the self’s very destruction. The point is that humanity enters into a radically redefined relationship with God in which its power is much more limited. Curtailed freedom does not equal total obliteration. Even if we accept Koerner’s interpretation of Luther’s views of the self, does this interpretation really apply to the picture and its intended beholders? Right understanding of the gospel and the law does have implications for the debate on free will, but the debate between Luther and Erasmus is far from central to the picture. Law and Gospel teaches a vernacular lesson; it does not lead an academic debate. Koerner himself defines the individual believer as the representative of “‘simple folk.’” He even reiterates Worringer’s dismissal of the simplicity of Law and Gospel as appropriate for “‘catechism pupils.’”76 Speculating on the nature of the self surely would have qualified as the dangerous wish to “to be clever” Luther warned against in the Easter Sermon cited at the beginning of this discussion.77 Seeing an explicit statement on free will in Law and Gospel is precisely such an error, especially because Luther asserted that images were suited only for weaker believers who were unable to cope with a more abstract, and superior, image-less devotion.78 Beyond the dichotomy shared with the depiction of Hercules, pairings in visual culture and habits of looking generally may also support the idea of antithesis in the Prague panel. A quick glance at some subjects of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings demonstrates the prevalence of dichotomous compositions. Three of the most obvious subjects include the Last Judgment, with its division between saved and damned; the Crucifixion, with the good and bad thieves on either side of the Cross; and Ecclesia and Synagoga, female personifications of church and synagogue. Crucifixions and Last Judgments permeate the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ecclesia and Synagoga share direct parallels with Law and Gospel because their representation contrasts Christian salvation with Jewish damnation.79 Identifying such contrasts may have been an important, possibly unconscious, late-medieval and early-modern convention, and one that would have led beholders to a formally supported but theologically unorthodox reading of the picture.

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The single figure in the Prague panel supports both a both-and as well as an either-or reading. In contrast, the Gotha Law and Gospel upholds a more starkly polarized either-or reading, suggesting the consequences of decisions already taken, rather than the process of deciding.80 The visual “or” in the Gotha panel enacts the effects of two separate decisions. Each of the two naked figures demonstrates the consequences of gospel and law individually; each has his own experience, one of damnation, the other of salvation. These distinct experiences formally reinforce the differences between gospel and law rather than their interconnection. Koerner sees in the two nude figures in the Gotha picture implications for the authority of the beholder. For Koerner, the beholder of the Gotha Law and Gospel has been deprived of the individuality that comes from interpretive freedom. The manifest fate of the depicted sinners has usurped the beholder’s autonomy, leaving no room for interpretive action; the beholder of Law and Gospel has lost the interpretive freedom accorded, for instance, to the beholder of Italian art.81 Koerner also rightly argues that the picture “reads” like a book, where the motifs reference ideas symbolically rather than describing them illusionistically.82 I would counter that the reader retains interpretive authority, whether the picture “reads” like a text or an Italian Renaissance image. Even the most dogmatic texts, Luther’s treatises, for instance, are subject to interpretation and disagreement.83 The beholder of Law and Gospel has the same authority and interpretive freedom as the reader of any text, even one that seeks to eschew all ambiguity. Koerner traces the beholder’s lack of authority to her or his exclusion from the picture. Cranach provides no foothold, no space within the picture where the beholder may imagine stepping in and becoming part of the unfolding events. For Koerner, such potential inclusion characterizes Italian art and creates richer interpretive possibility. However, the beholder of Law and Gospel arguably has even greater freedom. She or he occupies an omniscient vantage point above and beyond the dilemma of gospel and law, able to discern both paths more clearly than can the figures embroiled in the depicted scenarios. The idea that meaning is a function of multiple factors, including the objectives of patron and artist, the circumstances of display, and the beholder’s knowledge and expectations, is a commonplace of art history. Still, recent scholars have been so committed to the idea of reciprocity between Lutheran thought and pictorial meaning that they have overlooked the ambiguity of the language of the image itself, especially the bisected composition. The viewer’s previous conceptual and visual training plays a role in the constitution of meaning, and if that training involves reading Erasmus and beholding images of Hercules at the Crossroads, looking at Crucifixions or Last

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Judgments, then Law and Gospel could support meanings at odds with Luther’s intent.

SCHOLARLY VARIATIONS Most, though not all, scholars agree that Law and Gospel is “Protestant,” that is, clearly not Catholic.87 One scholar has suggested that the content of the painting, like the Reformation itself, contains nothing but the true meaning of Catholicism.85 Other scholars have arrived at various interpretations. Friedrich Ohly contends that Law and Gospel concerns typology.86 Other scholars argue that the Prague and Gotha panels each represent different subjects. According to Werner Busch, Cranach’s Prague type is an “unambiguous typological juxtaposition of the two testaments,” while the Gotha type is more explicitly Lutheran.87 Carsten Bach-Nielsen argues that the Prague and Gotha panels are qualitatively different: The Prague panel is better.88 He argues further that the Prague panel shows the necessity of the entire Bible, the singular importance of grace, and the absurdity of free will, whereas the Gotha panel merely separates the testaments.89 A significant portion of twentieth-century scholarship concerns the inspiration for the picture and Cranach’s role in the invention of this pictorial type. Most scholars believe that the image is a Cranach invention in all its variations.90 Some argue that Cranach’s Prague type is indebted to earlier versions of the subject, for instance Tory’s woodcut or Holbein’s Weltbild,91 or the opposite, that Cranach influenced the French print.92 Grohne is more concerned with the origins of Law and Gospel than any other scholar, and he proposes literary and pictorial sources for Cranach’s image.93 The obvious explanation for these diverging scholarly opinions is that some scholars are right while others are simply wrong. However, given the ambiguous formal elements of the composition and the possible patterns of influence among artists, the intended and received meanings of the picture may not be so closely allied. Read in close association with Lutheran theology, the meaning may seem clear, but the formal evidence makes it less certain.94 If the beholder approaches the painting searching for illustrations of Lutheran orthodoxy, readings of the painting that seem inconsistent with Lutheran thought may simply seem wrong. But given the visual vocabulary, other meanings seem plausible enough to give the lie to the claim that the picture is “transparent to its referent and purged of elements that either resist interpretation or sustain the picture’s appeal once it has been deciphered for its content.”95 As we saw above, scholars cannot even all accept the same

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“referent”—Luther, Melanchthon, synthesis, or dichotomy—much less whether the picture is “transparent” to it.96

RHETORICAL STRATEGIES In the struggle for the reformation of the church, it grew clear to him that Jewish legalism now posed the identical threat to the evangelical church. Over the years, this view of the collision between the religion of law and gospel, between the record of salvation and the record of calamities, between God and the devil, Christ and the antichrist, remained a constant in Luther’s thought. Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation97

Though scholars have explored the Lutheran content of Law and Gospel, they have not paid as much attention to rhetorical strategies within the image. As in Lutheran thought, law is an inclusive concept, embracing Old Testament legalism (Moses) and Catholic good works (Christ in Judgment). We have also seen that, for Luther, law is also the means by which the necessity of grace becomes apparent. Good works alone will never lead to salvation. In Lutheran thought and in Law and Gospel, good works are part of a larger dynamic of salvation. However, at the same time that Cranach’s painting of Law and Gospel specifies the dynamics of salvation, it also indicates a dichotomy, but not—and this is crucial—between gospel and law. The painting draws a boundary between the dynamics of law and gospel (Lutheran theology) on the one hand, and law on its own (Catholicism or Judaism) on the other. The world is truly divided into two groups: those who properly understand gospel and law, and those who do not. Gospel and law work together to oppose Catholic misconceptions (from Luther’s point of view) about the relationship between the Testaments, the theological meaning of good works, or the relationship of faith and grace. Proper understanding is within the image; misunderstanding resides outside the frame. In a treatise attacking Anabaptism (the practice of adult baptism), Luther wrote, “And why the daily use of gold and goods which have been used by bad people, papists, Turks, and heretics?”98 For Luther, all who rejected Lutheran salvation, Anabaptist, Muslim (“Turk”), Jew, or Catholic (“Papist”), were the same, existing outside the frame of Law and Gospel. Luther attacked Catholics and Muslims at the same time. He saw all “bad people” as collective enemies of his theology of law and gospel.99 A similar strategy appears consistently in the images, especially the prints, of Cranach the Elder and

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Cranach the Younger, for instance, in the print Christ Defeating the Pope as Three-Headed Beast, in which the monster has the head of the pope, a Turk, and a woman, perhaps the whore of Babylon.100 By stating that adherents of other religions, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam, were enemies, Luther was asserting that his was the only true and legitimate faith.101 A follower of Luther who understood gospel and law by definition would never be on the wrong side of the tree or on the wrong side of Christ on the Day of Judgment. In very clear contrast, traditional Catholic Last Judgments depict Catholics as both fallen and saved; bad Catholics populate hell, while good Catholics populate heaven.102 Luther employed rhetorical antithesis, especially demonizing the pope, to the end of his life. His very last writing against the pope in 1545 was one of his fiercest attacks. Edwards calls the tract “the most violent and vulgar to issue from Luther’s pen.”103 These designations of “us and them” permeate the Cranachs’ Reformation art from the early Passional Christi et Antichristi of Cranach the Elder to the work of Cranach the Younger, for example, his print The True and False Church of 1546–47.104 In the Passional, contrast is paramount. Juxtapositions of Christ and the anti-Christ run throughout, with the pope himself starring in the role of anti-Christ. The vitriolic words and images on the subject of Papism scream the corruption of the Catholic establishment in contradistinction to Christ and Lutheran theology. For example, one pair of images juxtaposes Christ riding into Jerusalem with the pope and his entourage processing into the flames of hell (fig. 1.6).105 As early as 1520 Luther stated bluntly, “I have almost no doubt that the Pope actually is the anti-Christ.”106 Viewing the Passional may predispose the beholder to apply the concept of contrast to Law and Gospel, locating the contrast between the sides of the image rather than between the image and the world beyond the frame. The rhetorical strategies of antithesis are manifest in Cranach’s later Lutheran commissions. For example, a program of paintings dating from 1536 once adorned the walls of the castle in Torgau.107 Along with numerous assistants, Cranach was employed for several weeks to paint two panels for the Spiegelsaal (Hall of Mirrors).108 The wall paintings in the Festsaal depicted a scene of the Ascension of Christ juxtaposed with the Damnation of the Popes.109 These paintings reiterated the basic ideas and rhetorical strategies of the Passional.110 The common compositional device of antithesis in the Passional and the Torgau murals collapses distinctions between expensive site-specific paintings accessible to a limited, aristocratic audience and a mass-produced propagandistic book. In 1545, Cranach’s workshop provided illustrations for Luther’s text Das Papstum. Luther was not pleased with the work Cranach did, complaining in a letter to Nikolaus von Amsdorf in Zeitz,

Figure 1.6. Cranach, Passional Christi et Antichristi, Entry into Jerusalem / Pope and Entourage entering Hell, 1521, page from a printed book. Photo credit: Warburg Institute.

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“Besides, he could have represented the pope in a more appropriate, that is to say, more diabolical fashion, but you can judge for yourself.”111 Whatever the audience or medium, certain rhetorical, antithetical strategies are consistent. Even though we cannot definitively conclude that the Law and Gospel is about antithesis merely because other images were, the parallel compositional strategies would understandably lead a viewer to expect similar meaning.

SYNTHESIS Luther’s statement that I quoted in the epigraph, that “one has to instruct ordinary people simply and childishly, as much as one can,” characterizes the rhetorical strategies of Law and Gospel and Lutheran art more broadly. Law and Gospel attempts to reduce complex theological issues into a (pictorial) slogan. Too much interpretive freedom was dangerous. Surely Luther’s influence is undisputable, and in the context of his theology there is a “correct” interpretation. But the translation from word to image is an imperfect project. The visual cues, as well as the space between Luther’s writings and the actual appearance of Law and Gospel, opened the door to the variety of scenarios scholars have proposed, despite the best efforts of artist and theologian. Cranach did not take dictation from Luther, nor did he channel Luther’s thinking through his brush. Rather, he initiated an interpretive process that began with Luther’s ideas. The artist is not an omniscient creator with utter autonomy over the meaning of the work of art, nor is he a neutral translator of words into pictures, as other scholars have oddly assumed. He is, of course, only one of many influences in the circuitous journey from word to image. According to one scholar, the Bible citations accompanying Law and Gospel were appended to eliminate ambiguity,112 though the words themselves are, of course, fraught with uncertainty, despite Luther’s claims of the transparency of scripture. More plausibly, the picture was meant to clarify the text; the text does not clarify the picture. The idea of including scripture to elucidate meaning is compatible with Luther’s conviction that the pure meaning of scripture was clear. Yet, as noted, the words themselves are subject to uncertainty, even if Luther contended or Cranach assumed they were clear. Far from resolving ambiguity, the language of scripture gives rise to the necessity for explication and interpretation. Add visual interpretation to the intricacies of scripture and to the polemics of theology, and the result is an image that is complex despite its professed simplicity. Painting before the Reformation rendered a variety of services: It bestowed blessings on the viewer or patron (dead or alive); it represented or stimulated

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a holy vision; or it became itself an object of veneration. By contrast, the didactic Law and Gospel panels were constructed to remind the believer of scripture or fundamental Lutheran principles. Unlike much Italian Renaissance art, Law and Gospel actively denies the illusion of the three-dimensional world contiguous with the viewer’s space, and in so doing it reaches out to the viewer conceptually rather than spatially.113 Law and Gospel became the signifier of Lutheran art, asserting confessional identity when it came into contact with other subjects, for example, when it took its place among other, more traditional, subjects in the program of later polyptychs. Later retable altarpieces have the benefit of physical context to insist on a singular, Lutheran reading more effectively than could their ancestor, Law and Gospel. The following chapter on the Schneeberg Altarpiece will demonstrate the ways the presence of Law and Gospel transformed the traditional retable into a specifically Lutheran monument.

NOTES 1. Martin Luther, Third Easter Sermon, WA, vol. 37, p. 64, lines 32–35: “Man mus doch dem groben volk kindlich und einfeltiglich fürbilden, als man immer kan, Sonst folget der zweyer eines, das sie entweder nichts da von lernen noch verstehen, odder wo sie auch wollen klug sein und mit vernunfft inn die hohen gedanken greaten, das sie gar vom glauben komen.” 2. Some important works on Law and Gospel include Karl Ernst Meier, “Fortleben der religiös-dogmatischen Kompositionen Cranachs in der Kunst des Protestantismus,” Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 32 (1909): 415–35; Ernst Grohne, Die bremischen Truhen mit reformatorischen Darstellung und der Ursprung ihrer Motive, Abhandlungen und Vorträge der Bremer Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (Bremen: Geist, 1936); Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979) and Princes and Propaganda: Electoral Saxon Art of the Reformation, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 20 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992); Jean Wirth, “Le dogme en image: Luther et l’iconographie,” Revue de l’art 52 (1981): 9–23; Friedrich Ohly, Gesetz und Evangelium: Zur Typologie bei Luther und Lucas Cranach zum Blutstrahl der Gnade in der Kunst, Schriftenreihe der West Fälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, new series, no. 1 (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1985); Suzanne Urbach, “Eine unbekannte Darstellung von ‘Sundenfall und Erlösung’ in Budapest und das Weiterleben des Cranachschen Rechtfertigungsbildes,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 28 (1989): 33–63; Carsten Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther, und servum arbitrium,” Analecta Romana 19 (1990): 145–84; Frank Büttner, “‘Argumentio’ in Bildern der Reformationszeit: Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung argumentiven Strukturen in der Bild-Kunst,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 57 (1994): 23–44; Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 363–410; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of

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the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 30, 246–47; Christoph Weimer, Luther, Cranach, und die Bilder: Gesetz und Evangelium—Schlüssel zum reformatorischen Bildgebrauch (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1999). 3. Wilhelm Worringer, Lukas Cranach (Munich and Leipzig: R. Piper, 1908), 118. 4. Christensen, Art and the Reformation, 127. 5. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 379. 6. Paolo Berdini, The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 10. 7. Though the bibliography on this subject is vast, two key sources are Berdini, Jacopo Bassano, esp. the introduction, 1–35, and Oskar Bätschmann, “Text and Image: Some General Problems,” Word and Image 4, no. 1 (1988): 11–23. 8. Berdini, Jacopo Bassano, 9. 9. . Berdini, Jacopo Bassano, 8, 12. 10. . L. G. Duggan, “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?” Word and Image 5 (1989): 227–28. 11. An exception is Büttner, “‘Argumentatio’,” 23–44, especially 27, 31–35, 39–44; Büttner applies the term “argumentatio,” the part of an argument where a point is proven, to the pictorial strategies of Law and Gospel. The argumentatio follows the narratio, the exposition of the facts of the argument. 12. In Erasmus-Luther: Discourse on Free Will, trans. and ed. Ernst F. Winter (New York: Continuum, 1961), 106. 13. In Answer to the Hyperchristian, Hyperspiritual, and Hyperlearned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig-Including Some Thoughts Regarding His Companion, the Fool Murner, LW 39:179. 14. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 126. Other events around 1529 are compatible with the appearance of a picture that clarifies Lutheran doctrine. Luther’s Small Catechism appeared in 1529. Cf. Friedrich Buchholz, Protestantismus und Kunst, Studien über christliche Denkmäler, ed. Johannes Ficker, new series of Archaeologischen Studien zum christlichen Altertum und Mittelalter, vol. 17 (Leipzig: Dieterich Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1928), 5. Luther’s Sermon on the Fifth Book of Moses on the pedagogical uses of images (LW 1:332–59; WA, vol. 28, pp. 677–79), also appeared in 1529. See also Karin Groll, Das “Passional Christi und Antichristi” von Lucas Cranach der Ältere, Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 28, vol. 118 (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 14. On June 29, 1529, Pope Clement VII accepted peace at Barcelona, and François I made peace with Charles V on August 3. The resolution of these conflicts freed the papacy to take action against the reformers, who now faced a powerful and undistracted enemy; see Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 129. 15. See Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 134. Donald Ehresmann calls the picture Law and Grace. Ehresmann, “The Brazen Serpent: A Reformation Motif in the Works of Lucas Cranach the Elder and His Workshop,” Marsyas 13 (1967): 32–47. Werner Hofmann, in the catalog from the exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, discusses the Law and Gospel images in a section called “Gesetz und Gnade”

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[Law and Grace]. Hofmann, ed., Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1983), Cat. 84–89, 210–16. 16. Versions appear in retable altarpieces, epitaphs, wall paintings, monumental panels, broadsheets, illuminated miniatures, title-page woodcuts, stained-glass pulpit decorations, iron stove tops, bookbindings, and marriage chests (Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 366 and n. 14; see also Meier, “Fortleben,” 421–22). According to Grohne, by 1936 thirty domestic chests from 1550–1650, all with the Prague version of Law and Gospel, remained in the Focke Museum (Bremischen Truhen, 8). Richard Foerster also mentions a sixteenth-century Law and Gospel chest with Low German origins, probably intended for a wedding. Foerster, “Die Bildnisse von Johann Hess und Cranachs Gesetz und Gnade,” Jahrbuch des Schlessischen Museums für Kunstgewerbe und Altertümer 5 (1909): 117–45. On sculpted versions of Law and Gospel and German sculpture of the period generally, see Jeffrey Chipps Smith, German Sculpture of the Later Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 17. Ehresmann, in “Brazen Serpent,” reproduces the full text of the Gotha panel (36), as do Werner Schade and Allmuth Schuttwolf in the section “Malerei und Plastik” in Allmuth Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen (Gotha: Schlossmuseum Gotha, 1994), 20. The columns read: First column: “Vom Regenbogen und gericht, / Ess wird Gottes zorn offenbart vom himmel über aller / menschen Gotloss leben und vnrecht. Roman 1[:18] / Wer seind allzumal sünder unndt mangelnn des preises / das sie sich Gottes nicht rühmen mügen Roman.1. [3:23].” Second column: “Vom Teufel und Todt, / Die Sünde ist des Todes spiess aber das gesetz ist der sünden / krafft. Corinth. 15[:56] / Das gesetz richtet zornn ahn. Roman 4.[:15].” Third column: “Vom Mose und den Propheten, / Durch das gesetz kömet erkentnus der sünden Roman. 3.[:20] / Matthei. 11.[:13] / Das gesetz undt propheten gehen bis auff Johannes zeitt.” Fourth column: “Vom Menschen, / Der gerechte lebett seines glaübens Roman. 1.[:17] / wier halten das einmensch gerecht werde den glaüwen / on werch des gesetzes Roman. 3.[:28].” Fifth column: “Vom Teuffer, / Sihe das ist gottes Lamb das der welt sündetregt / Sant Johannes Baptist. Johannis. 2[:2] / In der Heiligüng des geistes zum gehorssam vnd bespregüng / des blütes Jesü Christi amen1 petri. 1.” Sixth column: “Vom Tode und Lamb, / Der Tod ist verschlüngen ym sieg Tod wo ist dein spiss / Helle wo ist dein sieg; danck hab Gott der uns den siegk gegeben / Hat durch Jesüm christüm unsern herren. 1. Corinth. 15[: 57].” 18. Versions based on the Prague model produced outside of Germany include Hans Holbein the Younger’s painted version, currently in Scotland, and a print by Geoffroy Tory; see Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 178. On the relationship of Tory’s work to the Prague painting, see Meier, “Fortleben,” 420–21. Cf. Ohly, Gesetz, n. 52; Werner Busch, “Lucas van Leydens Große Hagar und die augustinische Typologie-Auffassung der Vorreformation,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45 (1982):

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116; Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild, 21, Cat. 1.3; Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther,” 158. 19. On the Brazen Serpent in Law and Gospel, see Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 32–47. Ehresmann observes that the scene of the Brazen Serpent stands out against the dark landscape around it (36). See also Craig Harbison, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe: A Study of the Relation between Art and the Reformation, Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), 98. 20. My thanks to Pavel Kryml and Professor Olga Kotkova, who allowed me to see both paintings in the studio and who also provided me with reproductions. Foerster suggests that the copy may be from Cranach’s hand (“Bildnisse,” 126). Cf. BachNielsen, “Cranach, Luther,” 151 and n. 8; and Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 128. The Prague inscriptions state: First column: “Roma. 6. Der Todt ist der sünden sold. 1. Kor. 15 / Die Sünd ist des Todes spies. Aber das gesetz Ist der / sünden krafft. Roma. 4. Das Gesetz richtet zorn ahn. // Roma. 1. Es wirdt offenbart gottes zorn von himel uber / aller menschen gotlos leben und unrecht. Roma. 3. / Die seindt alezumal sünder und mangeln des preises das sie / sich gottes nicht rümen mögen.” Second column: “Roma. 3. Durch das gesetz komet erkenntnis der Sünden. / Matthei. 11. Das gesetz und Propheten gehen bis auff Jo / hannis zeitt. // Roma. 7. Ich Elender Mensch wer wirdt mich erlösen / aus dem Leibe des Todes. Roma 1. Der gerechte lebet gerns ge / lawbens. Roma 3. Wir halten das ein Mensch ge / recht werde durch den geglauben on werck des gesetzes.” Third column: “Marci 1. es Wirdt ein stercker komen nach mir S. / Johannis Baptist. Joan. 2. Sihe das ist Gottes lamb / das der weltt sünde treget. 1 Petri 1. In der heilil- /gung des geistes zum gehorsam und besprengung des blu-/tes Jesu Christi. Amen.” Fourth column: “Essaie 26. Send das lamb den herscher der Erdenn / Exodi 12. Es wirdt sein ein Lamb on mackel. // Der Todt is verschlungen Im sieg. Todt wo ist dein / spiess? Helle wo ist dein sieg? Danck hab gott / der unns den sieg geben hatt durch Jesum Christum / Unsern Herren. 1. Korin. 15. // Matthei 4. Die Engel haben sich genehet unnd dienten yhm. / Wenn seinen Engeln ist gepoten von dir auff das / sie dich behütten yn allen deinen wegen. Psal. 90.” 21. For example, the title page for the Low German Luther Bible in Lübeck, designed by Erhard Altdorfer, Ludowich Dietz, publisher, 1553; see Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 394. 22. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 95–116. 23. LW 39:178; Berdini explains that Luther believed in the literal meaning of scripture, not the allegorical or anagogical, which enabled too much hermeneutic possibility (Jacopo Bassano, 9). 24. See Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 381, on Merckbilder; see also Walter Tappolet, Das Marienlob der Reformatoren (Tübingen: Katzmannverlag, 1962), 147. Luther explained this idea on October 31, 1529. See WA, vol. 28, p. 677, line 21 through p. 678, line 28.

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25. See Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 369, 379, on Law and Gospel’s limited interpretation, and Berdini, Jacopo Bassano. Some of the most trenchant work within the vast literature on pictorial function of late-medieval art includes Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–118; James Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69; and Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998). 26. Christiane Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienst der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 43. On Luther’s opinions about art compared to those of other reformers, see Sergiusz Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe, trans. Chester Kisiel (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), chap. 2, “The Iconophobes: Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Calvin,” 43–74. Secondary sources analyzing Luther’s general position on images include Margarete Stirm, Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 45 (Götersloh: Götersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1977), esp. 130–214; Christensen, Art and the Reformation, 42–65; Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, 46; Hans Preuß, Martin Luther der Künstler (Gütersloh: Druck Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1931); Paul Lehfeldt, Luthers Verhältniß zu Kunst und Künstlern (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, 1892); Christian Rogge, Luther und die Kirchenbilder seiner Zeit, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 108 (Leipzig: Im Kommissionsverlag v. Rudolf Haupt, 1912), 1–29; Günther Wartenberg, “Bilder in den Kirchen der Wittenberger Reformation,” 19–33, esp. 24–30, where he reviews Luther’s opinions on images; Wartenberg also nicely summarizes the functions of late-medieval art (23–24). 27. Three important overviews of Cranach’s work as a Reformation artist are Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst; Günter Schade and Klaus-Peter Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR: Ausstellung im Alten Museum vom 26. August bis 13. November 1983 (Berlin [West]: Elefanten Press, 1983); and Christensen, Art and the Reformation. See also the more recent Hans Georg Thümmel, “Lucas Cranach d. Ä., die Reformation, und die Altgläubigen,” Kunst und Kirche 19, no. 1 (2002): 53–76. 28. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 44. Despite later differences between Luther and Melanchthon, the two men seemed to be in general agreement in the 1520s and early 1530s. On Melanchthon and Luther vis-à-vis their influence on Reformation art, particularly the use of the Brazen Serpent, see Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 34. Ehresmann asserts that the specific influence of Luther or Melanchthon matters less than the role of the Brazen Serpent as an unmistakable symbol of the early Reformation. 29. “Der Ehrwirdige Herr Doktor hat die Figuren zum Teil selber angegeben, wie man sie hat sollen reissen oder malen, dass man auffs eingeltigst den inhalt soll abmalen . . . und wolt nicht leiden, dass man überley und unnütze ding, das zum text

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nicht dienet, solt dazu schmieren” (WA, vol. 18, p. 83). See also Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 44. 30. John Dillenberger, introduction to Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), xxv. 31. Dillenberger, introduction to Selections, xix. Cf. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 67–71. 32. Dillenberger, introduction to Selections, xxv. 33. The Small Catechism is reproduced in Timothy Lull, ed., Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 471–96; see also A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels, LW 35:113–24; WA, vol. 10, part 1, pp. 8–18. In the Small Catechism, Luther explains the meaning of the Ten Commandments but omits any mention of idols and idolatry in the first or second commandments, thereby avoiding the tricky issue completely. See Lull, Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 476. 34. The first commandment: “You shall have no other gods.” The second commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” Small Catechism, in Lull, Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 476. All quotations from the Bible are taken from the Revised Standard Version (RSV). 35. On the various dates of Luther’s reforming breakthroughs, see Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 149–50. The defining and interlocking Lutheran notions of sola gratia, sola scriptura, and sola fides, as Luther defines them in the groundbreaking treatises of 1520, form the notion of Law and Gospel. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther attacked the Catholic sacraments, especially the Mass (LW 36:11–57). The Freedom of a Christian explains and defines Christian faith (LW 31:333–77). To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation calls upon the German rulers to reform the church (LW 44:115–217). Cf. Dillenberger, introduction to Selections, xiii. 36. See, for example, Michalski, Visual Arts. 37. Lohse succinctly explains: “The Word of God encounters people as law and as gospel, as a word of judgment and as a word of grace. . . . It is certainly true that there is more law than gospel in the Old Testament and more gospel than law in the New Testament. Luther’s distinction between law and gospel, however, referred to something other than the division of biblical statements into the two parts of the biblical canon. This distinction rather describes the fact that God both judges and is merciful” (Martin Luther, 157). 38. See Harbison, Last Judgment, 98–99. 39. See Ohly, Gesetz. 40. “Now this is the first thing that I ought to see in Moses, namely the commandments to which I am not bound except insofar as they are [implanted in everyone] by nature [and written in everyone’s heart]” (LW 35:168). 41. LW 35:168–69. 42. LW 35:173. 43. LW 35:173.

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44. “Thus I abandon myself from all active righteousness, both of mine own and of God’s law, and embrace only that passive righteousness, which is the righteousness of grace, mercy and forgiveness of sins” (Letter to the Galatians, in Dillenberger, Selections, 102). 45. Harbison observes this mixing of the Old Testament and Christian motifs (Last Judgment, 98–99). 46. For Luther, the idea of a covenant between humanity and God that allows Christians an active role in securing salvation parallels the covenant of the Old Testament. Ehresmann contends that Christ in Judgment in proximity to the Old Testament motifs suggests a basic similarity of Catholicism and Judaism, both contractual theologies (“Brazen Serpent,” 42). 47. Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, Cat. 84–89, “Gesetz und Gnade,” 210–16. For a reading of Law and Gospel in a painting by Holbein, see F. Grossmann, “A Religious Allegory by Hans Holbein the Younger,” Burlington Magazine 103 (1961): 491–94. Grossmann sees the Catholic influence on the law side of Law and Gospel but still asserts that Holbein’s Weltbild is about a contrast between the Old and New Testaments. 48. Dillenberger, introduction to Selections, xix. Cf. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 67–71. 49. In a drawing in Dresden, the Brazen Serpent appears on the gospel side (Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 37). This might suggest that the Dresden drawing appeared later than the Gotha and Prague panels and functioned as a preparatory drawing for subsequent paintings of Law and Gospel. 50. Grohne, in his Bremischen Truhen, is the first and, to my knowledge, the only scholar who compares The Dying Man and Law and Gospel. In 1848, The Dying Man was removed from the Nikolaikirche first to the City Library in Leipzig and then to its place in the Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste, inv. Nr. 1924–40. See also Katharina Flügel, Catalog entry A5, in Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, 42–43, and Susanne Heiland, “Der Sterbende,” in Vergessene Gemälde, 54–56. 51. Flügel, Catalog entry A5, 42. 52. Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 24, 25. 53. Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 23. 54. Grohne supplies this factual information as well as the idea that the naked soul refers back to a medieval tympanum and looks forward to the naked figure of Law and Gospel (Bremischen Truhen, 23). 55. Heiland, Vergessene Gemälde, 54. At the very top of the panel is the following text: “PATRI. OP. HENRICVS. SCHMITBVRG. LIPZESIS. IVRIVM. / DOCTOR. FIERI. FECIT. AN. AB. INCAR. DO.M.D. XVIII / MISERACIONES. EIVS. OMNITA. OPERA. EIVS. PSALMO 144.” Katharina Flügel translates this text into German: “Dem besten Vater ließ Heinrich Schmitburg aus Leipzig dies fertigen im Jahre 1518 nach der Geburt des Herren” (Catalog entry A5, 42); Susanne Heiland, whose translation is identical to Flügel’s, fills in some of the abbreviations: “Patri op(timo) Henricus Schmitburg Lips(i)e(n)sis iurium doctor fieri fecit an(no) ab incar(natione) do(mini) MDXVIII” (Vergessene Gemälde, 54). Translated into English, the text reads: “Our great Father allowed

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Heinrich Schmitburg of Leipzig to have this panel made in the year 1518 after the birth of Christ.” My thanks to John Kirkpatrick for his generous assistance with translating this Latin inscription. Heiland (Vergessene Gemälde, 54, n. 6) mistakenly claims the son commissioned the picture for his father; she misunderstands the word “Father,” which refers to God and not the father of the patron. The remaining texts give voice to some of the other figures. The following translations from Latin and Greek into German are from Heiland, Vergessene Gemälde, 54. English translations of German are my own or from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible. John Kirkpatrick corrected my translation from the German against his own translation from the original Latin. At the top of the image: “Miseraciones eium super omnia opera eius Psalmo 144” (144:9 in the Vulgate, 145:9 in the Luther Bible); “Der Herr is allen gütig und erbarmt sich aller seiner Werke”; “The Lord is good to all, / and his compassion is over all that / he has made” (from the RSV). On top of the mandorla, both right side up and upside down: “Sanctus Dominus Deus Saboath”; “Heiliger Herr Gott Saboath”; “Holy Lord, God of the Sabbath.” The Greek text over the Madonna states in German: “Das Heil is bei unserem Gott” (from Revelations 7, 10); and in English: “Salvation belongs to our God.” (The whole verse is: “and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!’”) Above John the Baptist: “Salvatio ex agno”; “Erlösung durch das Lamm”; “Salvation through the Lamb.” Next to the soul of the dying man: “Et si peccavi tamen te Deus meus nunq(uam) nevavi”; “Obschon ich gesündigt habe, so habe ich doch dich, mein Gott, niemals verleugnet”; “Although I have sinned, still I have never denied you, my God.” Above the dying man’s head, to his right: “Peniteat te peccati veniam pete: et spera misericordiam”; “Bereue deine Sünde, bitte um Vergebung und hoffe auf Barmberzigkeit”; “Atone for your sins, pray for forgiveness, and hope for mercy.” On the foot of the bed: “Desperandu[m] tibi prorsus cu[m] o[mn]ia Dei mandata negligenter mea vero auxiliante femina strenue s[em]p[er] peregisti”; “Du mußt gänzlich verzweifeln, weil du alle Gebote Gottes nachlässig, die meinigen (d.h. des Teufels) aber mit der Hilfe des Weibes (d.h. Eva) immer eifrig erfüllt hast”; “You must despair, because you neglected God’s commandments, and fervently fulfilled mine [the devil’s] with the help of the woman [Eve].” The notary writes: “Testator offert anima(m) Deo corpus terrae bona proximis”; “Der Erblasser übergibt seine Seele Gott, seinen Leib der Erde, seine Güter den Verwandten”; “The deceased gives his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his possessions to his relatives.” The inscription on the chest: “Desperandum tibi prorsus cum quia dei mandata negligenter mea vero auxiliante femina strenue sp. Peregisti”; “Der Sterbende fulfilled his good works carelessly” (Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 25). On the angels’ cartelino: “Opera Bona,” “good works,” meaning that this man taking leave of the world followed God’s demands carelessly and must fear for his soul. The implications of this proclamation is that the angel functions as an intercessor.

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56. Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild, 21, Cat. 1.3. See also Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 1:81, and FR, Cat. 221. 57. On the influence of Melanchthon and Luther on Law and Gospel, especially on the Brazen Serpent as a Lutheran subject, see Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 34. 58. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 was signed by, among others, John the Constant and John Frederick the Magnanimous of Saxony. Philip Melanchthon, A Melanchthon Reader, trans. Ralph Keen, American University Studies Series 7, Theology and Religion, vol. 41 (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), 125; the text appears on pages 95–125. Albrecht Steinwachs and Jürgen M. Pietsch note a parallel between the four panels in the Wittenberg Altarpiece and the seventh article in the Augsburg Confession. Steinwachs and Pietsch, Der Reformationsaltar von Lucas Cranach d. Ä in der Stadtkirche St. Marien Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Spröda: Pietsch, ed. Akanthus, 1998), 5. See also Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 10, and Dillenberger, Images, 102–3. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 declared Lutheranism a church, rather than a breakaway sect; see Koerner, Reformation, 21. 59. Lohse, Martin Luther, 82; McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 131. 60. Wirth argues that the Prague version is based on Melanchthon, while the Gotha version is based on Luther (“Le dogme en image,” 20). Cf. Ohly, Gesetz, 52, and Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther,” 158. Schuttwolf makes no distinction between Prague and Gotha regarding Luther’s or Melanchthon’s influence (Gotteswort und Menschenbild, 20–21, Cat. 1.3). 61. The Passional Christi et Antichristi of 1521 juxtaposes images throughout. On the Passional, see Groll, Passional; Hildegard von Schnabel, ed., Lucas Cranach der Ältere Passional Christ und Anti-Christi (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1972); and Bob Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 148–58. Law and Gospel is interpreted as antithesis in Urbach, “Unbekannte Darstellung,” 39, and in Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent.” 62. Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 41. See also Harbison, Last Judgment, 98. 63. Ehresmann, “Brazen Serpent,” 43. Meier also interprets Law and Gospel as a contrast (“Fortleben,” 418). Cf. Urbach, “Unbekannte Darstellung,” 39. 64. Reindert L. Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emergence of Dutch SeventeenthCentury Landscape Art—A Critical Evaluation,” in Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, ed. Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 353. And, of course, Michael Baxandall famously isolates the role of the beholder in the reconstitution of meaning; see especially chapter 2, “The Period Eye,” in his Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 29–108. 65. Mark U. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 5. In Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 6, Edwards approaches Luther’s early theology within various “communities of discourse”; the reformer’s message was as varied as the communities of people who received and interpreted it.

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66. On the tree in Law and Gospel as a multivalent symbol, see Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 23. Some of the antecedents for the dividing tree include the following: (1) A single-leaf woodcut from 1470, in the Vienna Hofbibliothek, depicting a youth on a low tree choosing between an angel on one side and death and the devil on the other. Over the young man’s head is a banderole stating “Freiwille” (free will). Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 30–31; Cf. Groll, Passional, 127–30. (2) Berthold Furtmeyr, Tree of Death and Life, from Missal of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Bernard von Rohr, circa 1480 (Stadtsbibliothek Munich, fol. 60, verso). This image also appears in Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, fig. 176. (3) A print by Hans Leonhard Schäufelein of the Fall and Eucharist (1516), in which two different types of leaves divide a tree in half. The Schäufelein print, in turn, may derive from the medieval juxtaposition of Ecclesia und Synagoga; see Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 54. See also Ruth Melinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 48–51, 64–65, 217–20, 232. In addition, see Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 55–56, for discussions of Eve and Mary, Salvation and the Fall in a Burgundian miniature of 1477 (fig. 28, reproduced on 81). Mary, the pope, and cardinals are on one side, and Adam and Eve and a king are on the other. This split image looks like a division between the cities of God and of humanity, rather than simply between virtue and vice, damnation and salvation. Grohne asserts an essential continuity of the use of the living and dead tree in the Middle Ages into the Reformation (42); he speculates further about the relationship between Law and Gospel and Biblia Pauperum, especially the source of the dividing tree (60–64). For further discussion of trees in northern art, see Busch, “Große Hagar,” 100–109. 67. Ernst Badstübner observes the tension between unity and antithesis in Law and Gospel. Badstübner, “Gesetz und Gnade in der Ikonographie Protestantischer Bildkunst,” in Gesetz und Gnade: Cranach, Luther, und die Bilder. Ausstellung im Cranach-Jahr 1994; Eisenach Museum der Wartburg 4. Mai-31. Juli; Torgau Schloss Hartenfels 25. August-6. November, ed. Ernst Badstübner and Günter Schuchardt (Eisenach: Museum der Wartburg, 1994), 33–40. See especially page 35, where Badstübner explains that the Gotha type presents the biggest problem of antithetical content, not just as a “compositional problem” but even as a “dilemma,” which the Prague type tries to avoid. 68. My thanks to Professor Dale Grote at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for helping me refine this translation. On simul justus et peccator, see Heiko Oberman, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, trans. Andrew Colin Gow (Grand Rapids Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), 60–61. 69. Lohse, Martin Luther, 157. 70. Koerner, in Moment of Self-Portraiture, 366, observes that Law and Gospel resembles an open book, where the figures read like words on a page because they relate conceptually rather than spatially. Bach-Nielsen, in “Cranach, Luther,” 150–51, contends that the nude figure in the Prague panel makes no decision and is simply caught in a dilemma, whereas the Gotha picture, without this ambiguity, may be more of an exemplar.

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71. Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Abstraktion, Agitation, und Einfühlung: Formen protestantischer Kunst im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, 118; Ohly, Gesetz, 21; Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 30–31; Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 385–91. See also FR, Cat. 408. On the Biblia Paupernum as a source for a human figure deliberating at the juncture of two paths divided by a tree, see Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 60–64. 72. According to Wirth, “Le dogme en image,” 19, the figure in the Prague panel makes a choice between two paths, a theme that refers back to Hercules, a theme Luther hated. 73. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 391. 74. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 396. On Law and Gospel as an inversion of humanism, Erasmus, and free will, see Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 396–98. 75. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 397. 76. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 383; see the discussion of Worringer in the introduction above, note 10. The 1529 prefaces to the Small Book of the Passion (Passionbüchlein) and to the Small Prayer Book (Betbüchlein) justify the use of picture books for the laity; see Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 127. 77. Edwards, Printing, 4, notes the dangers of using hindsight to speculate on what people in the midst of a complex situation understood. 78. Michalski, Visual Arts, 14, 17, 29. 79. Nina Rowe, “Monumental Fictions: Personifications of Synagogue and Church on the Thirteenth-Century Cathedral Façade” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2002). 80. Oskar Thulin, the preeminent scholar of Cranach’s Lutheran paintings, subtitles his chapter on Law and Gospel in Cranach Altäre der Reformation, “Der Mensch in der Entscheidung vor Gott: Sündenfall-Erlösung; Gesetz—Evangelium” [The Man/Person Deciding before God: Fall and Salvation—Law and Gospel] (126). 81. Berdini, Jacopo Bassano, 10, avers that German Reformation art was meant to limit the beholder’s interpretive freedom, whereas Italian art was meant to open up the possibility of expansive visual interpretation. 82. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 366. 83. Susan Boettcher, “Are the Cranach Luther Altarpieces Philippist? Memory of Luther and Knowledge of the Past in the late Reformation,” describes the way followers of Luther, right after his death, sought to assign themselves Lutheran identity by canonizing Luther’s writing and setting forth a particular reading of his theology as both normative and authoritative. In Ways of Knowing: Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Mary Lindemann, Studies in Central European Histories (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 85–86. 84. Ohly, Gesetz, 24–25, considers it “unthinkable” (“undenkbar”) that Law and Gospel, after such a short time, could spread from Cranach’s workshop in so many varied forms without Luther’s approval (Billigung). Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 365–66, dates Cranach and Luther’s collaboration resulting in Law and Gospel to 1529–30. Harbison, Last Judgment, 97, 101, insists that Luther is the theological origin of Law and Gospel.

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85. Thümmel, “Lucas Cranach,” 55, 56. 86. Ohly, Gesetz, 35–40, nn. 3–4. Cf. Büttner, “‘Argumentatio’,” 30, n. 22. 87. “Eine eindeutige typologische Gegenüberstellung der beiden Testamente”; Busch, “Große Hagar,” 116; see also 117–18. Wirth, “Le dogme en image,” 19, claims the Gotha and Prague panels are more like separate subjects than variations on a theme. 88. Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther,” 145, 154. 89. Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther,” 149, 152–54. 90. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 365–66, contends that all other examples of Law and Gospel—for instance versions by Holbein, Peter Gottlandt, Franz Timmerman, Erhard Altdorfer, and Georg Lenberger—are copies after Cranach. See also catalog entries 84–89, 210–16 in Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst. Eduard Flechsig attributes the Gotha version to Hans Cranach in Cranachstudien (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1900), 249–72. In Bremischen Truhen, 17, Grohne cautiously suggests that the Prague version is by the younger Cranach. 91. Bach-Nielsen, “Cranach, Luther” 149, 154–56, argues that Cranach did not invent the Prague picture and was indebted to Holbein’s Weltbild in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. Busch, “Große Hagar,” 116, and Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild, 21, Cat. 1.3, state that Tory’s woodcut was the source for Cranach’s Prague panel. Cf. Ohly, Gesetz, n. 52. 92. Meier, “Fortleben,” 420–21, proposes that the Tory picture follows Cranach’s Prague type, though probably through an intermediary print such as a title page from a Bible. Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 15–18, 21, proposes that the Prague version became Tory’s source. 93. Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 13–14. 94. Cranach also produced two drawings of Law and Gospel, one in Frankfurt and the other in Dresden, which may have been studies or preparatory drawings for the iconography of the picture. According to Grohne, Bremischen Truhen, 15, the Dresden drawing is the “original sketch” (“Urskizze”). Because the Dresden drawing has two nude figures, Grohne assumes that the Gotha version is older than the Prague version, even if only by a little bit (43). This does not account for the possibility that other drawings for the Prague version have since disappeared. According to Ernst Badstübner, the Dresden drawing testifies to Cranach’s authorship of the Gotha picture. “Sündenfall und Erlösung. Um 1530,” in Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, Cat. E 52.3, pp. 357–60, esp. 358. Both these drawings, as well as the Gotha panel, have a nude figure on each side of the composition. The story of the Brazen Serpent appears on the gospel side, not the law side, of both drawings. This iconographic shift suggests that these drawings are sketches for later versions of the subject. A text in Cranach’s hand on the reverse of the Dresden drawing dedicates the picture to Duchess Katharina. Katharina, née Mecklenburg (1477–1561), married Duke Henry of Saxony in 1512. The duke and duchess employed a court preacher with Lutheran sympathies, and beginning in 1524 had mass said in German at the castle in Freiberg, in opposition to the Albertine Duke George. See FR, Cat. 61. 95. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 379.

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96. Berdini, Jacopo Bassano, 12, explains that pictures refer not directly to a text but, rather, to readings of the text: “Simply put, an image visualizes a reading and not a text.” He rightly points out that viewing does not replace reading. Pictures interpret the text or return the viewer to revisit the text: “What visual exegesis describes is the new encounter with the text made possible by the image, not its substitution, much in the same way as the painter’s reading of the text should not be taken as a substitution for ours” (15). 97. Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 102. 98. Concerning Rebaptism, LW 40:229–62; cf. Lull, Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 343. 99. In the sermon How Law and Grace May Be Thoroughly Distinguished from One Another (Wie das Gesetz und Evangelium recht grundlich zu unterscheiden sind) of 1532, WA, vol. 36, pp. 8–23, Luther writes, “In Papism, the Pope, with all his advisors, Cardinals, [and] Bishops . . . never knew . . . how to tell Law from Grace or Grace from Law. Their religion is nothing more than Turkish religion of Law” (Unter dem Papstumb hat der Papst mit alle [sic] seinen gelerten, Cardineln, Bisschoffen . . . noch nie gewust, . . . , was das Evangelion gegen dem gesetz oder was das gesetz gegen dem Evangelion unterschiedlich sey, Darumb ist ir glaube ein lauter Turken glauben von den gesetzen). 100. Scribner, Simple Folk, 175–77; for further discussion of the association of the pope and the Turk, see also 181–83. 101. Scribner, Simple Folk, 205. 102. My thanks to Nina Rowe for clarifying this point in reference to the Last Judgment tympanum at the cathedral at Bamberg. 103. Edwards, Last Battles, 185; see his discussion of this point, 182–200. 104. Groll, Passional, 2, 286. The adamant insistence on the difference between Lutheran salvation and Catholicism is even more pronounced in later prints by Cranach the Younger, for instance, The True and False Church, 1546–47, and the 1547 print of The Old and the New Church; see Groll, Passional, 36, fig. 37. See also Johannes Jahn, ed., Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Das gesamte graphische Werk (Munich: Rogner & Bernhard, 1972), 672–73. A colored version of this print is in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Cf. Scribner, Simple Folk, 199–205. Scribner discusses the way opposition to the anti-Christ is part of Lutheran self-definition in “popular” prints. 105. See Groll, Passional. See also Schnabel, Lucas Cranach der Ältere Passional Christ und Anti-Christi. According to Groll, Philip Melanchthon and Johann Schwertfeger also participated in the planning of the Passional. Melanchthon and Schwertfeger chose the texts (Passional, 18, 283). See also Scribner, Simple Folk, 148–58. 106. “Beinahe habe ich keinen Zweifel mehr, daß der Papst im eigentlichen Sinne jener Antichrist sei.” Luther wrote these lines on February 24, 1520, to Spalatin, the Hofpredigter; quoted in Schnabel, Lucas Cranach der Ältere Passional Christ und Anti-Christi, 48. Scribner describes in detail in Simple Folk (163–65) the role of the anti-Christ in printed Protestant propaganda. The corrupt pope personifies the evil

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inversion of religion, the world turned upside down (verkehrte Welt) (164). In Last Battles (38), Edwards explains, “By the 1530’s, the differences between Catholics and Protestants were irreconcilable. Each side claimed to be of the true church. Each believed that its opponent was in league with the devil. Each felt that justice was on its side. Each had a long list of grievances against the other. Such convictions left little to be discussed.” 107. On Torgau, see Smith, German Sculpture, 87–94, and Wirth, “Le dogme en image,” 15. Records of Cranach and his assistants working at Torgau are reproduced in Walter Scheidig, “Urkunden zu Cranachs Leben und Schaffen” in Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Der Künstler und seine Zeit, ed. H. Lüdecke (Berlin: Herschelverlag, 1953), Document 52. These records, stored in the Landeshauptarchiv Weimar, are also recorded in Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 3:264–73. 108. Groll, Passional, 103. 109. Schade, Family, Document 314, dated 1538, records the payment Cranach received for his Ascension of Christ and Pope’s Descent into Hell in Torgau. See also Buchholz, Protestantismus und Kunst, 38. In 1566, Earl (Graf) Froben Christof von Zimmern and Earl Wilhelm Wernher von Zimmern refer to these images in the Zimmerische Chronik; see Groll, Passional, 103. The writers of the Zimmerische Chronik also note the similarities with the Passional; see Groll, Passional, 103–4 and nn. 36–37. See also Buchholz, Protestantismus und Kunst, 38. The Zimmerische Chronik states further that the Spanish destroyed Cranach’s images. The Zimmerische Chronik also notes that the juxtaposition of the pope and Christ appears in Torgau as it did in the Passional of 1521; see Groll, Passional, 103–4 and nn. 36–37. Groll proposes instead that the paintings were painted over (Passional, 104 and nn. 39–40). Cf. Preuß, Martin Luther der Künstler, 185. 110. According to Groll, the paintings in Torgau also shared features with the Passional Christi et Antichristi of 1521. For Groll, the paintings for the castle church indicate the transformation of the folksy (volkstümlich) woodcuts of the Passional into a more sophisticated and enduring form (Passional, 104). 111. “Daneben hätte er den Papst in würdigerer, ich meine teuflischerer Gestalt malen können, doch magst du selbst urteilen.” This letter is reproduced in Scheidig, “Urkunden,” Document 57; cf. Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 2:53. 112. “The ambiguity inherent in the visual image could, of course, be resolved by the use of image plus text, with the latter supplying an unambiguous reading” (Scribner, Simple Folk, 244). 113. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 370. Of course, all art relates to the viewer conceptually, but much of Italian Renaissance art explicitly creates the illusion of space continuous with the viewer’s own.

Chapter Two

The Schneeberg Altarpiece and the Structure of Worship

If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes? Martin Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets1

Lucas Cranach’s Schneeberg Altarpiece of 1539 is the first Lutheran retable (figs. 2.1–2.5).2 Its production and installation at the high altar of the Church of Saint Wolfgang in the Saxon city of Schneeberg signals the establishment of an explicitly Lutheran type of polyptych altarpiece.3 Though the triptych format of the Schneeberg Altarpiece derives from Catholic retables, its iconography and function set it apart from that tradition,4 and though the iconography and function resemble earlier single-panel Lutheran paintings such as Law and Gospel, its polyptych format departs from the adamant didacticism of these single panels. When considered in the context of established forms of Catholic art or of the earliest single-panel Lutheran painting, the Schneeberg Altarpiece is a conundrum, resisting the restrictions of both categories. This chapter will demonstrate the ways in which the Schneeberg Altarpiece establishes a discrete phase of Lutheran painting, still bound by the devotional forms of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century northern art, yet moving away from the theological polemicism of earlier single-panel Lutheran images.5 The Schneeberg Altarpiece is a complex monument, encompassing a total of eleven, originally twelve, painted surfaces and three different viewing positions: the rear panels, the closed or weekday position, and the opened or feast day position.6 On the rear panels (fig. 2.1) the Last Judgment appears in the center, with the stories of Lot and His Daughters and of Noah and the Flood on either side. The defining subject of Lutheran art, Law and Gospel, spreads across the front panels in the closed or weekday position (fig. 2.2). 67

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Figure 2.1. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, rear panels, 1539, panel. Photo credit: Foto-Georgi, Schneeberg / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung.

These panels open to reveal the feast day or opened position (figs. 2.3, 2.5), with a Crucifixion in the center panel.7 In the feast day position, the donors are seen kneeling in the lower half of each wing, with the Agony in the Garden on the upper left and the Resurrection on the upper right. On the front of the predella appears the Last Supper (fig. 2.4). The missing panel, depicting the Raising of the Dead on the back of the predella, was burned in 1945.8 No substantive research on the Schneeberg Altarpiece has been published in English.9 One explanation for this dearth of scholarship may be the retable’s location in the former East Germany, inaccessible to either western European or American scholars. Its prolonged restoration and virtual invisibility in the Institut für Denkmalpflege in Dresden from 1960 to 1996 may also explain this enduring obscurity.10 The rather limited German literature on the retable consists of general descriptions of iconography and style and scholarly reviews of Schneeberg’s history.11 Other studies address the Schneeberg Altarpiece within the frame-

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Figure 2.2. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, closed position, 1539, panel. Photo credit: Foto-Georgi, Schneeberg / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung.

work of Cranach’s art or art of the Reformation in general.12 Oskar Thulin’s important and fundamental book presents all three of Cranach’s major Lutheran retables—the Schneeberg Altarpiece, the Wittenberg Altarpiece (1547), and the Weimar Altarpiece (1553–55)—as a thematic group.13 His discussion consists primarily of detailed formal analysis, basic historical background, and the fundamentals of Lutheran theology. Thulin presents the Schneeberg Altarpiece as a passive vehicle, a conduit for the expression and clarification of Lutheran theology; in essence the altarpiece becomes secondary to the theology it embodies.14 Yet the Schneeberg Altarpiece is active; it does not passively “reflect” the new theology, as Thulin’s scholarship assumes (see introduction). Instead, through new iconography and motivations for patronage, this first Lutheran polyptych enacts a change in the function of the altarpiece as such. The present discussion is concerned not only with the changes the altarpiece replicates but, more importantly, with the changes the altarpiece perpetuates.

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Figure 2.3. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, opened position, 1539, panel. Photo credit: Foto-Georgi, Schneeberg / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung.

COMMISSION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The initial commission for the Schneeberg Altarpiece came from John Frederick the Magnanimous, elector of Saxony, who appears on the wing to the viewer’s left on the feast day side, and his half brother, John the Serious, duke of Coburg, who appears on the wing on the viewer’s right.15 The retable was placed on the altar in 1539.16

Figure 2.4. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, detail, Last Supper, 1539, panel. Photo credit: Foto-Georgi, Schneeberg / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung.

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Figure 2.5. Cranach, Schneeberg Altarpiece, detail, Crucifixion, 1539, panel. Photo credit: Foto-Georgi, Schneeberg / Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Sachsen Bildsammlung.

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John Frederick and John the Serious were Ernestines, a Protestant family of Saxon electors that also included Frederick the Wise (d. 1525) and John the Constant (d. 1532), all of whom supported Luther loyally.17 The Albertines, cousins of the Ernestines and dukes of Saxon territories, were not supportive of Lutheran reform.18 Both these aristocratic lines had claims to territories within the modern state of Saxony, and specifically to the city of Schneeberg.19 Founded in 1471, Schneeberg came into existence as a mining town in the Erzgebirge, a mountain range between Germany and the present-day Czech Republic. Schneeberg was a small satellite of the larger city of Zwickau and depended for its livelihood on the silver mines that attracted settlers to the relatively new city.20 The commission and installation of the Schneeberg Altarpiece coincided with John Frederick’s taking control of the city in 1532, the definitive declaration of Schneeberg’s Lutheran identity, and the removal of Catholic art from Schneeberg’s churches.21 By 1540, the building of Saint Wolfgang was completed, and the church was consecrated.22 Catholic priests had been dismissed and Lutheran clergy installed.23 The Schneeberg Altarpiece marked the official establishment of Lutheran reform in Schneeberg. It also proclaimed the confessional identity of the donors, of the people who worshipped at the Church of Saint Wolfgang, and of the city of Schneeberg itself. By commissioning the retable, John Frederick and John the Serious also declared themselves the rulers of this newly conquered territory, giving the retable overt political significance.24 The installation of the retable heralded the establishment of both Lutheran and Ernestine authority in Schneeberg.25 It is worth pausing at this juncture to reiterate an important basic point that recurs throughout this study: Because the donors paid Cranach to carry out the commission, their wishes of course overrode the artist’s beliefs and intentions. Cranach was Luther’s personal friend and theological ally, as we saw in the introduction. Based on his friendship and sympathies with Luther and his cause, it is highly likely that Cranach would have approved of the iconographic program personally, but he was still officially expressing the wishes of others.

PRINCIPLE OF LAW AND GOSPEL IN SCHNEEBERG As the first Lutheran polyptych, the Schneeberg Altarpiece exploits the iconography of Law and Gospel but adapts it to the more traditional form of a polyptych.26 The Schneeberg Altarpiece expands Law and Gospel into a format that explores the compatibility of Lutheran iconography and theology

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with the traditional, Catholic polyptych form, incorporating a declaration of confessional identity into the practice of public devotion. Most of the elements of the Gotha version of Law and Gospel appear in the Schneeberg Altarpiece. On the far left, the devil pursues a man into the fires of hell; Christ sits in majesty above. In the next scene, Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit in the background, while Moses and other prophets stand and gesture toward the figure of death. On the gospel side, a second male figure stands with John the Baptist before Christ on the Cross. At the far right, the risen Christ stands triumphant in front of the tomb, victorious over both the devil and death. In the background appears a motif that is not present in the Gotha prototype but that does appear in subsequent versions of the subject: Directly on top of the tomb, the Virgin receives the unborn Christ while shepherds in the fields look heavenward.27 Like its ancestor, the Gotha Law and Gospel, the Schneeberg Altarpiece contains biblical texts, many of which are identical to the excerpts in both the Gotha and Prague versions of Law and Gospel.28 The Law and Gospel panels in the Schneeberg Altarpiece raise two basic questions: How does the meaning of Law and Gospel change in relationship to the other panels, and, conversely, how does the meaning of the scenes on the other panels change in relation to Law and Gospel? Because Law and Gospel occupies the center of the monument, more prominent than the rear panels but less holy than the feast day position, it mediates the viewer’s experience of the other scenes. I propose that scenes on the rear panels exemplify the concept of law and those on the feast day position clarify the meaning of gospel. Subjects familiar from earlier Christian art assumed new meaning and function by virtue of their proximity to Law and Gospel. The ubiquitous retable was the defining format for public religious paintings up to the Reformation.29 A general and theoretical definition of a retable would accommodate some variation, for instance, in the number and size of the panels. A retable adorned and designated the holiest parts of the church, either the high altar or an altar in a side chapel. It marked the location of ritual and helped define, identify, and guide the worshippers’ devotion. It instructed in theology, either by illustrating a point of dogma, depicting an object of veneration, or marking an object of veneration, such as a holy relic. This very basic description already points to the kinds of changes I propose the Schneeberg Altarpiece, as well as the altarpieces in Wittenberg and Weimar, represent. The religious ideas a retable presents or the rituals it defines vary according to the denomination for which it is painted.30 An altarpiece designated to mark holy space in a Lutheran church or to support Lutheran practice must function differently than would its Catholic counterparts, even if the physical form is identical, that is, even if the triptych format

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is preserved. These obvious ideas warrant repetition, because the physical sameness of late-medieval Catholic and Lutheran altarpieces has caused scholars to question the very existence of a “Lutheran altarpiece.”31 The altarpieces in Schneeberg, Wittenberg, and Weimar break unmistakably with the past, despite their traditional formats. My focus on function goes back to Luther’s own conditional acceptance of religious art. As we saw in the introduction, for Luther, pictorial function determined the acceptability of a work of art. Images were acceptable provided they were never worshipped as though they themselves were holy objects with miraculous properties.32 In the Lutheran altarpieces, associations with the new theology and an altered context, as well as the inclusion of prominent Wittenbergers, subvert the traditional ideas and functions that the continued use of the retable format might imply.33 As a Lutheran variation of this tradition, the Schneeberg Altarpiece redefined the retable’s varied functions. Law and Gospel, placed in the heart of the retable, becomes the key to the proper interpretation of the other panels. By 1539 Lutheran Christianity had become a separate faith in Saxony, far more than a mere detour in the course of the Catholic Church’s history. Nonetheless, the traditional polyptych could be drawn on to serve the needs of the new teaching. The Schneeberg Altarpiece performed the basic functions of an altarpiece in innovative ways. It designated holy space, but it did so for a ritual where clergy and laity together, rather than clergy alone, celebrated the sacrament; it guided the religious experience of the viewers not by housing a relic, working miracles, or inspiring visions but, rather, through the teaching of Lutheran salvation. Most important, the image was itself not holy; it was a pedagogical tool, never an object of veneration.34

REAR PANELS The rear panels of the Schneeberg Altarpiece extend the law side of the Law and Gospel equation. The panels displaying the Flood (Gen. 6:5–8:22) and Lot and His Daughters (Gen. 19:1–38) demonstrate the consequences of human sin. In the scene illustrating the story of Lot, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah burn in the background as punishment for human debauchery, while the opposite panel shows the dead and flooded earth in the story of Noah.35 The Schneeberg Altarpiece highlights the essential feature of these two narratives: the human responses to divine judgment. The Last Judgment on the center back panel represents divine wrath at the end of Christian history, the ultimate event, in which humanity is judged. This Christian case of

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divine retribution follows a paradigm similar to the judgments of the Flood and Lot panels, and all three narratives represent a moment when humanity must account for itself. These scenes appear on the rear of the altarpiece, which the congregants saw as they took Communion. In a Lutheran service, the laity and clergy alike receive the Eucharist in both kinds, in contrast to the Catholic practice of denying the laity the chalice.36 (This subject will receive detailed discussion in chapter 3.) After receiving the bread at the left of the altarpiece, the believer circled around the back, past Lot, the Last Judgment, and Noah, to receive the wine of the Eucharist on the right side of the altar.37 Because the participants saw these scenes as they partook of Communion, they saw the effects of law, in both Old and New Testament motifs, from the standpoint of saving grace. The very act of participating in the sacrament implied a state of grace predicated upon right understanding of Law and Gospel and a realization that mercy, not merit, formed the basis of the relationship between humanity and divinity. Lutheran believers participated in the sacrament not because their actions made them worthy but because they recognized their obligation to receive and believe. Were the believers to rely on their own efforts and actions, they would be as lost as the people burning in Sodom and Gomorrah, drowning in the flood, or damned in the Last Judgment. The sequence of scenes from the back to the front of the Schneeberg Altarpiece forces us to wonder about the relationship among the scenes on the rear panels, on the weekday side, and on the feast day side. How did the viewer move conceptually from Judgment, Lot, and Noah through Law and Gospel to the Crucifixion? The specific relationship between interior and exterior scenes does not involve a simple, sequential shift from Old Testament to New Testament, or a chronological passage through stages of Christian history. Nor is the organizing principle strictly hierarchical, separating human and divine. Although the defining Christian subject, the Crucifixion, is placed in the heart of the monument, the donors—that is, the least holy figures—are not relegated to the weekday side but appear on the feast day side, buttressing the scene of Christ on the Cross. Chronological, sequential, and typological paradigms do not adequately explain the order of scenes in the Schneeberg Altarpiece. The conceptual relationships among the panels in the Schneeberg Altarpiece make this monument unique. The principle of law and gospel—the central theological principle of Cranach’s Lutheran painting and of Luther’s writings as well—define the pictorial program. The Law and Gospel scenes on the weekday panels bridge the scenes of judgment on the back and the scenes

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of salvation on the feast day position, creating a conceptual scaffolding for the rest of the retable. Like all the Law and Gospel images, this version in the retable’s intermediate position initiates the viewer’s visual journey with motifs exemplifying law. The depictions of Noah, Lot, Adam and Eve, and Christ as judge denounce the conceit that human action can ensure salvation; but these subjects also lead to the apprehension of the true, sinful human condition. The Crucifixion responds to both the recognition of human sin and the futility of human action with the promise of unearned grace.38 The repetition of Christ as judge on the rear panels and on the weekday side epitomizes this principle of law and gospel. The proximity of both versions of Christ judging to Law and Gospel emphasizes their new meaning in the context of this quintessential Lutheran principle. On the exterior, as an extension of the law paradigm, and in the context of The Flood and Lot and His Daughters, the Last Judgment portrays the reality of damnation. On the weekday panels, however, Christ as judge, presiding over Adam and Eve as well as over death and the devil driving a sinner into hell, not only appears physically closer to the allegory of grace but also becomes part of the very system that defines grace. By appearing in dialogue with the paradigm of grace, this scene of judgment becomes a foil for Lutheran salvation. The Christian viewer need not perform works to become deserving of heaven. On the contrary, this Christ in Judgment instructs the viewer that such actions accomplish nothing. The fear of judgment does not disappear in Lutheran teaching, but the remedy for avoiding damnation no longer hinges upon pleasing or appeasing an angry deity through effort and merit. Yet another iconographic feature of the scenes of judgment in Schneeberg marks a departure from earlier tradition. In traditional scenes of the Last Judgment, from Romanesque tympana to panel painting, Christ oversees both damnation and salvation.39 Yet in the Schneeberg Law and Gospel panels, Christ in Judgment presides exclusively over damnation. The issue becomes not whether the sinner fulfills his obligations well or poorly, but whether he trusts in the strength of human actions at all. Through the vanity of his efforts he should recognize the necessity of grace. Christ in Judgment becomes a pronouncement on the futility of human striving for salvation rather than an event at the end of time.40 In addition to Christ in Judgment, all the other subjects in the orbit of Law and Gospel acquire new meaning. The rear panels emphasize punishment. Sodom and Gomorrah burn, and Lot accepts drink from his daughters. In the Flood panel, we see not the ark but a seascape of floating dead animals that overpowers the meek presence of the dove. The rear panels thus prepare the viewer to respond to the remaining series of images.

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PREDELLA LAST SUPPER The Last Supper in the predella is visible in both the weekday and feast day positions of the altarpiece and serves as a visual foundation on which to build a theological interpretation of the other panels. In the context of both Law and Gospel and its explicitly Lutheran patronage and setting, the Last Supper in the predella becomes the first part of an equation that defines a critical point of Lutheran theology: Luther’s notion of the real presence, in contradistinction to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The Last Supper in scripture (Matt. 26:17–29; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–23) raises at least three separate topoi pertaining to the Schneeberg Altarpiece. The first is the actual Passover meal, when Christ distributes bread and wine as body and blood. The second is the Crucifixion, that is, the literal shedding of Christ’s blood. In this regard the Last Supper memorializes an event that has not yet occurred. Third, the Last Supper prophesies future commemorations of the Last Supper, which Luther calls the Lord’s Supper, the climax of the Lutheran service.41 This complex subject thus occupies multiple points between the past and the future. In his commentary on Psalm 111, Luther wrote, “Whoever is inclined to put pictures on the altar ought to have the Lord’s Supper of Christ painted. . . . Since the altar is designated for the administration of the Sacrament, one could not find a better painting for it. Other pictures of God or Christ can be painted somewhere else.”42 Luther’s proclamation that “the altar ought to have the Lord’s Supper of Christ painted” explains a tendency among scholars to associate the Last Supper with the Reformation retable.43 Nonetheless, very few artists and patrons heeded Luther’s call.44 Among Cranach the Elder’s surviving retables, only the Schneeberg Altarpiece and the Wittenberg Altarpiece depict the Last Supper.45 (See chapter 3 on the Last Supper in Wittenberg.) Regardless of whether the Last Supper was typical or atypical in Lutheran art, in Schneeberg the Last Supper predella proclaims proclamation Lutheran doctrine in condensed form. The public statement made by the Schneeberg Last Supper parallels the arguments in Luther’s Babylonian Captivity, which attacked the Catholic doctrine asserting Christ’s real presence in the Mass.46 Luther rejected transubstantiation utterly because it was an attempt to explain rationally a miracle, a matter of faith. Despite his rejection of the doctrine, Luther asserted and vehemently defended the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.47 For Luther, the real presence in the bread and wine is a matter of pure faith, analogous to the acceptance of grace, which cannot be explained or justified rationally.48 The biblical Last Supper not only marked the initiation of the Passion but also inaugurated the first Christian community. In 1539, Schneeberg was

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also a new community, and in this respect, the status of the Schneeberg Altarpiece as the first Lutheran retable becomes particularly important. Just as the Last Supper instituted the Christian community during Christ’s lifetime, the picture of the Last Supper in Schneeberg established the legitimate continuation of the first Christian community in this new Lutheran territory. The Last Supper in the predella built upon the historical Last Supper that the Schneeberg community reenacted according to Cranach’s imaging of Luther’s exegesis.49

DONORS In the feast day position, the donors appear amid three different manifestations of Christ. On the lower half of the left panel appears a bust-length portrait of John Frederick, below a scene of Christ in Gethsemane and the three sleeping apostles, Peter, James, and John, in the upper portion of the panel.50 The center panel displays the Crucifixion, and on the right panel, John the Serious stands below the Risen Christ and the astonished guards at the tomb. The following discussion will demonstrate the ways in which the donors’ motivations and the roles they play in the Schneeberg Altarpiece interpreted and responded to Lutheran doctrine. The donors’ proximity to the holy figures signified a critical feature of the altar’s Lutheran function. In many polyptychs of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a hierarchy of sacred and secular prevailed. As the least holy figures, the donors frequently appeared on the outside panels or in the lower registers, locations typically exposed on weekdays and during Lent. On Sundays and feast days the holy figures on the inner panels were normally visible. Cranach’s Altarpiece of George the Bearded of 1534 in Meissen offers a clear example of this hierarchy of human/holy and opened/closed (fig. 2.6). The two patrons are George the Bearded from the Albertine branch of the Saxon rulers, and Duchess Barbara (d. 1534), daughter of King Kasimir IV of Poland. The donors kneel in the lower corners of the wings as their patron saints direct them to the Man of Sorrows flanked by the Virgin and John in the central panel.51 The Schneeberg Altarpiece epitomizes the deceptive appearance of continuity between Catholic and Lutheran art. Superficially, the presence of donors in a retable is an utterly traditional, indeed a characteristic, feature of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century retables. This formal similarity, however, contradicts profound semantic and functional differences. Only in the context of the Schneeberg donors’ Lutheran faith can the significance of their presence become apparent.

Figure 2.6. Cranach, Altarpiece of George the Bearded, 1534, panel transferred to canvas. Photo credit: Verlag Brück und Sohn / Hochstift Dom-zu-Meißen.

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Traditional Catholic donors, such as the George the Bearded and Duchess Barbara of Meissen, earned their representation in works of art with pious donations, acts of asceticism, or philanthropy in the hopes of salvation—in short, with good works. Broadly speaking, Catholic donors commissioned works of art as a good work. However, the Schneeberg donors did the exact opposite. Though donating a large public work of art, whatever the motivation, would always aggrandize the patron, the commission of the Schneeberg Altarpiece did not constitute a good work or enhance the donors’ spiritual merit. The presence of John Frederick the Magnanimous and John the Serious is linked to the Lutheran notion that their very desire to commission an altarpiece arose from and declared their faith, which alone promised their salvation. They appear physically close to Christ in the retable’s feast day position because Lutheran theology allowed them to believe that their faith would justify them. This changed motivation for and significance of patronage exemplified the new function of art in a Lutheran environment. The donors see in the Crucifixion the promise of their own salvation, as guaranteed by the new theology. Salvation in Lutheran thought depended not on action but on passive reception of faith and grace. As Luther wrote, “Thus I abandon myself from all active righteousness, both of mine own and of God’s law, and embrace only that passive righteousness, which is the righteousness of grace, mercy and forgiveness of sins.”52 The inextricability of faith and salvation provided John and John Frederick a place within the visual narrative. In some examples of Catholic art in general, and Cranach’s Catholic art in particular, patrons commissioned images depicting human and holy figures with no physical separation between them. However, the basis for the fluid boundaries between holy and human derives from different motivations and justifications in Catholic and Lutheran environments, respectively. A prominent and important Catholic counterpoint to the Schneeberg Altarpiece is Cranach’s painting of Albrecht of Brandenburg with a Crucifix (c. 1520–25) in Munich (fig. 2.7).53 In this panel, Albrecht kneels in an otherwise empty landscape in the presence of a looming crucifix. His face turns away from Christ, and his unfocused, vacant expression typifies late-medieval representations of Christians experiencing an individual, spiritual vision.54 In both the Schneeberg and Albrecht panels, the donor has direct access to Christ. Nonetheless, once again the formal similarities between Catholic and Lutheran art mask the actual universe of theological difference. John the Serious and John Frederick in the Schneeberg work appear physically close to Christ because of their faith and the gift of divine grace. The point is not the question of whether they actually see the Crucifixion through a spiritual vision, but rather the notion that their faith places them in proximity to the

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Figure 2.7. Cranach, Albrecht of Brandenburg with a Crucifix, c. 1520, panel. Photo credit: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

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savior. In contrast, Albrecht portrays himself in the presence of divinity as a tribute to his efforts, as part of the world of late-medieval piety and visionary experience. The subject of visions in late-medieval piety has received extensive scholarly attention in recent decades. Scholars such as Craig Harbison and James Marrow have demonstrated that late-medieval images in which donors appear in the presence of holy figures or intrude into holy narratives such as the Crucifixion display the inward, spiritual experience of the donor.55 Cranach’s Albrecht panel exemplifies this tradition. Such visionary experiences testified to both effort and accomplishment, and the images made the pictorial claim that through ascetic practice, zealous and passionate prayer, or pious donation, donors experienced holy visions. Such contact with divinity rested upon a visionary experience earned through pious effort. Whether donors actually had such visionary experiences matters less than the pictorial claim that they did. In contrast, the Lutheran understanding of the Schneeberg donors’ proximity to the Crucifixion was that it resulted from faith and grace. The absence of saints acting as intercessors marks another decisive feature of the changed relationship between donors and Christ in the Schneeberg Altarpiece. In Cranach’s Catholic religious paintings, the donors peering into a scene such as the Nativity or the Crucifixion often appear in the company of a patron saint.56 In such images, the patron saint or intercessor mediates between the human and the divine and pleads for mercy from a remote and judging Christ. In Schneeberg, however, no intercessors are visible anywhere.57 Cranach’s Altarpiece of George the Bearded furnishes a pertinent counterpoint to the independence of Lutheran donors. The patron saints, James the Elder and Peter, stand in the left wing with George the Bearded. Paul with his sword and Andrew with the Cross accompany the deceased Barbara in the opposite wing. In this altarpiece, the donors witness the suffering of Christ through the patron saints’ mediation. The contact between humanity and God takes place via traditional channels and abides by an established hierarchy that linked humanity and divinity only indirectly. The direct relationship between donors and holy figures in the Schneeberg Altarpiece exemplifies the differences between donors as they are portrayed in Lutheran and Catholic retables. In the Lutheran universe of the Saxon electors, the encounter between the Christian and Christ must bridge the same distance, but the path between the human and the holy involves neither the protocol of formal introductions nor a spiritual vision nor the charity of intercessors, but the direct path of justification by faith. As the civic and religious leaders of Schneeberg, the donors stand in proximity to the Crucifixion as model receivers of grace. Their position above the Last Supper predella implies their participation in the sacrament that reenacts

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this scriptural event. Their proximity to Law and Gospel and the Last Supper identifies them as Lutheran leaders of, and as participants in, the Christian community initiated at the Last Supper. They continue a story that begins with the Old Testament on the rear panels and moves through Law and Gospel to the establishment of Lutheran practice. The story culminates with the defining event of Christianity, the Crucifixion. CRUCIFIXION And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Mark 15:39

Through the warnings of Lot, Noah, and the Last Judgment on the back panels, and the explication of gospel in the first, opened position, the viewer of the Schneeberg Altarpiece encounters the Crucifixion with considerable preparation. The correlations between scenes of judgment and salvation in the Schneeberg Altarpiece parallel and reiterate the relationship between the two sides of Law and Gospel. Just as Noah, Lot, and Christ in Judgment develop the law side of the balance, the feast day panels, culminating in the Crucifixion, extend the gospel side. The pictorial shift from Law and Gospel to the Crucifixion demonstrates the relationship between the initial and critical acceptance of faith to participation in the Lutheran sacrament and the blood and body of the Eucharist. The Last Supper and the Crucifixion signify the alpha and omega of the Lutheran sacrament, and of Lutheran theology as a whole. Visually as well as theologically, Lutheran faith and the blood of the Crucifixion refer back to the Eucharist, whose biblical source, the Last Supper, appears in the predella. The vertical relationship between the Last Supper and Crucifixion creates a visual analog to the biblical origins of the Eucharist and the real presence. Only the Lutheran Lord’s Supper and the law-and-gospel model of salvation explain the meaning of the Crucifixion in the heart of the retable. The Schneeberg Crucifixion, as well as Cranach’s other Crucifixions of the 1530s, share similar composition and iconography, which depart markedly from Cranach’s pre-Lutheran versions of this subject.58 In Schneeberg, the two thieves frame Christ in the center of a densely populated composition. In the middle ground, soldiers and curious onlookers on horseback and on foot swarm about. In the foreground on Christ’s right, the Virgin and a group of women cry and grieve, while across from them, on Christ’s sinister side, a mob of men brawl, pulling hair and drawing swords.

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Compositionally, the Schneeberg Crucifixion is divided in two, much like the single-panel Law and Gospel images, creating a tension that the surrounding panels buttress and underscore.59 In traditional Crucifixions, placement of the good and bad thieves on the dexter and sinister sides of the Cross, respectively, separates the composition into the damned and the saved. The Schneeberg Altarpiece emphasizes this separation through its arrangement of all motifs between dexter and sinister. The grieving Marys accompany the converted centurion and the good thief on the dexter side. Across the panel on the sinister side, the evildoers accompanying the bad thief include a group of men rolling dice and placing bets for Christ’s garment, and the gesturing, disbelieving high priests.60 The converted centurion on Christ’s right side, also called Longinus, corresponds with Stephaton, on Christ’s left, the disbelieving soldier who does not recognize Christ.61 These figures appear on horseback on either side of the cross, framing Christ in the middle of the composition, as do the thieves above (fig. 2.5). The converted Longinus and the disbelieving Stephaton epitomize the relationship between law and gospel in precisely the manner of the saved and condemned figures in the Law and Gospel panels. The relative positions of Stephaton and Longinus on opposite sides of a bisected composition make their association with Law and Gospel unmistakable. As with the two nude figures in the Gotha Law and Gospel, faith separates them: Longinus has faith, Stephaton does not. The translation of the nude figures into Longinus and Stephaton plants the principle of law and gospel within the structure of this Lutheran Crucifixion, implying an analogous dynamic. Just as Law and Gospel calls upon the viewer to follow the example of the saved sinner, the Schneeberg Crucifixion asks the viewer to model her- or himself on the Marys, Longinus, and the good thief by comparing their salvation to the evident sin on the opposite side. This rearrangement of a familiar motif into a composition rooted in Luther’s teaching creates a Lutheran image out of a familiar Catholic subject. The Schneeberg Crucifixion reinvents pre-Reformation versions of the same subject. In these earlier versions, the elements so tidily distinguished in Schneeberg fuse into a compositional whole. Cranach’s Crucifixion Triptych (c. 1528, formerly in Amsterdam but lost in World War II) makes a particularly instructive comparison (fig. 2.8). Like the Schneeberg Altarpiece, the Amsterdam triptych has a Crucifixion in the center, Christ in Gethsemane on the left, and the Resurrection on the right. Despite their identical subject matter, the different compositions of these two retables reveal the confessional distance between them. In the earlier triptych, both the converted centurion and the good thief appear together on the sinister side. Across from the centurion, the Virgin and the group of women swoon on the dexter side, along

Figure 2.8.

Cranach, Amsterdam Crucifixion Triptych, c. 1520, panel.

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with the unconverted thief, who looks conspicuously away from Christ. Also on the dexter side in the middle appear two figures with grotesque caricatured faces, whose distorted features and snarling expressions remind the viewer of the brawling figures who gamble for Christ’s garment on the sinister side of the Schneeberg Crucifixion. In the Amsterdam panel, the elements of the two reactions to the Crucifixion are unmistakable, individual motifs, though their arrangement does not conform to the same clear division of the composition; rather, they present an alternating rhythm of desirable and undesirable responses. Without the didactic organization and theological structure of the principle of law and gospel, the viewer must voyage visually through the panel, interpreting each of these motifs independently. The Crucifixion as it appears in the heart of the Schneeberg Altarpiece becomes a Lutheran subject in a Lutheran environment. The patronage and proximity to Law and Gospel would be sufficient to designate it as a Lutheran painting. More interesting, and more subtle, is the arrangement of traditional motifs according to the principle of the paradigmatic Lutheran painting, Law and Gospel. This redeployment of familiar motifs underscores the essentially didactic function of the Schneeberg Crucifixion and of Lutheran art in general.

SYNTHESIS Earlier Lutheran paintings, not only Law and Gospel but also the famous Four Holy Men of 1525 by Dürer, eschewed the retable format, possibly because this traditional form would too easily blur the new and still-malleable distinctions between traditions. Early Lutheran painting was concerned with demonstrating key points of the new theology in clear contrast to Catholic doctrine and art, hence the excerpts from Luther’s German Bible in the Dürer image and the declarative explication of doctrine in Law and Gospel. Only after the new faith was proclaimed and established in both word and image did it become safe to place the new ideas in a traditional frame—new wine in old skins, as it were. The sophisticated blend of Lutheran thought and Catholic pictorial form in the Schneeberg Altarpiece reveals dramatic theological and artistic change in the ten years since Law and Gospel. The Schneeberg Altarpiece represents a major shift in Lutheran painting from the declarative Law and Gospel panels to a more sophisticated and subtle pictorial form. The Schneeberg Altarpiece perpetuated the ideals of a religion sure enough of its own identity to employ the deeply Catholic polyptych as a vehicle for the expression of Lutheran theology. While all the scenes in

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Schneeberg had been subjects in earlier art, Luther’s hermeneutic, and the pictorial function it supported, proclaim the confessional character of this first Lutheran retable.

NOTES 1. Martin Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament (1524–25), WA, vol. 18, p. 83, cited in Hermann Petrel, “Das protestantische Abendmahlsbild im niederdeutschen Raum und seine Vorbilder,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 13 (1974): 224. Cf. LW 40:99–100, Against the Heavenly Prophets. 2. Heinrich Magirius et al., “Der Cranachaltar in der St. Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg,” Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Restaurierung 6, no. 2 (1992): 298. 3. In 1477 Duke Albrecht began construction of the first stone parish church in Schneeberg, dedicated to Saint Wolfgang and the Virgin Mary. This original structure still forms the western part of the current church. See Rudolf Zießler, Die Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 3d ed., Christliche Denkmal, vol. 81 (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1984), 1, and Richard Steche and Cornelius Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, Beschreibende Darstellung der Älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Königreiches Sachsen, 8 (Dresden: C. C. Meinhold, 1887), 29–30. In December 1481, Schneeberg became a Freie Bergstadt. Andreas Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag der Weihe der St. Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg im Erzgebirge (Schneeberg: Kirchenvorstand St. Wolfgang, 1990), 5. Cf. Christian Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk (Schneeberg, 1684), 316–18, and Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 28. My thanks to Christine Kelm for providing me with a typed version of Melzer’s text. 4. Christiane Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienst der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte, by the New York Public Library (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 43–79, esp. 43, notes that in his 1525 Sermon on the First Commandment, Luther explains that images are neither good nor bad, but their (mis)use determines their value. 5. Most scholars agree that the Lutheran identity of the Schneeberg Altarpiece is beyond dispute. Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 298; Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33. 6. See Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 42–46; Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 299; Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk, 80–85; Herbert von Hintzenstein, Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Altarbilder aus der Reformationszeit, 3d ed. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1980), 94–98; and especially Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33–53, on Schneeberg, for a full formal description and detailed reproductions. 7. Heinrich Magirius calls the Crucifixion the “feast day side” (Festtagsseite) and the Law and Gospel panels the “everyday side” (Alltagsseite). Magirius, Schneeberg St. Wolfgang (Passau: Kunstverlag Weick, 1996), 20–21. Cf. Magirius et al., “Cranachal-

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tar,” 299; Frank Meinel, Der Lucas Cranach Altar zu Schneeberg (Schneeberg: Verlag Bergstraße, 1996), 36, 41–60. 8. Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 303, 305; cf. FR, Cat. 379. Meinel, in Altar zu Schneeberg (75), and Magirius et al., in “Cranachaltar” (299), provide a reproduction of the destroyed Raising of the Dead panel (reproductions of the panel are not available). 9. John Dillenberger describes the Schneeberg Altarpiece briefly in Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 101–2. 10. Restoration of the altarpiece began in 1960, and it was returned to the church in Schneeberg in June 1996 (Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 305). I am grateful to Christine Kelm, restorer of the Schneeberg Altarpiece in Dresden. Her insights in our discussion of the altar (October 23, 1995) and her assistance with sources and bibliography have been invaluable. 11. Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag, is a general history. Further scholarly sources include Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 1–31; Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg; and Klaus Kratzsch, Bergstädte des Erzgebirges: Städtebau und Kunst zur Zeit der Reformation (Munich and Zurich: Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 1972). Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk, is the oldest and most complete source. The entire text is dedicated to Schneeberg’s history, from art to theology to weather patterns. 12. What is known about the Schneeberg Altarpiece and Cranach’s work as a whole depends heavily on Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern; see especially 2:112–22. Schuchardt concludes that the Schneeberg Altarpiece is not Cranach’s work but that of his workshop (2:118–20; cf. 1:288–89). Thulin shares Schuchardt’s opinions on attribution; see his Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 36. For further discussion of attribution, see C. J. Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1843), 54, and, most recently, Ingo Sandner’s introduction to Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund: Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen, ed. Ingo Sandner, with the Wartburg-Stiftung Eisenach and the Rachhochschule Köln (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1998), 12. 13. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33–53. 14. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33–34. 15. Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag 8, 24; Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 7; Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33, 36; Schuchardt, Cranach des Aelteren, 2:121; Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 40. John Frederick’s identity is unmistakable, particularly when compared with any of Cranach’s other representations of him, for example, in the Weimar Altarpiece, 1553–55. On the similarity between John Frederick’s appearance in the Schneeberg Altarpiece and in Cranach’s other portraits, see Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 36. The identity of the other donor has caused some scholarly confusion, deriving from an erroneous identification on a plaque placed at the altar on May 23, 1650; see Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 41. The plaque identifies the donor as John the Constant (Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 2:121–22; see also Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33). Melzer perpetuated this misunderstanding when

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he also incorrectly identified the donor based on this inaccurate inscription (Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk, 82–85). The donor in question is young; John the Serious was born in 1521, so he would have been eighteen years old at the time the altarpiece was installed in 1539, approximately the same age as the donor across from John Frederick. Most importantly, if the portrait of the young man in the Schneeberg Altarpiece is compared to known portraits of John the Constant, it is clear he is not the donor, and the only other convincing candidate is John the Serious. On this, see FR, Cat. 311 A and B, 337 B, and 179 E. Cf. Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 298, and Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag, 8. 16. Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag, 6 and 8; Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 298; Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 33. Melzer, in Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk (83), explains that the retable dates from 1539, per a nowlost date once next to Cranach’s insignia. On the transportation of the Schneeberg Altarpiece to Wittenberg in April, Easter week of 1539, see the manuscripts by Peter Albinus in the Schneeberger Kollektaneenchronik (Manuscript d. 45 folio III and Manuscript d. 48 folio 142), which appear verbatim in Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 36–46 nn. 23–24, and 85 n. 15. Cf. Kratzsch, Bergstädte, 124. 17. For a discussion of the Ernestine electors’ support of Luther and their patronage of Cranach, see Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979) and Princes and Propaganda: Electoral Saxon Art of the Reformation, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 20 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992). 18. My thanks to the anonymous reader for University Press, who explained that the confessional lines between Lutheran Ernestines and Catholic Albertines blurred after 1539. Henry the Pious, who had converted to Lutheranism, took control of the Albertines and remained Lutheran. 19. Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 5, 7. In the fifteenth century, Ernst and Albrecht Wettin ruled Saxony. In 1485, the Ernestines had residences in Weimar, Wittenberg, and Torgau, and the seat of the Albertines was in Dresden. When the family split into Ernestine and Albertine factions, the territories were divided along extremely jagged lines, and smaller, independent territories, including Meissen, Naumburg, and Schönburg, were also part of Saxony according to Kratzsch, Bergstädte, 12. 20. Kratzsch, Bergstädte, 12–13. During a visit to Schneeberg in June 2001, Minister Frank Meinel introduced me to sermons written by Johann Mathesius, a student of Luther’s who became minister in Schneeberg in 1542. Mathesius used the vocabulary of the mining profession as a metaphor to instruct his congregation. 21. The division of the territory from 1485 stated that the use of local mines belonged to both lines of the ruling families, Albertine and Ernestine, but the rulership of the city was divided. Conflict ensued between the descendents, Frederick the Wise and John the Constant on the one hand, and George the Bearded on the other. In 1531, George the Bearded’s part of the city, but not his right to the mines, fell to the electors and, in 1532, to John Frederick. According to Steche and Gurlitt, it was on the occasion of John Frederick’s gaining power in Schneeberg that he and John the Serious of Coburg, who also was entitled to half of the use of the mines, commissioned the altarpiece (Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 29). In 1541, John Frederick

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visited Schneeberg, and the altars of the Rosary and of the Miners were removed (Melzer, Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk, 32; Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag, 7; Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 13). As early as 1524, papal practices were abolished; for example, no more processions took place. At that time, the Eucharist was given in both kinds, and Lutheran ministers married (Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 23). 22. Zießler, Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 8. An earlier version of the church was completed in 1478 (Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag 23, 24, and Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 30). 23. Krusche, Festschrift zum 450. Jahrestag 7, 23. Zießler claims that a Lutheran church was already established in Schneeberg as of 1534 (Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 7). Melzer describes the career of Wolffgang Krauß (priest 1509–1534, d. 1537). Krauß recorded the beginning of his career in 1509 in a Bible. After his retirement in 1534, he received 20 florins a year until his death in 1537. Krauß was the last Catholic priest in Schneeberg. Beschreibung der Bergk-Stadt Schneebergk, 202, 213. 24. Heinrich Magirius, “Zum Wiederaufbau der St. Wolfgangskirche in Schneeberg seit 1945,” in Denkmalpflege in Sachsen, 1894–1994, ed. Heinrich Magirius and Angelica Dülberg (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1997), 1:343–51, especially 344. Magirius proposes that the Schneeberg Altarpiece was conceived to contrast with the Catholic Altarpiece of the Holy Kinship commissioned by Duke Georg in 1522 in the Annenkirche in Annaberg from the Augsburger Daucher workshop. See also Meinel, Altar zu Schneeberg, 20. 25. Primary source documents in Schneeberg reveal no direct information concerning the dedication of the Schneeberg Altarpiece. Archival records from the rectory (Pfarramt) in Schneeberg record births, marriages, and deaths dating back to the late sixteenth century, but only from the years after the installation of the altarpiece in 1539. Documents in the rectory describe events in the 1530s only retrospectively. My thanks to Frau Elke Oppiz for her help deciphering the handwriting in these documents. 26. The parallels between single-panel Law and Gospel images and the version in Schneeberg are discussed in Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 44–46; Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 35–36; and Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 2:116–17. Cf. Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 300–301. On the Schneeberg Law and Gospel as the first example of this subject in a polyptych, see Jutta Krauss and Günter Schuchardt, Aller Knecht und Christi Untertan: Der Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld; Katalog der Ausstellungen zum 450 Todesjahr 1996, Wartburg und Eisenach (Eisenach: Die Stiftung, 1996), Cat. 215 A, 258. 27. On the role of the Virgin as a paradigm of grace, see Jan Wittmann, “Die Bedeutung des Marienbildes im Schaffen Cranachs” in Sandner, Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen, 169–80. 28. Steche and Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, 43. The altarpiece’s texts read: First panel, Adam: “Sie sind alle zumal sunder: und mangeln das sie sich gottes nicht rhumen mugen. Rom. III. die sunde ist des todes spies: aber das gesetz ist der sunde krafft. 1 Cor. 15.” Second panel, Death: “Das gesetz richtet nur zorn an. Rom. IIII Durchs gesetz kompt erkentnis der sunde. Rom. III. Das gesetz und alle

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Propheten: gehen bis auff Johannis zeit. Matthei XI:.” Third panel, Adam and John the Baptist: “Der gerecht lebt seines glaubens. Ro. I. Wir halten das der mensch gerecht werde durch den glauben: on des gesetzs werk. Rom. III. Sihe das ist gottes lamb: welches der welt sunde tregt. Jo.I. In der heiligung des teistes:.” Fourth panel, the Resurrected Lord: “zum gehorsam und besprengung des blutes Jesu Christi 1 Petri 1. Der tod ist verschlungen ym sieg: Tod wo ist dein spies Helle wo ist dein sieg. Gott aber sey danck: der uns den sieg gibt: durch Jhesum christum unsern Herrn. 1 Cor. 15.” Magirius et al. correctly note that these citations are not in Lutherdeutsch but, rather, are in a local dialect of German (“Cranachaltar,” 300). 29. For full and explicit definition and discussion of the retable, see Jof. Braun, “Altarretabel (kath.),” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1937–1987), vol. 1, cols. 529–64; Helmuth Eggert, “Altarretabel (prot.),” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, cols. 565–602; “Altar-Altar Apparatus” and “Altarpiece,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Reese Strayer (New York: Scribner, 1982). On the triptych in early-Netherlandish painting, see Antje Maria Neuner, Das Triptychon in der frühen altniederländischen Malerei Bildsprache und Aussagekraft einer Kompositionsform, Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 28, vol. 242 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995). For a taxonomic definition of the altarpiece and religious images in general, see Martin Kemp’s introduction to The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, ed. Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1–20. On the altarpiece in northern Europe, see Barbara Lane, The Altar and Altarpiece (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), and Carol J. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). See also Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages, translation by Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer of Das Bild und Sein Publikum (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990), 23 and n. 39. See also Lynn Jacobs’s superb article “The Triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000): 1009–41. 30. Bernd Roeck notes that medieval and early-modern viewers read images differently. Roeck, “Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Die historische Perspektive,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Reformatorischer Bildersturm im Kontext der europaäischen Geschichte, ed. Peter Blickle, Historische Zeitschrift, new series, vol. 33 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), 33. The premier study of historically specific perception is Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 31. Hans Georg Thümmel, “Lucas Cranach d. Ä., die Reformation und die Altgläubigen,” Kunst und Kirche 19, no 1 (2002), 55–56. 32. Here it is worth repeating Luther’s proclamation from 1522, cited in the introduction: “Here we must admit that we may have images and make images, but we must not worship them, and if they are worshipped, they should be put away and destroyed” (Martin Luther, “On Images,” Third Sermon, Tuesday after Invocavit, March 11, 1522, LW 51:82). 33. Susan Boettcher suggests that Luther portraits retain aspects of medieval convention. Boettcher, “Von der Trägheit der Memoria: Cranachs Lutheraltarbilder im

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Zusammenhang der evangelischen Luther-memoria im späten 16. Jahrhundert,” in Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, ed. Joachim Eibach and Marcus Sandl (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 68. See also Johann Michael Fritz, ed., Die bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums—Mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1997). On the adaptation of medieval art to Lutheran function, see especially Fritz, “Die bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums—Mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen,” in Fritz, Bewahrende Kraft, 9–18; Günther Wartenberg, “Bilder in den Kirchen der Wittenberger Reformation,” in Fritz, Bewahrende Kraft, 19–33; and Gottfried Seebass, “Mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelisch gewordenen Kirchen Nürnbergs,” in Fritz, Bewahrende Kraft, 34–53. 34. For a discussion of the use of the retable in sixteenth-century Reformation painting, see Walburg Törmer-Balogh, “Zur Entwicklung des protestantischen Altars in Sachsen während des 16. und beginnenden 17. Jahrhunderts: Versuch einer Typologie der Aufbaukonzepte,” in Magirius and Dülberg, Denkmalpflege in Sachsen, 2:411–36. 35. The Cranach workshop also produced individual panels of Lot and His Daughters ranging in date from 1528 to 1533. The composition of these single panels is almost exactly the same as the composition in the Schneeberg version. See FR, Cat. 204–7. 36. For a concise explanation of Luther’s insistence that the laity partake of the Eucharist in both kinds, see Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 119. Luther supported the laity receiving the chalice in numerous treatises and sermons, and especially in the Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:11–126, esp. 20–27. 37. Magirius et al. explain that these panels were visible to the congregants as they stood in a circle around the altar, a practice that was already established in the sixteenth century (“Cranachaltar,” 298–99). My thanks also to Professor Magirius for explaining, in his letter of July 5, 2000, the custom of walking around the altar. See also Meinel, Altar zu Schneeberg, 36, 72. Thanks also to Minister Meinel for his explanations, in our discussion on June 21, 2000, of sixteenth-century practice. 38. Cf. Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 299–301. 39. Two famous examples are the twelfth-century Last Judgment tympanum at the Church of Mary Magdalene at Vézélay and the fifteenth-century Last Judgment altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden at the Hospice de Beaune. 40. “Glaubensentscheidung”; see Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 301. 41. Luther uses the term “Lord’s Supper” throughout his writings. The terms “Mass” and “Eucharist” are often used generically to signify the ritual of bread and wine that occurs at a Christian altar (Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, 148). For further discussion of the relationship between the Mass and the altarpiece, see also J. J. M. Timmers, “Eucharistie,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann (Rome: Herder, 1968), vol. 1, col. 687. 42. Commentary on Psalm 111, in LW 13:375. Cf. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 34. “Wer hier Lust hätte, Tafeln auf den Altar malen zu lassen, der solle lassen das Abendmahl Christi malen” (WA, vol. 31, p. 415). Quoted in Barbara Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre vor der Reformation (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag,

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1991), 7, 151. See Hermann Oertel, “Das frühprotestantische Abendmahlsbild in Wittenberg und Dresden,” Kirche und Kunst 3 (1972): 39. See also Brigitte Riese, “Der Einfluß der Reformation auf Malerei und Graphik in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, dargestellt am Beispiel der Wittenberger Reformation” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Leipzig, 1983), 84. Magirius et al. claim that a source for the predella may be a drawing by Cranach the Younger in Berlin dating from 1535 (“Cranachaltar,” 299). 43. Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 150. 44. According to Welzel in Abendmahlsaltäre (29), the Last Supper appeared relatively rarely as the subject of an altarpiece well into the fifteenth century. Before the Reformation, the Last Supper tended to appear in a monastic context and mainly as a part of a larger narrative of the Passion of Christ, becoming familiar in monastic refectories beginning in the fourteenth century; see Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 226. In the second half of the fifteenth century the Last Supper began to appear on altars commissioned by lay brotherhoods. Italian Last Supper refectories are part of a different tradition entirely (Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 225). On representations of the Last Supper in refectories, see also Creighton E. Gilbert, “Last Suppers and Their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, ed. Charles Edward Trinkaus and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 10 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), 371–402. 45. According to a chronicle (Observationes zu Torgau) by Tilemann Stella, who was the travel companion (Reisebegleiter) of the Duke Johann Albrecht I in 1560 on a trip to Torgau, a Last Supper triptych, painted in 1544, adorned the Torgau castle chapel. See Johannes Erichsen, “Zwei Schweriner Dokumente zu Lucas Cranach,” Kunstchronik 50 (1997): 49–53; Erichsen reproduces the excerpt from Stella’s manuscript on page 51. The Dessau Altarpiece (1565) and the Kemberg Altarpiece (1565), both by Cranach the Younger, also depict the Last Supper. 46. In the Babylonian Captivity, Luther points out the three important ways in which the church holds the sacraments captive: (1) in the doctrine of transubstantiation, (2) by withholding the chalice from the laity, and (3) with the belief that the priest makes an offering or performs a good work or sacrifice when he celebrates the Mass. Luther dismissed all three of these claims as unscriptural and therefore untenable (LW 36:11–126). See also McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119–20. On the representation of transubstantiation and the power of the priest, see Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Ucello, Joos van Ghent, Piero della Francesca,” Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 1–24. See also Timothy George, “Transubstantiation,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 169–70. 47. Article 10 of the Augsburg Confession declares, “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the body and blood of Christ are really present, and are distributed to those who feed at the Lord’s Supper, and they disapprove of those teaching otherwise.” A Melanchthon Reader, trans. Ralph Keen, American University Studies Series 7, Theology and Religion, vol. 41 (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), 102. “They” refers to “the churches” (indicated in Article 1, “Of God”), that is, the Lutheran

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churches whose beliefs and practices the document defends (Melanchthon Reader, 100). 48. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 120. In the Babylonian Captivity, Luther proclaims, “You have seen that the mass is nothing else than the divine promise or testament of Christ, sealed with the sacrament of his body and blood. If that is true, you will understand that it cannot possibly be in any way a work; nobody can possibly do any thing [sic] in it, neither can it be dealt with in any other way than by faith alone. However, faith is not a work, but the lord and life all works” (LW 36:47). 49. Erwin Panofsky interprets Dürer’s Last Supper woodcut of 1523 as a Lutheran image, proposing that the relatively barren table and the prominent chalice set off by a yawning, empty space suggests Luther’s insistence that the laity receive both the bread and the chalice. Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, paperback ed. (4th ed., 1955; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 222. 50. Matt. 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; Luke 22:39–46; John 18:1. 51. See FR, 112–13, Cat. 219, for a short description of the altarpiece. Cranach’s portrait of George the Bearded is included in FR, Cat. 340 B. 52. A Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), 102. 53. FR, Cat. 183. 54. See Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–118. 55. Harbison in “Visions and Meditations” (91) succinctly states that artists managed “to find the means to visualize, subtly and fully, the chief religious ideal of the time, lay visions and meditations.” 56. See, for example, Rogier van der Weyden’s Vienna Crucifixion (c. 1440) and Bladelin Nativity (Berlin, 1452–55). 57. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 50. 58. Thulin claims the Schneeberg Crucifixion as well as other versions from the late 1530s draw upon earlier medieval models (Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 36–46 and notes 23–24). Cranach the Younger also painted a crowded-panel style Crucifixion in the Kemberg Altarpiece (1565). On Cranach’s Crucifixions of the 1530s, see also Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 299, and Günter Schade and KlausPeter Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR: Ausstellung im Alten Museum vom 26. August bis 13. November 1983 (Berlin [West]: Elefanten Press, 1983), 366, Cat. E 60, 365. Some of Cranach’s Crucifixions contemporary with Schneeberg work include the 1538 single panel in the Art Institute of Chicago (FR, Cat. 377); a panel in Madrid (FR, Cat. 377 D); the Altarpiece of the Crucifixion of the Castle in Hannover (FR, Cat. 377 E); a version in Nuremberg (Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 46 and nn. 23–25; Magirius et al., “Cranachaltar,” 299–300); and two versions in Dessau, dating from before 1537 (Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, Cat. E 58, 364–65). One of the Dessau panels was formerly in Wörlitz (Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, 364; see also FR, Cat. 377 B and C).

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59. Magirius et al. observe that the Schneeberg Crucifixion and the other Reformation-period Crucifixions are divided into sides corresponding to salvation and damnation analogous to Law and Gospel (“Cranachaltar,” 300), though this observation receives little explanation. 60. See Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, Cat. E 58. In his discussion of Cranach’s Crucifixions, Charles W. Talbot Jr. astutely remarks that despite the assembly-line workshop production, Cranach made his many versions of the same subject slightly different so that each one can claim originality. “The Interpretation of Two Paintings by Cranach in the Artist’s Late Style,” National Gallery of Art Report and Studies in the History of Art, 1967, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1968: 67–88, esp. 67–68 61. For a concise discussion of Longinus and Stephaton, see James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols, rev. ed. (New York: Icon Editions, Harper & Row, 1979), 83. On the historical juxtaposition of Longinus and Stephaton in the context of anti-Semitism, see Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern

European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 69–71, 191, 212–15.

Chapter Three

The Wittenberg Altarpiece: Communal Devotion and Identity

Whoever is inclined to put pictures on the altar ought to have the Lord’s Supper of Christ painted, with these two verses written around it in golden letters: “The gracious and merciful Lord has instituted a remembrance of his wonderful works.” Then they would stand before our eyes for our heart to contemplate them, and even our eyes, in reading, would have to thank and praise God. Since the altar is designated for the administration of the Sacrament, one could not find a better painting for it. Other pictures of God or Christ can be painted somewhere else. Martin Luther, Commentary on Psalm 1111

Lucas Cranach’s 1547 Wittenberg Altarpiece marks decisive changes in the iconography and function of public, religious art as a result of the Lutheran Reformation. Located in Wittenberg, the crucible of the Reformation, and boasting portraits of some of the most illustrious reformers, the altarpiece embodies many of the key adaptations in religious art in the context of Lutheran reform. Building on earlier scholarship, I will put forward in this chapter a three-part interpretation of this complex painting. First and most fundamentally, I will consider the ways in which the Wittenberg Altarpiece functions differently than do late-medieval Catholic altarpieces, even those with the same subject matter and triptych format. Second, I will examine how the Lutheran rituals of Baptism, Confession, and the Lord’s Supper were key elements of this functional shift. And third, I will show how the altarpiece celebrates the Wittenberg community and its distinctly Lutheran identity. The emphasis on the authority of scripture and its “correct” (that is, Lutheran) interpretation and the tendency, in both pictures and texts, to associate Luther and his followers with the apostles support the notions of functional change, redefined rituals, and confessional identity. 97

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Other scholars have also observed the themes of community, identity, and ritual in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, but they have done so either in far more general discussions of Cranach’s Reformation painting or with reference to the way the altarpiece inspired painting of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In contrast to these studies, the present discussion will address the subtle yet decisive ways the Wittenberg Altarpiece comments on and departs from retables of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Painted in shades of red, yellow, and orange, Lucas Cranach’s Wittenberg Altarpiece is the focal point of the interior of the City Church.2 The exterior panels (fig. 3.1) depict the Last Judgment, the Risen Christ, and the Old Testament stories of the Brazen Serpent and the Sacrifice of Isaac. The front panels depict a pictorial primer of Lutheran sacraments (fig. 3.2). In the left wing, Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague on the faculty at the university in Wittenberg and fellow reformer, presides over a well-attended Baptism; and in the right panel, Johannes Bugenhagen, city minister of Wittenberg, leads a Confession. The Baptism and Confession panels frame a scene of the Last Supper in the center, where the apostles sit at a round table surrounded by large windows (fig. 3.3). Christ conspicuously inserts a morsel of bread into Judas’s mouth while an apostle bearing Luther’s features turns to receive a cup of wine from a servant. In the predella (fig. 3.4), a looming, seemingly still living Christ on the Cross bisects the scene where Luther preaches from a pulpit to an attentive congregation. This discussion will begin with a summary of the painting’s historiography, followed by general comments on the representation of local figures in the retable and a brief sketch of historical context. From there, I will present some pictorial forerunners of the Wittenberg Altarpiece as an entrée into an interpretation of the picture. This discussion is organized around the parts of the altarpiece—the exterior panels, the central panel and predella, and the wings, each of which is best understood through the interlocking points of functional change, ritual, and community identity. The Wittenberg Altarpiece has received surprisingly limited scholarly attention until quite recently. Reformation scholars have observed Luther’s general influence and asserted basic associations of the painted scenes with the Lutheran sacraments. John Dillenberger’s 1999 work very briefly encapsulates generally accepted ideas about the picture.3 Much recent, and some older, scholarship has addressed the issue of Lutheran identity and community.4 Scholars have also discussed the intersection of images and identity during the Reformation specifically.5 Joseph Koerner has examined the Wittenberg Altarpiece in the context of Cranach the Younger’s late-sixteenth-century painting, paying attention to the inclusion of

Figure 3.1. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, exterior panels, 1547, panel. Photo credit: Ev. Stadtkirchengemeinde Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

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Figure 3.2. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, front panels, 1547, panel. Photo credit: Ev. Stadtkirchengemeinde Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

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Figure 3.3. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, Last Supper, 1547, panel. Photo credit: Ev. Stadtkirchengemeinde Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

sixteenth-century figures in the Last Supper and to community building.6 No discussion of the Wittenberg Altarpiece would be complete without a response to Koerner’s book The Reformation of the Image.7 Koerner’s argument may be summarized as follows: Appearing after the iconoclasm of the 1520s, and designed in accordance with a faith that was, by definition, invisible, the Wittenberg Altarpiece presents an infinite paradox. The local figures and quotidian rituals in the picture so obviously reciprocate events within the church that the altarpiece dissolves into its surroundings.8 Redundancy and

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Figure 3.4. Cranach, Wittenberg Altarpiece, predella, 1547, panel. Photo credit: Ev. Stadtkirchengemeinde Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

invisibility accommodate the wishes of the iconoclasts who removed art from this very church in the early 1520s and the faith that motivated them. The present discussion asserts my own interpretation of the Wittenberg Altarpiece in response to Koerner’s study specifically and to the historiography of the altarpiece generally. Koerner rightly sees such issues as community identity, apostolicity of the reformers, and the insistence on scriptural mandate evidenced in the image. Koerner asserts that compositional parallels with prints and book illustrations going back to the 1520s testify to the “ordinariness” of the subject, affirming the “everyday service” the picture presents.9 However, I take issue with the idea that this pictorial norm necessarily reconstitutes literal practice. I counter that similarities with earlier pictures merely tell us that compositional preferences were consistent over time; they do not necessarily tell us about what actually happened in the church, much less how often. In short, Koerner sees pictorial description, whereas I see pictorial prescription. My second disagreement with Koerner concerns the importance of iconoclasm for the meaning of the picture. I contend that the Wittenberg Altarpiece, far from receding into its surroundings and thereby making concessions to contemporary iconoclasm, clearly proclaims its theological and polemical purpose, as well as its redefined function. A comparison of the Wittenberg Altarpiece and Rogier van der Weyden’s Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, which epitomizes the sacramental circumstances that the Wittenberg Altarpiece subverts, will make clear the ways in which the altarpiece differs from earlier altarpieces and asserts its own devotional role. Reformation scholars have tended to characterize the Wittenberg Altarpiece, like Cranach’s earlier Lutheran paintings, as a pictorial analog of textual theology. I cannot deny the decisive influence of Lutheran thought on Cranach’s painting, but here I emphasize the ways the picture itself comments

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on and perpetuates Lutheran practice, even if the meaning of the picture may seem inconsistent with related texts.10 Far from passively mirroring Luther’s doctrine, the picture renders its own version of ideal of practice and belief. Historically, Cranach scholars have been concerned with connoisseurship, and many scholars agree that the Wittenberg Altarpiece combines the efforts of Cranach the Elder with significant contributions by Cranach the Younger and other assistants. Such collaborative efforts were typical of Cranach’s large and efficient workshop.11 Throughout this discussion, I refer to Cranach as the artist because the altarpiece almost certainly represents the master’s designs and ideas, even if assistants or the younger Cranach in fact executed portions of the picture.12 Scholars accept that the city of Wittenberg commissioned the retable and that it was installed on the altar in April 1547. The document recording Cranach’s payment was discovered in 1884 but has been lost since 1967.13 Other major Lutheran altarpieces during the career of Cranach the Elder were extended projects completed over the course of many years.14 The large and complex Wittenberg Altarpiece is the conceptual product of the months or years before the traditional date of installation.

THE REFORMERS IN THE WITTENBERG ALTARPIECE AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT As we saw in the previous chapter, the retable was the predominant form of monumental public painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and through adaptations in iconography and function, it accommodated the demands of Lutheran theology and devotional practice. The Wittenberg Altarpiece is connected to earlier traditions by its retable format, but the presence of major reformers and figures representative of the Wittenberg community within the image, as well as the changes in the painting’s use and function, offset these connections.15 Underpinning new pictorial function is the radically new role assigned the human figures. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, human figures were typically, though not exclusively, representations of donors, but the Wittenberg Altarpiece presents identifiable people as representatives of the community rather than as specific patrons. Though Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melanchthon are the only figures who may be clearly identified, others bear a general resemblance to local people through clothing, gesture, and action.16 These generic similarities create an impression of familiarity and inclusiveness, in contrast to individual donors in earlier altarpieces, who are portrayed experiencing very private, exclusive visions. Beholders of the

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Wittenberg Altarpiece encountered neither extravagantly suffering martyrs nor gentle saints offering intercession nor private donors showcasing their piety, but members of their own community. This interchange between viewer and depicted figures ensures that the Wittenberg Altarpiece repels any temptation to venerate the painted figures or the object itself.17 The installation of the Wittenberg Altarpiece marks a traumatic time in the city’s history. Catholic imperial troops had defeated Elector John Frederick and his Protestant allies in the humiliating Battle of Mühlberg. After the Schmalkaldic League was defeated by Catholic forces under Charles V, the territory was divided and John Frederick imprisoned. The Ernestine territory, including the University of Wittenberg, came into Albertine control. The Ernestines in turn founded their own university in Jena, officially chartered in 1558. Under Melanchthon’s guidance, Lutheran practice in Wittenberg became more tolerant of certain aspects of Catholic practice. In an agreement known as the Leipzig Interim, certain Catholic “external matters,” or adiaphora, were reinstated. At the same time, the Ernestines in Jena defined themselves as Gnesiolutherans, or true or genuine Lutherans, insisting that they were Luther’s genuine followers. The Gnesiolutherans accused Melanchthon and other moderates, the Philippists, of capitulating to the pope and the emperor.18 The installation of the altarpiece in 1547 assumes greater significance in the aftermath of the reformer’s death and on the eve of military defeat and factionalism.19 Moreover, the 1540s were a time when Protestant reformers focused on defining their constituents as distinct religious communities.20 This point returns us to Koerner’s interpretation of the picture as an image of daily rituals so unremarkable they dissolve into their surroundings. In the context of Luther’s death and the military defeat and imprisonment of his princely defender, the altarpiece presents an image of a cohesive, clearly defined community that in fact was threatened by conflicting theologies. In the fragile political circumstances at the time of its installation, the altarpiece represented a vulnerable and unstable normalcy.21 The production of the altarpiece, of course, began long before anyone could have known when Luther would die or the that the elector would lose his territory. Nonetheless, its installation in 1547 assumed greater significance in the aftermath of these events and the factionalism that ensued.

WITTENBERG ALTARPIECE EXTERIOR PANELS The exterior panels (fig. 3.1), including the Last Judgment in the predella, the Risen Christ in the center, and the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Brazen Serpent

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on the left and right wings, respectively, evolved out of the fundamentals of Law and Gospel (see figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The Brazen Serpent (Num. 21:6–9) is a loaded motif that came to exemplify a particularly Lutheran notion of grace. According to scripture, God sent serpents to punish the Israelites fleeing from Egypt because they spoke (murmured) against him and Moses. To be rescued from the plague of serpents, the Israelites needed to look at the serpent Moses held before them on a T-shaped cross and believe they would be saved. For Lutherans, this Old Testament story demonstrated a particular idea about faith and grace. In accordance with Christian typological tradition, in which this story was a type for, or foretold, the Crucifixion, in the earliest versions of Law and Gospel, Cranach placed the Brazen Serpent on the law side.22 In Cranach’s later work, however, the motif migrated to the gospel side. Under the Lutheran model of salvation, the meaning of the story shifted so that it was no longer seen as an event that predicted the Crucifixion; rather, it became an Old Testament exemplar of Lutheran concepts of faith and grace. Like the Brazen Serpent, the Sacrifice of Isaac (Gen. 22:1–14), on the opposite wing, is also an Old Testament story reconfigured to support Lutheran notions of how action follows belief. The Sacrifice of Isaac narrates God’s commandment to Abraham to sacrifice his only son as a test of his faith. The story could be read as a tale of obedience and sacrifice in response to a divine command, the ultimate good work. Alternatively, it could also be seen as an admonishment to the believer to recognize that action comes from faith. Cranach resolves this dilemma and argues for the latter by placing the story in proximity to what was, by 1547, the indisputably Lutheran Old Testament reading of the story of the Brazen Serpent. Like the story of the Brazen Serpent, the Sacrifice of Isaac also becomes a model of justification by faith. Abraham abandoned himself to belief in God’s mercy, even though it meant sacrificing his own son; and God’s mercy was ultimately revealed when God spared Isaac after all. Abraham did not earn divine favor by following a commandment; instead, his faith in God prepared him to receive God’s command in a state of grace-filled readiness.23 This interpretation of the story defines the Lutheran idea of grace as the point of departure for all good action, not as the reward for fulfilling a commandment. In the Wittenberg Altarpiece, the images of the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Brazen Serpent create a new environment for the Last Judgment.24 In the risen Christ image on the central panel, Christ appears above the figures of death and the devil, as he does in the law side of Law and Gospel. As in the Law and Gospel panels, judgment no longer appraises individual actions but, rather, grants salvation to the faithful, just as Abraham in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac and as the Israelites in the desert received salvation for their faith. If the viewer follows the examples of these two Old Testament stories,

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she or he can face the Last Judgment knowing that salvation is at hand. These exterior panels become a primer on the Lutheran relationship between gospel and law and prepare the viewer to participate in the sacraments, depicted on the front of the retable, in the right spirit.

WITTENBERG ALTARPIECE FRONT PANELS: RESHAPING THE SACRAMENTS The move from the exterior to the interior of the Wittenberg Altarpiece brings us to the definition of sacraments, “the most solemn of the rituals whereby the medieval Church claimed to mediate divine grace reliably and predictably to the believer.”25 Luther formulated his major attack against the seven traditional Catholic sacraments in his foundational Babylonian Captivity. Sacraments are the junction of doctrine and practice and therefore rich indicators of the actual performance of ritual. In the early 1520s, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were considered sacraments, as was Confession, albeit in a qualified form.26 (For clarity in this discussion, I will use the word “Mass” to refer to the Catholic rite, and “the Lord’s Supper” to refer to the Lutheran rite.) By the 1540s, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper maintained their sacramental status, and Confession remained an important practice but was no longer a sacrament.27 The seven Catholic sacraments of Baptism, Confession, Confirmation, Communion, Holy Orders, Marriage, and Last Rites are portrayed in Rogier van der Weyden’s Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments (1453–55; now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp; fig. 3.5).28 As noted above, the Seven Sacraments exemplifies the sacramental system the Wittenberg Altarpiece explicitly rejects. This is not to suggest that the Wittenberg Altarpiece responds directly to the Seven Sacraments; rather, Cranach’s altarpiece challenges and inverts the theology and pictorial conventions the Seven Sacraments epitomizes. The patron of the Seven Sacraments was probably Jean Chevrot, the bishop of Tournai. The retable’s likely original location was the Saint Anthony chapel, which Chevrot also founded, in the Church of Saint Hippolytus in Poligny, Chevrot’s hometown.29 Even if the panel supports the agenda of the specific patron, it simultaneously perpetuates the priorities of the institutional church. All the sacraments occur concurrently in the continuous space of a church interior. The left panel displays the rituals of Baptism, Confirmation, and Confession; on the right are Holy Orders, Marriage, and Last Rites. The bishop of Tournai himself appears in the left wing, performing the rite of Confirmation. In the background of the central panel a priest stands before a

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Figure 3.5. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, 1445-50, panel. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, N.Y.

carved retable, adorned with a conspicuous figure of the Virgin Mary, as he celebrates the Mass with his back to the congregation and viewer (fig. 3.6). The scene highlights the crucial moment when the priest elevates the host, uttering the Latin phrase “Hoc est corpus meum” (This is my body) from Matthew 26:26.30 In the foreground of the central panel, an enormous Cross soars up to the lofty heights of the vaulted ceiling.31 No carved or painted Crucifix, this is the literal crucified Christ; even the traditional mourners are present. The literal Cross links the ritual of bread and wine with Christ’s physical presence, his body and blood. Specifically, this scene supports the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Raised to the level of official doctrine at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, transubstantiation asserts that the priest’s recitation of “Hoc est corpus meum” and the elevation of the host transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in fact if not in form.32 The term “transubstantiation” refers back to the Aristotelian distinction between substance (the essential nature) and accidents (the outward

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Figure 3.6. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, detail of elevation, 1445-50, panel. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, N.Y.

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appearance). In transubstantiation, the accidents of bread and wine remain, while their substance becomes the body and blood.33 One motivation for the bishop of Tournai to enlist van der Weyden’s services was to defend the ecclesiastical side of Christianity, which contrasted strongly with the private, personal, and largely extra-ecclesiastical spiritual activities of much of the laity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. To that end, the composition asserts the critical role of the clergy in the Mass and, ultimately, in salvation itself.34 The priest’s turned back and position deep in the central aisle remove him from the beholder, while other formal devices further assert that he is both essential and apart. The perspective pulls the viewer’s eye toward the altar at the center of the triptych, yet at the same time, the priest remains physically remote and anonymous, a relatively small figure in the rear of a complex composition. These compositional factors render the priest indispensable yet removed. The lay Christian probably confessed once each year and took Communion three times a year at most.35 On those occasions, they took only the bread— Communion in one kind—and not the wine, which was reserved for the clergy. In 1415, withholding the chalice became official doctrine, although this had been the de facto practice since the twelfth century.36 Denying the laity the chalice reinforced the clergy’s exclusive right to perform the ritual as well as to the privilege of participating fully. In the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), seeing the host was the vehicle of grace, while receiving the host was not crucial. Some believers would therefore try to squeeze multiple viewings of the host into a single day, moving from one church to the next. Witnessing multiple masses was a good work providing remission of sins.37 For Luther, transubstantiation, withholding the chalice from the laity, and the belief that the priest performed a good work or sacrifice in the Mass were unscriptural and therefore indefensible.38 The central panel and predella in the Wittenberg Altarpiece underscore Luther’s objections to these ubiquitous practices and use them to propose an ideal Lutheran form of the Lord’s Supper. The Wittenberg Altarpiece becomes a refutation of the doctrine the Seven Sacraments promulgates.

THE CENTRAL PANEL AND PREDELLA: RITUAL AND COMMUNITY In the Wittenberg central panel, Christ sits at a round table, John sleeping cozily in his lap, while the other apostles talk, gesture, and eat. One apostle, with Luther’s features, extends his hand to receive the chalice, while Christ

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offers Judas the morsel (fig. 3.3). The figures sit at a table close to the viewer, their facial expressions legible, in clear contrast to the turned back of the officiating priest in the Seven Sacraments. Rather than signifying priestly ritual, the Wittenberg Last Supper highlights elements of biblical narrative. The first is Luther taking the chalice, and the second is Judas receiving the morsel. After a quick sketch of the history and sources of the Last Supper retable, I will explore the meaning of both these elements. The story of the Last Supper is recounted in all four of the Gospels. Biblical accounts of the Last Supper offer many possibilities for pictorial representation, and artists have highlighted both narrative and sacramental aspects, depending on intended display and function.39 The Last Supper seems an utterly reasonable, even axiomatic subject for the central panel of an altarpiece, the ideal backdrop for the ingestion of the body and blood, mirroring Christ’s example.40 Surprisingly, however, there exists no strong pre-Reformation tradition of Last Supper altarpieces.41 Before the Reformation, the Last Supper more typically appeared in a monastic context, as a part of a larger narrative of the Passion, or it adorned the wall of monastic refectories.42 One of the few painted Last Supper retables is Dirk Bouts’s Louvain Altarpiece (1464–67).43 An example of a pre-Reformation German Last Supper carved retable is Tilman Riemenschneider’s exquisite Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, begun in 1499. Neither Bouts’s nor Riemenschneider’s retables occupy high altars. The Last Supper did not become the subject of a retable on a high altar until the first decade of the sixteenth century.44 Notwithstanding Luther’s stated preference for the Last Supper as the subject of an altarpiece, its inclusion is not characteristic of Lutheran retables either.45 Only a few sixteenth-century Lutheran Last Supper retables exist, many of them produced after the Wittenberg Altarpiece.46 The earliest extant Lutheran Last Supper retable dates from 1537 (ten years before Wittenberg) and is in the Spitalkirche in Dinkelsbühl. This altarpiece bears only the text of the Last Supper—no pictures, just the words from the Bible—on the central panel and has the text of the Ten Commandments on either side.47 According to one scholar, the Wittenberg Altarpiece is the only example of a Last Supper integrated into a sacramental cycle.48 The image of Luther and his chalice defends a bedrock issue for Lutheran practice: the lay Eucharist in both kinds.49 For Luther, the Lord’s Supper was meant for the whole community of believers, and his prominent acceptance of the chalice insists on this point. Earlier Last Suppers, in keeping with contemporary theology, sometimes de-emphasized the chalice to the point of omitting it entirely, a fact that evinces the polemical significance of its inclusion in Wittenberg and in later Lutheran painting.50

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Luther receives the chalice neither as an officiating priest nor even as an Augustinian monk, his earlier vocation, but as the layperson Junker Jörg, the identity he assumed after the 1521 Diet of Worms when he entered into protective custody under Frederick the Wise. Luther’s youngish face and full beard immediately recollect any of Cranach’s panels or prints of Junker Jörg (fig. 3.7). Luther twists his body away from the other figures, making sure the beholder sees and recognizes his face. Hidden away at the Wartburg, Luther became a hero and was seen as a brave defender of Christian truth. In both the Wittenberg central panel and in earlier representations, Luther wears a long, thick mustache with loops at the ends, a puffy beard, and longish, unruly hair curling around the ears. Perhaps only a few members of the congregation personally remembered Junker Jörg and the events of the early 1520s, but any viewer who had ever seen Luther preach, as the members of the Wittenberg congregation had, would have recognized his features and his layperson’s guise.51 The depiction of Luther as a layperson conveys the idea of lay administration and full participation in a practice historically reserved for the clergy. Depicting Luther as the young rebel on the run from the Catholic authorities, defending the faith against the pope, whom he himself equated with the anti-Christ and his minions, helped create a myth of shared history and of collective struggle, two essential ingredients of a cohesive community.52 All members of the community in the Wittenberg Altarpiece are not presented as equal; Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen are differentiated from the other figures as leaders of the community, and theirs are the only certain portraits. Yet the stark separation between laity and clergy, represented, for example, in the Seven Sacraments, is missing.53 Despite vocational differences, laity and clergy were all allowed to marry, were equally in need of grace, and were members of the same community, even if their roles within that community were different.54 Ultimately, whether or not lay and clerical Lutherans in fact felt themselves part of the same community is less important to this discussion than the fact that the Wittenberg Altarpiece proposes that unity as an ideal. The Wittenberg Last Supper highlights the Lutheran Eucharist in both kinds and its concomitant assertion of community. The Wittenberg central panel also emphasizes the identification of Judas as Christ’s betrayer. Judas receives the morsel, seemingly by force, his teeth clenching bitterly around the morsel. The violent insertion of the morsel and Judas’s almost canine mouth highlight his treachery. This visual insistence on Judas as evildoer emphasizes the drama of the revelation of the betrayer—not simply that Christ will be betrayed, but disclosing the betrayer’s actual identity. The morsel

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Cranach, Luther as Junker Jörg, engraving. Photo credit: Warburg Insti-

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forced into Judas’s mouth points to the betrayer in a way that most closely resembles the text of John 13:26–27: Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

The source in John is not surprising, as it was Luther’s favorite of the four Gospels.55 Other compositional features call attention to Judas. He wears a sulfurous yellow robe, which sets off the bright red stockings and jersey of the servant offering wine to Luther, creating a dialog of warm colors, not just emphasizing the main points of this telling of the story but also connecting them. Judas’s robe and red hair set him apart from the more muted colors of the other figures.56 He is also noticeable because he is moving away from the table, removing himself from the community. His fully visible foot conspicuously crosses Christ’s foot, and his whole body turns, heading out of the composition. His position within the composition follows the text of John, which continues: “So, after receiving the morsel, he immediately went out; and it was night” (John 13:30). Not only does Judas isolate himself, but his departure underscores the cohesiveness of the other members of the community who remain. The City Church in Wittenberg was the heart of the Lutheran community, where Luther preached over three thousand sermons—about one hundred annually for thirty-three years—from the original, sixteenth-century pulpit depicted in the Wittenberg predella.57 The fact that this pictorial clarification of specific doctrine sits at the high altar of the church where lay Wittenbergers came to hear sermons and worship points to the crucial relationship between the retable and the community in Wittenberg. Believers who came to worship were instructed verbally and visually. The predella of the Wittenberg Altarpiece reinforces the proclamations of community and ritual of the central panel. In the predella, Luther stands and preaches to a congregation, a Bible resting on his pulpit. The congregation sits in an austere church interior, listening attentively. With his hand in the posture of blessing (fig. 3.4), Luther gestures toward Christ on the Cross, painted to the same scale as the other figures.58 Scholars have postulated specific identities for some of the assembled figures: Katharina Luther, (née Katharina von Bora) is present with her infant in her lap. The young woman behind her is Luther’s deceased daughter Magdalena; the servant proffering the cup of wine to Luther in the central panel is Cranach the Younger.59 Koerner, building on an observation by Thulin, proposes that the older,

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bearded man standing slightly apart from the crowd is Cranach himself. Koerner believes the figure’s vertical alignment with Christ at the table above not only identifies him as the artist but also defends the painting as his particular vision. Indeed, Cranach was seventy-five years old in 1547, about the apparent age of the man portrayed.60 The portraits of Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melanchthon are unmistakable. The other faces are so generalized that no positive identification is possible, regardless of how strategic their placement. Less important than the specific identities of the figures is their general resemblance to sixteenth-century Wittenbergers, which would suffice to make viewers look twice and recognize similarities between the depicted figures and themselves. Their presence, as true portraits or generic resemblances, is a strategy to help viewers see themselves in the rituals being performed before them, reinforcing Luther’s message of salvation for all who model their actions on those represented in the Wittenberg Altarpiece. The presence of local people in the predella of this public altarpiece posits a very particular relationship between image and viewer. The figures in the predella who listen attentively to Luther create an attainable ideal for the beholders to imitate, a reflection of an idealized, pious, attentive community. This reflexive relationship establishes a paradigm for viewer response. Most fundamentally, the people in the predella (except, of course, Christ) are not holy figures; there exists no risk of idolatry, of worshipping the individual figures, much less the object itself. The community of attentive Wittenbergers in the predella is not a holy vision or the issue of pious meditation or discipline. The painted figures and the beholder confront one another on equal ground, literally in equal space: the City Church in Wittenberg. Luther as Junker Jörg in the central panel and the predella bundle three historical periods: the early first century, a period of time around 1521, and 1547. This triple reference associates the Wittenberg community with the biblical past, with the (probably romanticized) birth of the Reformation, and with the 1547 present. Community embraces laity and clergy in shared ritual, uniting past and present.61 This junction of past and present brings us to the roles of scripture and the reformers’ apostolicity in the Wittenberg Altarpiece. What follows will explicate each these interlocking ideas with reference to the central panel and predella.

THE CENTRAL PANEL AND PREDELLA: RITUAL, SCRIPTURE, AND APOSTOLICITY The many differing priorities exemplified in the works of van der Weyden and Cranach come down to one fundamental distinction: the authority of

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scripture versus the authority of tradition.62 Van der Weyden’s central panel thematizes a practice, with all its choreographed actions and systematic exclusions, based on the doctrine of transubstantiation. Significantly, the banderole above the officiating priest contains an excerpt from De sacramentis, by the church father Ambrose, asserting the priest’s role in the transformation of the bread.63 Cranach’s central panel, in contrast, purports to derive directly from scripture, though, of course, any image or textual commentary contributes additional ideas and interpretations, and the text beneath the Risen Christ comes from the Bible (from Matthew 28), where Christ commends his followers to baptize and make disciples.64 For Luther, scripture is the clear, authoritative Word of God, and his theology did not so much interpret scripture as reveal the truth it contained.65 Those who disagreed with him were not simply repudiating his theology but rejecting God’s divine word. Moreover, Luther rejected traditional or extrascriptural theology.66 Tension between scripture and tradition is an old issue, but it became keenly divisive during the Reformation.67 The salvation the Wittenberg Altarpiece advertises is inseparable from Luther’s conviction that his theology represented the essence of scripture itself. Visual cues alluding to community, discussed above, simultaneously signify the scripturally grounded theology at the community’s core. Not only does the Last Supper in the central panel refer to a scriptural source for the Lord’s Supper, but the very uniqueness of its use in an altarpiece further accentuates its scriptural origins. Other biblical passages, for instance the Crucifixion, also pertain to the Lord’s Supper, but the Last Supper stands out because it carries no strong pictorial legacy in the format of an altarpiece. Earlier artists had obviously painted biblical subjects, but stories of saints or subjects based on the Golden Legend or other nonscriptural sources were equally prominent. Luther’s very presence insists on the primacy of scripture in sixteenth-century Lutheran practice. As neither donor nor holy figure, the reformer attending the Last Supper preaches the word as a link between past and present. A corollary of the Wittenberg Altarpiece’s foundation in scripture is the idea that Luther and the other reformers were de facto sixteenth-century apostles.68 The presence of sixteenth-century figures at the Last Supper fastens the proceedings in Wittenberg to the practices of the apostles themselves. Surely this dramatic and insistent association of past and present emphasizes the community’s ideal of itself rather than what Koerner sees as near disappearance in overly familiar daily practice. The predella further indicates Luther’s apostolicity. With his Bible and congregation before him, he preaches the Word, filtered only through his scripturally grounded theology. He also points emphatically to Christ in the

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predella, recalling John the Baptist, the last prophet, proclaiming “Behold the Lamb of God.”69 Luther’s certainty that his theology revealed God’s truth was so profound that he probably believed himself to be a prophet.70 Christ in the Wittenberg predella is still alive, his eyes downcast but opened, his lips parted as if in speech. Just as Luther reaches back in time to attend the Last Supper, Christ leaps forward to Reformation Wittenberg to be present among sixteenth-century believers. This living Christ defends the Lutheran idea of Christ’s presence wherever the Gospel is properly preached.71 In contrast to the living Christ in Wittenberg, the predella, or Sarg (“tomb” in German), is usually a place for the dead Christ. A famous example is Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1515), in which Christ’s grisly corpse lies supine. The living Christ in Wittenberg literally subverts tradition, turning it ninety degrees. The dead, horizontal Christ is now vertical and alive, rejecting pictorial tradition and defining the Wittenberg community. Apostolicity, adherence to scripture, and the presence of the living Christ combine to support a basic Lutheran notion: the real, physical presence of Christ in the sacrament.72 Luther’s defense of the real presence rejects transubstantiation for multiple reasons: Transubstantiation separated clergy from laity; it could claim no scriptural mandate; it attempted to justify rationally the Eucharist, which is a miracle, a question of faith.73 Rather than rational explanation and nonscriptural concepts, Luther emphasized the critical role of faith: “For my part, if I cannot fathom how the bread is the body of Christ, yet I will take my reason captive to the obedience of Christ, and clinging simply to his words, firmly believe not only that the body of Christ is in the bread, but that the bread is the body of Christ.”74 With its rejection of transubstantiation and simultaneous assertion of the real presence, the Wittenberg Altarpiece explicitly rejects the theological underpinnings and functions of earlier art. In both the Seven Sacraments and the Wittenberg Altarpiece, specific words relate to the presence of divinity. But in Wittenberg, only scripture and its proper understanding transport Christ to the believers’ midst. Christ’s appearance in the very center of the predella, between the piously attentive congregation and Luther preaching from his opened Bible, empirically demonstrates the association of the physical presence with the preaching of the Word. The force of scripture magnetically holds the congregation together. The Bible has trumped extrascriptural doctrine. Luther’s conviction that his understanding of scripture was accurate justifies his disagreement with other Protestants who denied Christ’s physical presence in the Eucharist. Luther and other reformers could agree on other points, but the real presence proved to be an insurmountable hurdle.75 Luther

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disagreed most vehemently with Huldrych Zwingli and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. Zwingli denied the idea of Christ’s physical presence, contending that Christ was present only in the hearts of the believers. According to Zwingli, “Hoc est corpus meum” meant not “This is my body” but rather “This signifies or represents my body” (emphasis mine); in other words, Christ’s words are not to be taken literally.76 Karlstadt also denied Christ’s presence in the bread and wine, asserting that Christ pointed to himself, not to the bread, when he said “This is my body” (emphasis mine).77 In adamant contrast, Luther advocated taking “This is my body” literally. He declared, “It is much more certain and much safer to stay with the words and the simple meaning, for this is the true pasture and home of all the spirits.”78 Christ’s appearance in both the central panel and predella, among the apostles and sixteenth-century believers, underscores the claims of transparency between biblical meaning and sixteenth-century ritual. Intervening millennia and accumulated extrascriptural traditions had not corrupted the practices of this idealized community. Luther’s emphatic presence as both leader and member of the community, together with Christ, the opened Bible, and local people, block any temptation to think in antiquated categories.

THE WINGS Baptism and Confession appear on the wings of the Wittenberg Altarpiece, formally and theologically peripheral to the Lord’s Supper. Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, presented here as Lutheranism’s answer to John the Baptist and Peter, perform a baptism and hear a confession, respectively.79 Functional differences from earlier painting, redefined ritual, and community identity based on scripture and apostolicity are paramount here and throughout the monument. Baptism In the left panel, Melanchthon, a ferocious opponent of Anabaptism, presides over a baptism underway in a church interior.80 Four other standing figures form a circle around the baptismal font, while a group of women fills the foreground. Standing to Melanchthon’s left, a bearded figure also attends, holding an open book. Luther explained that Baptism was “the first sacrament and the foundation of all the others, without which none of the others can be received.”81 This rite allowed the newborn into the community of Christians and ultimately admitted the new member to the Lord’s Supper.82 Most important for Luther,

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Baptism conferred faith upon the baptized.83 In Catholic practice Baptism required future supplemental good works. For Zwingli, Baptism merely symbolized inclusion in a community, but it itself bestowed no faith.84 Anabaptist practice rejected infant Baptism entirely and insisted that only consenting adults could properly be baptized. But for Luther, Baptism was a vehicle of faith, must be performed on infants, and was sufficient on its own to ensure salvation, provided the individual Christian recognized it as such. The depiction of infant Baptism in Wittenberg takes issue most explicitly with Anabaptists, Protestants who recognized only adult Baptism.85 For Luther, adult Baptism was scripturally indefensible. He explained in Concerning Rebaptism that the Anabaptists misunderstand Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”86 For Luther, “Whoever believes” does not force us to ascertain whether or not faith is present or absent. He explains rather obliquely: True, one should add faith to baptism. But we are not to base baptism on faith. There is quite a difference between having faith, on the one hand, and depending on one’s faith and making baptism depend on faith, on the other. Whoever allows himself to be baptized on the strength of his faith, is not only uncertain, but also an idolator who denies Christ.87

Luther maintained the practice of infant Baptism for multiple reasons. First, the infant’s faith comes through the faith of those who perform the Baptism. Second, faith is powerful. “For the Word of God is powerful enough, when uttered, to change even a godless heart, which is no less unresponsive and helpless than any infant.”88 Third, children and adults alike received faith passively.89 Fourth, specific recall is unnecessary; other people present may remember on the infant’s behalf.90 Fifth, “the custom has been to baptize children,” and nothing in scripture contends that children cannot or do not believe.91 Luther’s defense of infant Baptism is supported in Cranach’s single panels of Christ Blessing the Children,92 a subject that emerged during the Reformation. Like the Baptism wing in Wittenberg, the panels of Christ Blessing the Children may have been created to oppose Anabaptism. Based on “right” understanding of scripture, Baptism in the Wittenberg Altarpiece choreographs the arrival of the infant into the community.93 In the painting, Melanchthon, who composed the Augsburg Confession and whose beliefs around 1547 were still generally supportive of Luther’s, is prominent and central.94 Formally, the composition reaches out to the viewers, summoning them to present their infants to be baptized. The beckoning eye of a woman on the left entreats the viewer to step into the group and close the circle. The general fa-

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miliarity of the figures holds the viewer’s attention and invites the believer into the community of familiar-seeming people. The man holding the opened Bible presents a text assuring that scripture itself sanctions what we behold. The text declares, “Whoever believes and is baptized, he will be blessed; but whoever does not believe, he will be damned.”95 Moving from left to right, Baptism is the first panel the beholder “reads” en route to the Lord’s Supper and Confession.96 Visually and theologically, the Baptism panel initiates salvation by faith alone, an idea pertinent to the youngest members of the community. Like a good work in a Lutheran context, Baptism demonstrates what God has done, not what pious actions the believers have accomplished. Confession While the Baptism panel criticizes Anabaptist practice, the Confession panel contests Catholic practice. The Wittenberg Confession takes a space consistent, if not continuous, with the Baptism on the other side of the Last Supper.97 Placing Baptism and Confession within a similar space creates a visual bridge, explicating the mutually reinforcing relationship between these two practices.98 The man presiding over the Confession in the Wittenberg Altarpiece is Johannes Bugenhagen, or Dr. Pommer, as he was called after his hometown in Pomerania. Bugenhagen was a university professor and served as Stadtpfarer (city parish pastor) in the City Church, where he was well liked, though he was famously long-winded. Beyond his professional association with Luther, he was also his lifelong friend. He officiated at Luther’s wedding and delivered the eulogy at Luther’s funeral. Bugenhagen followed Luther’s teachings meticulously and shared his commitment to the authority of scripture. Bugenhagen’s loyalty to Luther personally and theologically surely influenced the reformer’s decision to appoint him city minister in 1523, and Bugenhagen in turn put Luther’s theological ideas into institutional practice, overseeing the formation of Lutheran churches throughout northern Germany and in Denmark.99 In the Confession panel, Bugenhagen stands in a group of figures holding a key in each hand. With his right hand he taps the head of a kneeling man whose eyes look mildly before him. On the other side of the panel, a colorfully dressed man with a long beard and sneering expression, with his hands bound in front of him by a piece of brown string or leather, turns away from Bugenhagen. For the pre-Reformation Catholic, Baptism removed original sin, but subsequent sins required Confession and penance to return the believer to a state

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of grace. Sins were confessed in private to a priest at least once a year, generally at Lent, in preparation for receiving the Eucharist, also a yearly event for many believers.100 The church had a supply of extra merit, and through Confession and good deeds, the Christian could harness this surplus to aid the salvation of her or his soul, or even to rescue a soul from purgatory.101 Sin, penance, and inevitable further transgression became a pattern of losing and recovering grace. Luther rejected the Catholic penitential cycle, especially acts of penance; Confession was decidedly not the occasion for lost grace to be restored.102 Instead, Luther believed its purpose was to remind the believer of Baptism and the lifelong divine grace it promised. Although Luther favored preserving Confession, even if it did not possess the same scriptural mandate as the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, he insisted upon specific changes.103 In the third section of The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics, Luther described three kinds of confession. The first is a confession before God, that every human being is born in sin and is a sinner. This confession “is commanded and necessary and obligatory upon everybody. But no one makes it except the Christians.”104 This first type of confession means recognizing the promise of grace.105 The second type of confession is made to one’s neighbor and signifies the social obligations among members of a community. Implicit is a sense of responsibility to others that Luther characterizes as exclusively Christian.106 The third type of confession is private, and most important, optional. In The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics, Luther explains private confession by supposing that the first types are public: “If those other two kinds of confession take place in public, one is not obliged to make this last kind.”107 Private confession was the bedrock of the Catholic rite, but for Luther, it was an elective exercise. Sin is a basic part of being human, and we may not even recognize a sin as such.108 Tallying sins confessed and penance performed were extraneous exercises; the Almighty requires no laundry list. Private confession, however, may serve other functions. It may soothe a guilt-ridden conscience or create an opportunity for religious instruction and coaching “for the simple, childlike people” who tend to be “indolent, continually hearing sermons and learning nothing.”109 Luther’s notion of a promise reiterated, rather than the Catholic notion of penance demanded and forgiveness bestowed, sabotaged a critical source of Catholic authority and wealth, specifically, the institutions of good works and indulgences.110 In The Keys, Luther explained that the pope believed he possessed the authority to forgive, a power rightfully belonging to God alone: Christ calls him bound who has been banished [from God’s presence] and whose sins are retained and not forgiven. . . . Christ calls him loosed who is free and

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rid of his sins, and whose sins are forgiven. But . . . the pope speaks as follows: he who is obedient to my bonds is bound—he shall be saved. Loosed is he who is rid and free of all of God’s commandments—he must be considered disobedient and condemned.111

The implications of Luther’s rejection of the penitential system were enormous and go well beyond the scope of this discussion, but, very much simplified, Luther’s idea of proper Confession rendered institutional forgiveness of sins, the selling of indulgences, and the performance of penance obsolete. Small wonder that scholars have focused on the confessional as the crucible of the Reformation.112 For Bugenhagen, education was a key element of a properly organized community, and Confession provided an opportunity for instruction in faith, grace, law, gospel, and forgiveness.113 Who better suited to guide and instruct the lay believer than Bugenhagen, who was Luther’s own confessor?114 Confession, penance, and controversy over indulgences were major factors in Luther’s own transformative crisis. In the Wittenberg Altarpiece, the man who heard the reformer’s own confession properly administers this practice. Bugenhagen extends a key to the figures on either side of him. With his right hand he lowers the key over the kneeling man’s head. With his left hand he grasps the key, pulling it back as though it had been offered and rejected. This scene exemplifies the Schlüsselamt, the Office of the Keys.115 In The Keys, written the same year as the Augsburg Confession, Luther wrote of the “keys to bind” the believer to sin, and the “keys to loose” the believer from sin and to offer forgiveness.116 Bugenhagen’s key simultaneously reclaims authority traditionally accorded Saint Peter, the first pope, for whom keys are the defining iconographic sign. Bugenhagen appropriates Peter’s keys, transforming them from a symbol of papal authority into a symbol of Lutheran forgiveness and faith. The man on Bugenhagen’s left walks away, looking over his shoulder, his hands literally tied in front of him, binding him to sin. The figure on Bugenhagen’s right receives the key and is loosed from sin, his unfettered hands marking his freedom from the burden of merit-based piety. Forgiveness is offered to each man, but only one accepts what is plainly there, namely, forgiveness and grace. The bound man’s tied hands are a particularly apt metaphor. Neither strength nor willingness nor earnest desire to do good matters if one’s hands are literally tied. The same is true for salvation; wishing to atone and performing good works count for nothing unless the believer severs the ties binding her or him to a mistaken notion of earned salvation. Further compositional details express the idea of correct and incorrect Confession. Bugenhagen looks toward the “loosed” man and away from the

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“bound” man. The forgiven sinner kneels humbly while the bound man turns away in bitterness.117 The forgiven man kneels in physical proximity to the Lord’s Supper, but the bound man is on the far side of the panel and is actively moving farther away. Though he still faces Bugenhagen, he is striding out of the image, away from the Lord’s Supper, away from the community, away from forgiveness. Luther even uses the word “banished” in the excerpt from The Keys cited above. Significantly, the only other figure in the whole composition moving away from the community is Judas; the picture tells us that rejecting faith and grace are tantamount to betraying Christ.118 The Confession panel refers back to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, precisely the set of references from which the bound man turns away. The kneeling figure, no longer obliged to confess every sin, may proceed easily from Confession to the Lord’s Supper without anxiety.119 After first accepting sin, and then accepting grace, it becomes possible to drink Christ’s blood and eat his body in the proper spirit of total abandonment to grace. The Wittenberg Confession panel synthesizes confession before one’s peers and private confession.120 The men with loosed and bound hands confess directly to Bugenhagen, yet remain in the presence of their peers, who fan out behind them. At the same time, the direct engagement with Bugenhagen suggests a private exchange. The kneeling figure perhaps unburdens his conscience in the manner of private confession, yet the presence of other figures suggests that this is a communal exercise. The bearded man behind the kneeling figure and the man farthest in the distance appear to watch and contemplate the scene in the foreground. The women also appear to be thinking, watching, and listening, each of their faces registering attention and introspection. Confession before God, the lynchpin of Lutheran practice, underpins both private and communal confession. These observations return us to the Seven Sacraments, and specifically to the depiction of Confession in the left panel (fig. 3.8). In van der Weyden’s left panel, the confessing figure kneels suppliant, like a subject before a king, inclining his body toward the priest. This confessing man gazes upward imploringly, leaning in as if beseeching the priest, even begging, for forgiveness. Still, the believer addresses himself directly to the human being before him who possesses the power to forgive or condemn, and not directly to God.121 Van der Weyden paints a touching, even tender exchange between priest and layperson, creating a positive reaction in the viewer, which is surely in keeping with the patron’s probable objective of returning lay believers to the institutional church. The priest’s authority is clear, even if it is gently exercised. In very obvious contrast to the lay figure in van der Weyden’s Confession, the “loosed” figure in Cranach’s panel is passive, gazing down at the

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Figure 3.8. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, detail of confession, 1445-50, panel. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, N.Y.

ground before him. He receives the key from Bugenhagen, but his abstract gaze turns in, focusing on God rather than on the man standing beside him. The differences between the confessing figures in the van der Weyden and Cranach panels exemplify the opposing principles of sincere penitence and passive reception of grace. The right panel of the Wittenberg Altarpiece, like the retable as a whole, points to changes in both theology and the motivations for art patronage. The desire to balance sin with Confession, contrition, and penance, which motivated the commissioning of works of art in the previous centuries, was no longer a factor. Bugenhagen did not commission the object as a good work or act of contrition. He experienced no private vision, expected no reprieve from purgatory or forgiveness of specific sins.122 The Wittenberg Confession panel severs the tie between Confession and good works, both in the origin of the work of art itself and in the way Confession is represented as an open profession of the recognition of inherent human sin.

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SYNTHESIS The most vexing aspects of interpreting the Wittenberg Altarpiece for a contemporary beholder are probably the very things that made the retable effective for the original viewers. The motifs are potent: Luther grasping the chalice, Christ on the Cross looming in the predella, Judas receiving the morsel, Bugenhagen distributing keys. The complex meanings behind these motifs and their intricate relationship to one another makes interpretation difficult. The interlocking ideas of community identity, fidelity to scripture, reformers’ apostolicity, the Eucharist in both kinds, Christ’s physical presence in the Mass, infant Baptism, and right Confession form a satisfying yet challenging iconographic and theological gestalt. Fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century retables could serve many functions: distinguishing between rites for the laity and for the clergy, testifying to a believer’s mystical vision, marking a pilgrimage destination, serving as an object of devotion. And the act of commissioning an altarpiece could ensure the release of a tormented soul from purgatory. In contrast, the images in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, individually and taken together, reject these functions in favor of proclaiming and celebrating communal and confessional identity. Here the purpose is to show Wittenberg’s leaders enacting newly codified rituals consistent with the new understanding of scriptural mandate and with Lutheran doctrine. Fortuitously, this ideal assumed particular meaning in the aftermath of Luther’s death and on the eve of John Frederick’s deposition. In the early sixteenth century, when the identity and definition of what it was to be Christian was fervently debated, correlative issues about Christian art arose. New devotional practices necessitated changes in the traditional relationship between beholder and image. The intended or actual function of religious art in large measure helps define the parameters of belief. We can best learn about how people understood their relationship to God by interpreting the devotional pictures that connected believers to their deity.

NOTES 1. Martin Luther, Commentary on Psalm 111, LW 13:375. 2. The altarpiece preceding Cranach’s in the City Church was removed in 1552, during a period of iconoclasm. On this, see Joseph Koerner, “Confessional Portraits: Representation as Redundancy,” in Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints, and Reception, ed. Mark Roskill and John Oliver Hand, Studies in the History of Art 60 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 127. Note that the City Church is not the same as the Castle Church, where Luther famously posted his Ninety-five Theses. See Oskar Thulin, Die Lutherstadt

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Wittenberg und ihre reformatorischen Gedenkstätten (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1960), “Das Schloß und die Schloßkirche,” 13–21, and “Das Bürgertum und die Stadtkirche,” 22–29. 3. John Dillenberger, Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 102–5. See also Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 9–32, and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 25–27; Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979), 139–41; Herbert von Hintzenstern, Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Altarbilder aus der Reformationszeit, 3d ed. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1980), 99–105; Hans Belting, “Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Reformatorischer Bildersturm im Kontext der europäischen Geschichte, Historische Zeitschrift, new series, vol. 33 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), 16–20; Albrecht Steinwachs and Jürgen M. Pietsch, Der Reformationsaltar von Lucas Cranach d. Ä in der Stadtkirche St. Marien, Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Spröda: Akanthus, 1998); Hans Georg Thümmel, “Lucas Cranach d. Ä., die Reformation und die Altgläubigen,” Kunst und Kirche 19, no. 1 (2002): 53–76; Bernhard Kerber, “Sakramente,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann (Rome: Herder, 1968), vol. 4, cols. 5–11; Susan R. Boettcher, “Von der Trägheit der Memoria: Cranachs Lutheraltarbilder im Zusammenhang der evangelischen Luther-memoria im späten 16. Jahrhundert,” in Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, ed. Joachim Eibach and Marcus Sandl (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 61. 4. On community in Wittenberg, see Oskar Thulin, “Das Taufbild am Wittenberger Reformatorenaltar,” Kunst und Kirche 14, no. 2 (1937): 13, and Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 10; Helmar Junghans, Wittenberg als Lutherstadt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Berlin: Union Verlag, 1979), 140; see also Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 130. On ritual in early modern Germany, see Susan C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), esp. 50–53, 94–107, 114–19, and 190–201; Bodo Nischan, “Ritual and Protestant Identity in Late Reformation Germany,” in The Later Reformation, vol. 2 of Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, Hants, England and Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998), 2:142–58. On medieval and Lutheran communities, see Peter Blickle, “Reformation and Communal Spirit: The Reply of the Theologians to Constitutional Change in the Late Middle Ages,” in The German Reformation: The Essential Readings, ed. C. Scott Dixon, Blackwell Essential Readings in History (Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999), 136–67, esp. 148–49, 153, 162–63. On Lutheran, Catholic, and Calvinist identity, see Wolfgang Reinhard, “Pressures towards Confessionalization? Prolegomena to a Theory of the Confessional Age,” in Dixon, German Reformation, esp. 173–77, 181. According to Koerner, historians consider Luther’s objection to iconoclasm the beginning of confessionalization (“Confessional Portraits,” 127). 5. Some recent work on this vast subject includes Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Bilderfrage im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum,” in Blickle, Macht und Ohnmacht, esp. 410–11, 449; Bernd Roeck, “Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Die historische Perspektive,” in

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Blickle, Macht und Ohnmacht, 34–35; Freya Strecker, Augsburger Altäre zwischen Reformation (1537) und 1635: Bildkritik, Repräsentation, und Konfessionalisierung (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1998), esp. 15, 19, 20–21, 45; Karl Arndt and Bernd Moeller, Albrecht Dürers Vier Apostel: Eine kirchen- und kunsthistorische Untersuchung (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003); Donald A. McColl, “Through a Glass Darkly: Dürer and the Reform of Art,” Reformation and Renaissance Review 5, no. 1 (2003): 54–91. 6. Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 125–39, esp. 132. 7. Joseph Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 252. 8. Koerner, Reformation, 69: “The panels so fit their locality that they nearly disappear.” 9. Koerner, Reformation, 252. 10. Boettcher sees Luther’s memorial portraits decisively in terms of written Luther Memoria (“Trägheit,” 60–62). On the pitfalls of seeing art as a footnote to theology, see Strecker, Augsburger Altäre, 13–14. On the vibrant relationships between text and image in Dürer’s Four Holy Men, see Arndt and Moeller, Dürers Vier Apostel, esp. “Die Texte und die Bilder,” 29–37, and David Hotchkiss Price, Albrecht Dürer’s Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 258–75. 11. On the involvement of assistants in Wittenberg, see Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 2:147–49; Thulin, “Taufbild,” 13, and Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 9–32; Brigitte Riese, “Der Einfluß der Reformation auf Malereif und Graphik in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts, dargestellt am Beispiel der Wittenberger Reformation” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Leipzig, 1983), 83–88; Fritz Bellmann, MarieLouise Harksen, and Roland Werner, Die Denkmale der Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1979), 23, 77; and Schade, Family, 46–47. On Cranach’s workshop, see Claus Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” in Lucas Cranach: Ein MalerUnternehmer aus Franken, ed. Claus Grimm, Johannes Erichsen, and Evemaria Brockhoff (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1994), 19–20, 27; see also Monica and Dietrich Lücke, “Lucas Cranach in Wittenberg” in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Mahler-Unterhenmer, 59; Andreas Tacke, Cranach Meisterwerke auf Vorrat: Die Erlanger Handzeichnungen der Universitätsbibliothek (Munich: Form Druck, 1994). 12. Koerner proposes the same scenario (Reformation, 238). 13. On the dates of commission, see Belting, “Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder,” 17; Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 102; Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 127; Koerner, Reformation, 75–76; and Susan Boettcher, “Are the Cranach Altarpieces Philippist? Memory of Luther and Knowledge of the Past in the Late Reformation,” in Ways of Knowing: Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Mary Lindemann (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 98, 100; Balthasar Mentzius, Syntagma Epitaphiorum . . . in Metropoli Witeberga (Magdeburg, 1604), part 2, 7; Franz Zitzlaff, Die Begräbnißstätten Wittenbergs und ihre Denkmäler (Wittenberg: Wunschmann Verlag, 1896), 114. Thulin states that documents from 1546 and 1547 are missing from the Wittenberg Archives (Cranach

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Altäre der Reformation, 9, n. 9). See also Bellmann, Harksen, and Werner, Denkmale, 177. My efforts to find the lost document in the recently reorganized City Archive of the Lutherstadt Wittenberg were unsuccessful. On the traditional date of dedication to the Wittenberg community, April 24, 1547, the day of the Battle of Mühlberg, see Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 9. See also Thulin, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 25; Christensen, Art and the Reformation, 139; and Günter Schuchardt, Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Orte der Begegnung (Leipzig: Kranichborn Verlag, 1994), 48. Thulin quotes from documents dated 1531 and 1547, when paintings from Cranach’s workshop were brought to the church, but dismisses the possibility that any part of the Wittenberg Altarpiece was painted in 1531 (Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 9, n. 9). 14. For example, the Weimar Altarpiece was painted between 1553 and 1555. Anne Laurence, David Mateer, and Nick Webb propose a date of 1549 for the Wittenberg Altarpiece, though this unique claim remains unexplained. Laurence, Mateer, and Webb, “The Representation of Reform,” in Challenges to Authority, ed. Peter Elmer (New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with London: Open University, 2000), 103–68, esp. 121. 15. Boettcher suggests that Luther portraits retain aspects of medieval convention (“Trägheit,” 68). 16. Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 129, and Reformation, 331–33. On the reformer portraits in Dürer’s Four Holy Men, see Arndt and Moeller, Dürers Vier Apostel, 61–62. 17. On the pedagogical and devotional functions of medieval religious art, see Günther Wartenberg, “Bilder in den Kirchen der Wittenberger Reformation,” in Die Bewahrende Kraft des Luthertums—Mittelalterliche Kunstwerke in evangelischen Kirchen, ed. Johann Michael Fritz (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1997), esp. 23. Wartenberg notes that despite intended restrictions, pictures were accorded the holy status of their subject. 18. Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 363–64; Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 130, and Reformation, 273–74, 392; David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 70; Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520–1620, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999), 39–45. 19. Unlike the Wittenberg Altarpiece, the younger Cranach’s Dessau Last Supper, depicting Melanchthon and other writers of the Leipzig Interim, unequivocally supports the Philippist stance. See Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 130–31. On the strategies of creating Luther’s memory, see Boettcher, “Trägheit,” 54–55, and “Philippist?”; Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 130; Cameron, European Reformation, 128, 361. 20. Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought, 3d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 202. Cf. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 9–10. Based on his analysis of “sermon summaries” in pamphlet literature, Bernd Moeller proposes a fundamental harmony between the messages of urban Lutheran preachers in the 1520s, in contrast to the extreme variation other scholars have proposed. Moeller, “What Was Preached in German Towns in the Early Reformation?” in Dixon, German Reformation, 36–52.

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21. Koerner, in Reformation (276), acknowledges that 1547–55 were traumatic years for Lutherans. Karant-Nunn, in Reformation of Ritual (99), suggests that lay believers kept the habit of annual, or at least infrequent, participation in Confession and the Lord’s Supper. 22. On the Brazen Serpent in Law and Gospel, see Donald Ehresmann, “The Brazen Serpent: A Reformation Motif in the Works of Lucas Cranach the Elder and His Workshop,” Marsyas 12 (1967): 32–47, and Craig Harbison, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe: A Study of the Relation between Art and the Reformation. Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), 98. On the Brazen Serpent in Wittenberg, see Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 105. 23. LW 4:123 and 4:115. 24. The tomb beneath the Risen Christ also bears an inscription from Matthew 28:18–20, the last words Christ spoke to his disciples after he rose from the dead. 25. Cameron, European Reformation, 156. 26. Luther states in the Babylonian Captivity (LW 36:11–126) that Penance, the Lord’s Supper, and Baptism are the original and only true sacraments; later in the same treatise, he recognizes only two. On the sacraments in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, see Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 103, and Koerner, Reformation, 308–14. On the Lutheran sacraments generally, see the Augsburg Confession, reproduced in A Melanchthon Reader, trans. Ralph Keen, American University Studies Series 7, Theology and Religion, vol. 41 (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), 97–125. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 was signed by, among others, John the Constant and John Frederick the Magnanimous of Saxony. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 (and the Augsburg Freedom of 1555), declared Lutheranism a church, rather than a breakaway sect; for this reason, the Confession is an important source of information for this discussion. See Koerner, Reformation, 21; Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 119; Cameron, European Reformation, 156–67, esp. 166–67. See also Luther’s Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ (1526), LW 36:335–61, and Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528), LW 37:206–35. 27. Cameron defines a sacrament as “a promise of God, to which a sign was added.” Sacraments were also sanctioned in scripture (Cameron, European Reformation, 156–57). 28. The seven Catholic sacraments became official doctrine in 1439, though they were already in practice in the twelfth century (Cameron, European Reformation, 166). On the infrequent administration of the sacraments, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35; Jacques Toussaert, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du Moyen-Age (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1963), 160–95, esp. 161, 167, 190–91, 192, 193–94; and Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 88 n 7. On the pre-Reformation sacraments, see Harbison, “Visions and Meditations,” 89, and Craig Harbison, Jan Van Eyck and the Play of Realism (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), 67, 86–92; Kerber, “Sakramente,” vol. 4, cols. 5–10. In his brief treatment of the Seven Sacraments, Koerner suggests that it and other pre-Reformation altarpieces “perform more

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than they model” (Reformation, 353–55); I contend in contrast that van der Weyden’s panel does model, but that it models a different kind of piety. 29. Dirk de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden: The Complete Works, trans. Ted Alkins (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 221–22; Alfred Acres, “Rogier van der Weyden’s Painted Texts,” Attribus et historiae 21, no. 41 (2000): 93; and Albert Châtelet, Rogier van der Weyden (Paris: Gallimard Maîtres de l’art Edition Gallimard; Electa, Milan: Elemond Editori Associati, 1999), 72. On the identity of a second donor, see Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, 222–23. 30. Karant-Nunn describes the sights and sounds of the late medieval mass vividly (Reformation of Ritual, 111–14). 31. According to Lynn F. Jacobs, the raised central panel of the Netherlandish altarpiece complements the higher central aisle and the elevation of the host. Jacobs, “The Inverted ‘T-Shape’ in Early Netherlandish Altarpieces: Studies in the Relation between Painting and Sculpture,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991): 37. 32. “Transubstantiation,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans Joachim Hillerbrand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 118–22; Barbara Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 107; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 71–72; Barbara Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre vor der Reformation (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 1991), 20; Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Altar of Corpus Domini in Urbino: Paolo Ucello, Joos van Ghent, Piero della Francesca,” Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 1–24. For a response to Lavin, see Dana E. Katz, “The Contours of Tolerance: Jews and the Corpus Domini Altarpiece in Urbino,” Art Bulletin 85 (2003): 646–61, esp. 646, 649. 33. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 121–22; Cameron, European Reformation 162. Reformers disagreed about how and whether Christ was present in the bread and wine, though all seem to have opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. See also Rubin, Corpus Christi, 37. 34. On the Seven Sacraments as a pictorial reaction to private piety, see Harbison, “Visions and Meditations,” 89; Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2 vols. (1953; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 1:282–84; Sixten Ringbom, “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions: Notes on the Place of Art in Late Medieval Piety,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6, no. 73 (1969): 159–70; and Cameron, European Reformation, 9–29. On the relationship of ass and altarpiece, see Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece, 13–14, 60, and 79–80. On the relationship of clergy to the Eucharist, see Rubin, Corpus Christi, 85–98. 35. Cameron, European Reformation, 15; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 64; Aloys Butzkamm, Bild und Frömmigkeit im 15. Jahrhundert: Der Sakramentsaltar von Dieric Bouts in der St.-Peters-Kirche zu Löwen (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1990), 129. 36. According to Welzel, omitting the chalice was held to be acceptable because transubstantiation asserts the presence of Christ in the wine and bread, and both elements are an inseparable substance (Abendmahlsaltäre, 24). 37. Maurits Smeyers, “The Living Bread: Dirk Bouts and the Last Supper,” in Dirk Bouts (ca. 1410–1475): Een Vlaams primitief te Leuven, ed. Maurits Smeyers and

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Katharina Smeyers (Louvain: Uitgevreij Peeters, 1998), 48. See also Butzkamm, Bild und Frömmigkeit, 128, and Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 92. 38. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119–20. 39. The Last Supper in the central panel of the Altar of Corpus Domini by Joos van Ghent in Urbino emphasizes ritual; Christ offers the sacrament in one kind to a kneeling apostle; see Lavin, “Altar of Corpus Domini,” 13. On narrative versus sacramental modes, see Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 39. According to Hermann Oertel, Cranach’s paintings typically show the revelation of the betrayer and the annunciation of the betrayal. He identifies the revelation of Judas’s betrayal as the main subject in Wittenberg. Oertel, “Das protestantische Abendmahlsbild im niederdeutschen Raum und seine Vorbilder,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 13 (1974): 229. See also Karl Möller, “Abendmahl,” in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1937–87), vol. 1, cols. 28–44. The Gospel accounts (Matt. 26:17–29; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–23; John 13:21–29) reference at least three separate moments: Christ’s distribution of the bread and wine; the Crucifixion, that is, the actual shedding of Christ’s blood; and all future commemorations of the Last Supper, the Catholic Mass or the Lutheran Lord’s Supper. The biblical Last Supper is both prophetic and anachronistic as the blueprint for a commemoration. 40. Welzel denies that the retable has any intrinsic function within the Mass (Abendmahlsaltäre, 18); Lane, however, asserts an intimate association between altarpiece and Mass (The Altar and the Altarpiece, 13–14, 60, 79–80). 41. Steinwachs and Pietsch, Reformationsaltar, 21; Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 7–12, 29, 61; Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 225; Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 128, and Reformation, 340–48. On Last Supper predellas, see Howard Creel Collinson, “Sacerdotal Themes in a Predella Panel of the Last Supper by Mathis Gothart-Neithart, called Grünewald,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986): 301–22. 42. Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 226, and Creighten E. Gilbert, “Last Suppers and Their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, ed. Charles Edward Trinkaus and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 10 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), 371–402. 43. Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 45, 75–91. Cf. Riese, “Einfluß der Reformation,” 83. See also Wolfgang Schöne, Dieric Bouts und seine Schule (Berlin and Leipzig: Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1938). 44. On the Last Supper as the subject of a retable at a high altar, see Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 226. On Riemenschneider, see Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980; 3d printing, 1985), 172–90, and Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 116–36, 145–49. 45. Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 228–31; Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 7, 151–53; Hermann Oertel, “Das frühprotestantische Abendmahlsbild in Wittenberg und Dresden,” Kirche und Kunst 3 (1972): 39–42; Riese, “Einfluß der Reformation,” 84; Koerner, Reformation, 321–24. In

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Abendmahlsaltäre (151), Welzel mistakenly concludes that Luther’s recommendation was not heeded in the Wittenberg Altarpiece because it was not a factor on other occasions. 46. Oertel, “Protestantische Abendmahlsbild,” 229, and Koerner, Reformation, 291. 47. Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 151; Peter-Klaus Schuster, “Abstraktion, Agitation, und Einfühlung: Formen protestantischer Kunst im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, ed. Werner Hofmann (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1983), 116; Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 128, and Reformation, 289–91. On a 1538 text altarpiece based on Dinkelsbühl in St. Moritz, Augsburg, see Strecker, Augsburger Altäre, 44. 48. Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 151. Cranach designed a Last Supper altarpiece (c. 1537–38) for Kurfürst Joachim II of Brandenburg for a side altar in the Stiftskirche in Berlin. See Andreas Tacke, Der katholische Cranach (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1992), fig. 131; see also 171–267, esp. 171–75, 217–18, and 233–36; Welzel, Abendmahlsaltäre, 114–15; and Steinwachs and Pietsch, Reformationsaltar, 8. The Stiftskirche Last Supper was part of a Passion cycle of altarpieces modeled on the extravagant commission Cranach’s workshop produced in Halle for Albrecht of Brandenburg, Joachim’s uncle and Luther’s adversary on indulgences (Tacke, Katholische Cranach, 71–92). 49. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119. On the lay Eucharist in both kinds, see LW 36:21. On the chalice in Reformation Last Suppers, see Butzkamm, Bild und Frömmigkeit, 131. 50. Butzkamm, Bild und Frömmigkeit, 130–31. David Hotchkiss Price argues that Dürer’s 1523 print, with a prominently displayed chalice, traditionally known as the Last Supper, does not call for the lay Eucharist in both kinds, contrary to most scholarly interpretation. Price, “Albrecht Dürer’s Last Supper (1523) and the Septembertestament,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59 (1996): 578–84. 51. On the identity of Junker Jörg, see most recently Koerner, Reformation, 243. See also FR, Cat. 148 and Cat. 149. See also Günter Schade and Klaus-Peter Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR: Ausstellung im Alten Museum vom 26. August bis 13. November 1983 (Berlin [West]: Elefanten Press, 1983), 135. Because of Luther’s youthful appearance, Steinwachs and Pietschhave speculated that the panel dates from 1531 (Reformationsaltar, 5 and 8). 52. Luther equates his opponents with the anti-Christ throughout his works, from the early Passional of Christ and Anti-Christ to his final treatise, Against the Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil (1545); on the latter, see Mark U. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983),182–200. Cranach the Younger’s print The True and False Church (1546–47) juxtaposes Luther’s church with the Catholic Church. In this image, the pope and other leaders burn in a hellmouth. See Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, Cat. F 41, 420. 53. Susan Karant-Nunn remarks that the lines between clergy and laity were stiffening as early as the 1530s (Reformation of Ritual, 99).

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54. On the community of lay and clerical Lutherans, see Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 128, and Blickle, “Communal Spirit,” 158–60. On German communities more generally, see Robert Scribner, “Germany,” in The Reformation in National Context, ed. Robert Scribner, Roy Porter, and Mikulás Teich (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21–22. 55. Cameron, European Reformation, 138. In the preface to his New Testament, Luther wrote, “John’s Gospel and St. Paul’s epistles, especially that to the Romans, and St. Peter’s first epistle are the true kernel and marrow of all the books. They ought properly to be the foremost books” (LW 35:361–62). Welzel states that for a Last Supper to be Lutheran, Judas must be present, but Judas’s absence may signify Lutheran affiliation, as in Dürer’s 1523 Last Supper print (Abendmahlsaltäre, 59); see also Hofmann, Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst, Cat. 103. 56. On Judas’s red hair, yellow robe, money bag, Semitic features, and red face in late-medieval painting, see Ruth Melinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 150–54, 232; Koerner points out, in “Confessional Portraits” (27), the anti-Semitic depiction of Judas in the younger Cranach’s Dessau Last Supper. 57. Koerner, Reformation, 74–75. See also Thulin, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 25. 58. Luther preaching and Christ appearing can also be seen in the younger Cranach’s True and False Church (1546–47); cf. note 52 above. 59. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 26, and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 26–27; Steinwachs and Pietsch, Reformationsaltar, 8 and 15; Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 103; Boettcher also identifies the deceased Barbara Cranach (d. 1541), one of the figures in the predella (“Trägheit,” 61). 60. Koerner, Reformation, 249–51. 61. Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 105. 62. Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 41, 47–48; Thomas Fuchs, “Reformation, Tradition, und Geschichte,” in Eibach and Sandl, Protestantische Identität, 71–89. Boettcher asserts the importance of book-centeredness in Lutheran historical memory (“Trägheit,” 56). The Devotio Moderna permitted the reading of scripture in the vernacular but never perceived a conflict between scripture and tradition. John van Engen, ed. and trans., Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 26. 63. “But that bread is bread before the words of the sacraments; when consecration has been added, from the bread it becomes the flesh of Christ. . . . When it comes to performing a venerable sacrament, then the priest uses not his own expressions, but he uses the expressions of Christ.” Ambrose, De sacramentis, in Saint Ambrose Theological and Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 44 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 301–3, citing part 4, ch. 4, line 14 in Ambrose’s text. On nonbiblical aspects of the Eucharist, see Smeyers, “Living Bread,” 47. Panofsky identifies the text as De sacramentis (part 4, ch. 4, lines 14–17), although what appears in the painting is clearly an excerpt (Early Netherlandish Painting, 473).

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64. Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 105. 65. Cameron, European Reformation, 141–42. 66. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1999), 154–56, and Cameron, European Reformation, 89, 136, 144. Acceptance of tradition was reiterated at Trent in 1546. See Koerner, Reformation, 278. 67. Cameron, European Reformation, 142; Bruce Gordon, “The Changing Face of Protestant History and Identity in the Sixteenth Century,” in Gordon, Later Reformation, 4. 68. Koerner, “Confessional Portraits,” 126, and Reformation, 338–39; Boettcher, “Trägheit,” 57, 62–63; Fuchs, “Reformation,” 86. Luther wrote, “Now the more closely our mass resembles that first mass of all, which Christ performed at the Last Supper, the more Christian it will be” (LW 36:346–54). 69. Koerner, Reformation, 191–200, esp. 199. 70. Markus Wriedt, “Luther’s Concept of History and the Formation of Evangelical Identity,” in Gordon, Later Reformation, 31–45; Lohse, Martin Luther, 41; Kolb, Prophet, Teacher, esp. 39–74; and Koerner, Reformation, 194–96. 71. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 132, quotes Luther: “The sure mark by which the Christian congregation can be recognized is that the pure gospel is preached there.” See LW 39:305. See also Blickle, “Communal Spirit,” 158, and Koerner, Reformation, 191–200, esp. 199. 72. On the real presence in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, see Koerner, Reformation, 234. 73. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119–20. 74. Quoted in McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119–20; cf. LW 36:34. 75. On the antipathy between Luther and his fellow Protestants concerning the Lord’s Supper, see Lohse, Martin Luther, 69–73. On the reformers’ disagreements in the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, see Lohse, Martin Luther, 75–76, and LW 38:15–89; on the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, see LW 31:39–70. 76. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 124. 77. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 121; Cameron, European Reformation, 163–64; Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 115. 78. Martin Luther, Concerning the Letter and the Spirit, LW 40:229–62; also reproduced in Timothy Lull, ed., Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1989), 79. Luther’s exegesis is not simplistic literalism; “simple meaning” still necessitates a historically informed understanding of language. “Thus ‘literal meaning’ is not a good term. . . . Those who call it ‘grammatical, historical meaning’ do better.” (Lull, Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 81). See also Lohse, Martin Luther, 41. 79. Koerner, in Reformation (72–73), and Dillenberger, in Images and Relics (105), astutely note that Bugenhagen and Melanchthon respectively appropriate the roles of Peter and John the Baptist. 80. On other Cranach portraits of Melanchthon, see FR, Cat. 314–15 A-G. On Dürer’s portrait engraving, see Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, Cat. E 39. On Melanchthon’s fierce defense of infant baptism, see Koerner, Reformation, 199, 329.

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81. LW 36:59. 82. “Thus you see how rich a Christian is, that is, one who has been baptized!” LW 36:60. 83. Cameron, European Reformation, 160; Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 51. 84. McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 124; Cameron, European Reformation, 160. 85. Article 9, “Of Baptism,” of the Augsburg Confession, states: “Of baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation and that through baptism the grace of God is offered; and that children are to be baptized so that being offered to God through baptism they will be received in God’s grace. They condemn the Anabaptists, who disapprove of the baptism of children and claim that children will be saved without baptism” (Melanchthon Reader, 102). See also Concerning Rebaptism (1527–28), LW 40:229–60. For anecdotal information on Luther’s position on baptism, see Table Talk, no. 3608, LW 54:242–43. 86. LW 40:239. 87. LW 40:252. 88. LW 36:73. 89. Cameron, European Reformation, 160. 90. LW 40:236. 91. LW 40:241. Tradition was not problematic provided it reinforced scripture. Radical reformers embraced more fundamentalist opinions on scripture alone. See McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 106–7. 92. Christiane D. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranach im Dienst der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 53–55. Andersson reports that Cranach’s versions of Christ Blessing the Children display the text of the scriptural story on the top; for instance, a version in Kiel has the text of Mark 10:15, and a version in Hamburg displays Mark 10:13. Cf. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland: Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983), 269. Andersson further points out that the Christ Blessing the Children panels propagate the idea of marriage and family over celibacy. She records a total of twenty-three versions from the Cranach workshop. Cf. FR, Cat. 217 A-C, Cat. 362 A-H, and Cat. 363, and cf. Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland, 269. A drawing of the subject dating from 1540, currently in the Leipzig Museum der bildenden Künste, also survives. See Koepplin and Falk, Cat. 366. Some archival documentation for a Christ Blessing the Children remains. A document from 1543 records that Cranach was paid seventeen florins, three groschen for a painting of Christ Blessing the Children (“17 Florin 3 Groschen an 15 Guldengroschen vor ein Tuch, darauf das Evangelium gemalt, da man die Kinderlein zu Christo trägt”). This document is from the Landeshauptarchiv Weimar, Reg. Aa. 2975, fol. 5. Cf. Schuchardt, Cranach des Aelteren, 1:160–61, and Walter Scheidig, “Urkunden zu Cranachs Leben und Schaffen,” in Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Der Künstler und seine Zeit, ed. H. Lüdecke (Berlin: Herschelverlag, 1953), Document 54. According to another document in the Landeshauptarchiv Weimar, Reg. Aa. 2975, fols. 18–21, 1552,

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Cranach records that he painted dar Kindlein zum Herrn bringt (Scheidig, “Urkunden,” Document 72; cf. Schuchardt, Cranach des Aelteren, 1:208). 93. On the correct performance of Lutheran Baptism, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 57–58. 94. See note 26 above on the Augsburg Confession. 95. “Wer da glaubt und getauft wird, der wird selig werden, wer aber nicht glaubt, der wird verdammt werden.” Schuchardt, in Orte der Begegnung (48), claims the text comes from Romans 6:4, although it matches this passage neither in the RSV nor in the Luther Bible. 96. Steinwachs and Pietschnote a parallel between the four panels in the Wittenberg Altarpiece and the seventh article in the Augsburg Confession (Reformationsaltar, 5). See also Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 10, and Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 102–3. The Augsburg Confession explicates the sacraments in exactly the order in which they appear from left to right in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, in articles 9, 10, and 11, followed by articles on “Penance” and the “Use of the Sacraments” (Melanchthon Reader, 102–3). 97. According to Thulin, all three scenes occur in a continuous space (Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 21). 98. See the Babylonian Captivity on Baptism (LW 36:57–58 and esp. 59, 60, 69) and on penance (LW 36:81–91). }} 99. On Bugenhagen, see Ernst Wolf, “Johannes Bugenhagen und die Ordnung der Gemeinde,” in Zwischenstation Festschrift für Karl Kupisch zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Ernst Wolf et al. (Munich: C. Kaiser Verlag, 1963), 281–97; David C. Steinmetz, “Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558): Structures of the Church,” 82–90, in Reformers in the Wings; Karlheinz Blaschke, Wittenberg—Die Lutherstadt, 4th ed. (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1983), 31–32; Steinwachs and Pietsch, Reformationsaltar, 12; Schuchardt, Orte der Begegnung, 48. For a concise biography, see Hans-Günter Leder, Johannes Bugenhagen Pomeranus—Vom Reformer zum Reformator, Studien zur Biographie, ed. Volker Gummelt (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), esp. 13–42. On Bugenhagen and Confession, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 96, 119–20. Bugenhagen constructed the new order of service (“Kirchenordnung”) and translated the Luther Bible into Low German. On this see Thulin, Lutherstadt Wittenberg, 26. 100. On Confession, see Cameron, European Reformation, 81. On low church attendance, see Harbison, “Visions and Meditations,” 88. On annual participation in the Eucharist, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 93, 127–29. 101. Cameron, European Reformation, 14; Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 67–77, 86–92, and Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 102. In the first and second of the Ninety-five Theses, Luther explained that “repent” in Matthew 4:17 does not refer to “the sacrament of penance, that is, Confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy” (LW 31:25). Only loss of faith can interfere with salvation after Baptism (LW 36:81–91). 103. Article 25 of the Augsburg Confession explains, “Confession is not abolished in our churches. For it is not right to give out the body of the Lord except to those

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who have been previously examined and absolved.” Melanchthon Reader, 113. Thulin cites the many remaining confessionals (Beichstühle) of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries to prove the persistence of confession. Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 10. 104. LW 36:356. 105. LW 36:354. 106. LW 36:356–57. 107. LW 36:359. See also Cameron, European Reformation, 132–33, on public Lutheran confession. 108. Luther wrote in the Babylonian Captivity that it is not possible “to frame a contrition for every sin” and that “we can know only the smaller part of our sins” (LW 36:85). 109. These words appear in the section called Concerning Confession in The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics, in Lull, Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 338 (LW 36:359); Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 96–97. 110. Cameron defines an indulgence as a “favour conferred by the Church, which canceled out works of satisfaction (‘penances’) imposed at the recipient’s last confession” (European Reformation, 82). 111. Martin Luther, The Keys, LW 40:335. 112. Steven E. Ozment, Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 18–19, 22–32, 47–56; and see Cameron, European Reformation, 305–8, for a critique of Ozment. Luther’s own struggle to confess adequately precipitated his break with Catholicism, though his anxieties were not necessarily typical. See John Dillenberger, introduction to Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), xv-xvii. See also Cameron, European Reformation, 167–74. 113. Wolf, “Johannes Bugenhagen,” 289–95. 114. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 22 and 24. 115. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 22. The most familiar keys in Christian iconography are given to Saint Peter by Christ. See Joachim Poeschke, “Schlüsselübergabe an Petrus,” in Lexikon zur christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 4, cols. 82–85; Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 105; Strecker, Augsburger Altäre, 36. On Peter and the keys in Dürer’s Four Holy Men, see Arndt and Moeller, Dürers Vier Apostel, 59–60. On the Lutheran power of the keys, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 131. See also Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). 116. Martin Luther, The Keys, LW 40:324. See also the Augsburg Confession, Article 25, “Of Confession”: “The power of the keys is praised and remembered, since it brings much consolation to terrified consciences, and God requires faith that we believe that absolution as a voice resounding from heaven, and that faith truly follows and accepts the remission of sins” (Melanchthon Reader, 113). 117. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 22.

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118. Koerner, Reformation, 189, 370-73. 119. Taking Communion without adequate Confession was a mortal sin; see Ozment, Reformation in the Cities, 51-53. 120. According to Karant-Nunn, in Reformation of Ritual (94), most confession in the later Middle Ages was fairly public, with the confessor sitting in an armchair, as depicted in van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments. 121. On the priest’s power to judge on God’s behalf, see Karant-Nunn, Reformation of Ritual, 99 and 131. 122. The paradigmatic art patronage as atonement is the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. On this, see Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, “Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto’s Arena Chapel in Padua,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 2 (1998): 274-91.

Chapter Four

Holy Visions and Pious Testimony: Weimar Altarpiece

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” / “Oh death, where is thy victory? / O death, where is thy sting?” 1 Cor. 15.54–55

INTRODUCTION The Weimar Altarpiece (1553–55)1 still occupies its original location at the high altar of the City Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Weimar, Germany (figs. 4.1, 4.2).2 This impressive triptych has been hailed as “the single most important visual monument of the German Reformation.”3 In spite of its striking composition and unique iconography, this altarpiece has received surprisingly scant scholarly attention. The first objective of this chapter is to present this important yet largely unfamiliar monument to a broader scholarly audience. Its home in the former East Germany made it relatively inaccessible to most western scholars until 1989, and its size and site specificity have made it an unlikely candidate for inclusion in any of the many relevant exhibitions since then.4 The second objective is to analyze the theological and devotional significance of the Weimar Altarpiece, specifically, how it presents and interprets Lutheran belief and practice. Like Cranach’s earlier Lutheran-inspired pictures, the Weimar Altarpiece is didactic, instructing viewers on foundational Lutheran ideas, particularly the idea of salvation by grace alone rather than by human action. As we will see throughout this chapter, the style of the Weimar Altarpiece denies conventions of illusionistic representation, in part 138

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Figure 4.1. Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, closed position, 1553–55, panel. Photo credit: SLUB Dresden / abt. Deutsche Fotothek.

through the repetition of the figure of Christ, deflecting any temptation to venerate the image itself rather than what it signifies.5 Most important, the Weimar Altarpiece redefines the relationships between human and holy, or rather, the channels through which people may approach God. Catholic donors of public religious art in the fifteenth and early sixteenth

Figure 4.2. Fotothek.

Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, opened position, 1553–55, panel. Photo credit: SLUB Dresden / abt. Deutsche

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centuries frequently had themselves represented in proximity to holy figures, in visionary experience earned through pious prayers that granted them audience with holy figures. The meticulous scholarship of James Marrow, Craig Harbison, and Jeffrey Hamburger, among others, has demonstrated that a great deal of late-medieval northern art functioned to evoke compassionate, often visionary responses contingent upon the imaginative and empathic capacity of the viewer.6 In contrast, the figures in the wings of the Weimar Altarpiece approach the holy figures with an apparent understanding of Luther’s notion of salvation through faith as an unearned, divine gift. The donors testify or bear witness to divine grace, exemplifying the Lutheran concept of salvation.7 A corollary of the changed relationship between human and holy is the motivation for art patronage. One powerful, though certainly not exclusive, reason why Catholic donors commissioned works of art was to expiate sin.8 However, the figures portrayed in the Weimar Altarpiece were not donors who had commissioned the painting in order to cleanse themselves of sin. Instead, they commissioned a work of art to display their acceptance that salvation was an act of divine mercy—as Luther’s theology insists—rather than a reward for human action. A brief introduction to the formal details here will help clarify my assertions about adaptations of pictorial function. The Weimar Altarpiece is a triptych with an opened and a closed position. The holy figures and stories represented throughout the altarpiece would surely have been familiar to sixteenth-century viewers. On the panels in the closed position (fig. 4.1) God the Father appears on the top of the left panel in a pool of golden light and encircled by bodiless putti. In the foreground, John the Baptist, wearing a hair suit, kneels beside the River Jordan and baptizes Christ, who stands knee-deep in the water. On the opposite panel, the Risen Christ stands triumphant in the top half of the composition, a red robe loosely draped around him. Surrounding Christ is a pool of yellow light, and there is a white cruciform halo behind his head. Putti with many-colored wings encircle him. Below, in the foreground, the apostles kneel and look up at the risen Christ, their faces registering fervent emotion. In contrast to the predominant pale yellows and cool blues of the outer panels, the inner panels of the Weimar Altarpiece (fig. 4.2) are painted in warm reds, yellows, and oranges. John Frederick and Sibylle of Cleves in the left wing and their three sons on the right wing frame a Crucifixion in the central panel.9 In the left wing, patterned orange curtains surround Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick the Magnanimous of Saxony, who pose behind a prie-dieu. Rotund and bearded, clad in black and fur and sporting gold chains around his

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neck and rings on his pale fingers, John Frederick holds his hands in prayer as he stares sternly out at the viewer. Along with a black frock and fur shawl to match her husband’s, Sibylle of Cleves wears a cloth-and-fur hat with an upturned brim. An open book rests on the prie-dieu in front of her. She folds her bejeweled hands in prayer; looking up from the text, she seems to stare in the direction of the middle panel. Her unfocused gaze resembles the pious expressions of late-medieval donors, such as Jan van Eyck’s Chancellor Rolin. In front of the prie-dieu are simplified versions of family coats of arms.10 Above John Frederick and Sibylle of Cleves,—a cloth with the same pattern as the surrounding curtains displays the letters “VDMIA”—“Verbum domini manet in aeternum” (The Word of God endures forever).11 In the right wing, the three sons of Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick sit in a similar orange and black curtained space, also dressed in black cloth and fur resembling their parents’ attire. These young men are, from youngest to eldest, John Frederick III, John William, and John Frederick II.12 The coat of arms in front of them is a combination of their parents’ families’ coats of arms. A now-lost Latin inscription in the predella (discussed in detail below) identified all the figures in the wings and described the grief of the sons at the recent loss of their parents.13 This inscription reveals that one of the purposes of the Weimar Altarpiece was to memorialize Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick. In the central panel is a cluster of human and holy figures that rouses the viewer’s curiosity.14 Christ on the cross looms in the center of a landscape that recedes back to a high horizon. On Christ’s dexter side is a second figure of Christ, standing in front of his tomb, smiting an expiring demon and trampling on a skeleton. This figure of Christ triumphs doubly over both death and evil. On the crucified Christ’s sinister side John the Baptist stands and points up to Christ on the Cross and down to the Lamb of God, a familiar symbol of Christ and his sacrifice. Including the Lamb, Christ is represented a total of three times in the foreground of this single, nonnarrative panel. This unusual triple repetition of Christ puts into question any assumptions that this is a conventional arrangement of human and holy. Further, this repetition of a single figure interrupts the conventions of illusionistic representation. The most surprising element of the retable are the figures of Cranach and Luther, who are included among the holy figures in the center panel. Luther presents a text to the viewer as Cranach receives a splash of Christ’s blood on his silver-haired head. The extraordinary presence of a sixteenth-century painter and theologian exclaim that this is no ordinary Crucifixion, indeed, no ordinary altarpiece. Neither Cranach nor Luther was mentioned in the predella inscription, leaving their significance mysterious. Neither donors nor holy figures, Cranach and Luther define a new niche for human figures within

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an altarpiece. What kind of scenario could bring together multiple representations of Christ, Cranach, and Luther? As the following argument will demonstrate, the inclusion of Luther and Cranach in the central panel is the key to the way the Weimar Altarpiece renegotiates the relationships between humanity and divinity. Two texts appear within the Weimar Altarpiece. The Lamb of God holds a banner with words from the Gospel of John: “Ecce agnus dei qui tollit peccata mundi”—“Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).15 John the Baptist’s pointing to Christ acts out this proclamation. Under the Cross at Christ’s feet, we see the date, “1555,” as well as the winged serpent, the artist’s insignia.16 Luther stands beside Cranach holding an open book with a prominently displayed German text stating: The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7b). Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16) [“]And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14–15).17

THE WEIMAR ALTARPIECE AND THE TRADITIONAL RETABLE With donors in the wings and a religious scene in the central panel, the Weimar Altarpiece seems to continue established pictorial conventions. However, it also represents significant change, despite the seeming continuity with the past. It interweaves unambiguous Lutheran theology into the familiar, traditional, triptych format, and thus seems to contain a contradiction: The Lutheran iconography appears to clash with the triptych form, the definitive format of Catholic public religious art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and associated with the Catholic Church, the institution against which Lutheran art defined itself. Tradition and innovation meet here, but this kind of thematic and spiritual dissonance is not easy to resolve into a harmonic whole. The fundamental interpretive challenge of the Weimar Altarpiece is to reconcile traditional form with Lutheran content, as we saw also with the retables in Schneeberg and Wittenberg. The heart of the Weimar Altarpiece is a paradox: Traditional form conceals a departure from traditional function. A comparison with a more conventional retable than the Weimar Altarpiece will help create a context in which to examine the unusual collection of figures

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within the central panel. After this comparison, we will return to a closer examination of the roles of the representations of Luther, Cranach, and the donors, in relationship both to the central panel and to the Weimar Altarpiece as a whole. Cranach’s Dessauer Fürstenaltar, or Altarpiece of the Princes (fig. 4.3), produced in the Cranach workshop circa 1510–12, was probably commissioned for the chapel dedicated to the Virgin in the Castle Church of Wittenberg.18 In the wings and central panel, the figures adhere to an organizing principle where human and holy figures remain in separate zones of the altarpiece. The donors, recognizable from other portraits as Frederick the Wise, on the left, and John the Constant, on the right, sit in the wings with their hands folded in prayer.19 Their peripheral location and their subservient gestures indicate their subordinate status relative to the figures in the center panel. Within the central panel, hierarchy prevails. The frontal and centrally placed Virgin occupies fully half the composition and looks at the viewer benevolently, while Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara, smaller and in profile, gaze shyly at Christ.20 The saints and attendant angels look down at Christ, whereas the Virgin gazes out at the viewer. Her arms and glowing blue and red garment add volume, asserting her presence in the form of a stable pyramid. Christ occupies the very center of the image and is further forward than any of the other figures. His pale skin stands out in front of the deeper colors of the Virgin’s dress and mantle, which appear to recede behind him and present him more insistently. Taken together, the various pairs of hands in all three panels—the donors’, Saint Catherine’s, Saint Barbara’s, and the angels’— create a complex pattern of gesture and color that points toward Christ, the focal point of the image. The white hands of the Virgin and the saints leap out against a receding background and coax the viewer’s eye along their length toward Christ. The only apparent violation of this arrangement of human and holy is Saint Bartholomew behind Frederick the Wise and Jacob the Elder behind John the Constant, holy figures relegated to the periphery.21 But this transgression is only ostensible, because it is the saints’ holiness that permits the donors’ audience with the holy figures. The saints’ task is to serve as intermediaries between the top of the holy hierarchy, where Christ and the Virgin reside, and the bottom, the earthly realm of the donors. Only with humility and prayer can the human figures approach the saints. This distinction between human and holy, bridged by the saints, makes a relationship among these unequal figures possible. The arrangement of figures and the scale of human and holy suggested by their placement plainly tell the viewer whom to venerate. There is little risk of miscalculating and directing veneration toward the donors.22

Figure 4.3.

Cranach, Altarpiece of the Princes, 1510-12, panel. Photo credit: Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau.

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The Altarpiece of the Princes exemplifies the function of many fifteenthand early-sixteenth-century retables, a function the Weimar Altarpiece would ultimately reject. Some of the defining characteristics of the Altarpiece of the Princes and many other retables of the period are 1. Hierarchy. Donors and less holy figures tend to be placed toward the periphery and are often relegated to wings, away from the central scene. 2. Directed veneration. The composition plainly distinguishes the objects of veneration, Christ and the Virgin in the case of the Altarpiece of the Princes. Proper devotion depends on correct identification of holy figures and their distinction from other figures. 3. Designation. The altarpiece is a physical marker, designating a specific place for prayer within the church, either at a side altar or at the high altar. The painted scenes or figures specify the object of veneration in that space. 4. Exemplary function. Figures painted in an altarpiece demonstrate ideal behavior to be emulated. The donors in the Altarpiece of the Princes exemplify ideal piety. Other donors epitomize compassion, delighting in the joys or commiserating with the sorrows of the holy figures.23 Identifying these basic features of northern European altarpieces helps underscore the ways the Weimar Altarpiece departs from and redefines the function of the retable. The confessional identity of the Weimar Altarpiece resides in the extent to which it inflects or reconfigures these four aspects of pre-Reformation retables. In the early sixteenth century, Christian identity and the proper function of Christian art were widely contested.24 New devotional practices stipulated a new relationship between religious image and beholder. Understanding the actual or intended function of religious art helps us comprehend the new ways believers conceptualized their relationship to God.

LAW AND GOSPEL REVISITED As we have seen with the Schneeberg Altarpiece, the presence of Law and Gospel and the implied presence of the theological principles underpinning it inflect the meaning of conventional, traditional motifs and forms. By employing Lutheran iconography in a retable format, the Weimar Altarpiece transforms the iconography and function of the traditional retable, adapting it to a Lutheran context. Behind the creation of the Weimar Altarpiece is the intention to declare and explicate scripturally grounded doctrine and to represent a single theological truth. Viewers of Lutheran art were not to imagine;

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rather, they were to be carefully guided through a picture. This desire to limit visionary possibility and to insist on a specific and scripturally defensible doctrine is apparent in the composition and iconography of the Weimar Altarpiece. Here the polyvalence that could inspire pious imagination is rejected in favor of what is meant to be an unequivocal declaration of doctrine. Christian art generally and Lutheran art in particular pertain to scripture, but the connection between text and image, as all art historians are aware, is never a clear translation of unmodified ideas from one medium to the next. The relationship between viewer and image is mediated on numerous levels, including the varied understandings of scripture and numerous theological ideas. Lutheran and Catholic belief are distinguished in part by differing interpretations of the Bible and in part by diverging ideas about the relationship between theology and scripture. The beholder’s response to both scripture and theology creates another wrinkle in the relationship between image and beholder. Old subjects become new because they evolve out of the changing understanding of scripture or other kinds of intervening texts and ideas. In the case of the Weimar Altarpiece, these layers of interpretation are particularly charged. Cranach’s painting may be grounded in Lutheran doctrine, but multiple levels of interpretation accumulate, introducing her or his own ideas, before the viewer ever beholds the altarpiece.25 Nonetheless, scholars have tended to ignore the complexities of the text/image relationship when they interpret Cranach’s Lutheran paintings, especially Law and Gospel, as we saw in chapter 1, accepting that the picture is as straightforward and precise in its conveyance of Lutheran ideas as Luther might have wished it to be. My purpose here is to insist that the Weimar Altarpiece, like the other images in this study, is both polyvalent and an interpretation of, rather than a neutral vessel for, Lutheran thought. The Weimar central panel is a more liberal reinterpretation of Luther’s theology than is its iconographic antecedent, Law and Gospel. The insertion of Cranach and Luther into the Weimar central panel interjects a new stage of gospel into the Law and Gospel paradigm. The operative distinction is no longer exclusively between left and right, though that border remains in place; in addition, the foreground and background are arranged in a temporal dichotomy. Biblical events in the background and contemporary sixteenthcentury events and figures in the foreground, including Luther and Cranach, appear on an axis that intersects with the left and right lines of Law and Gospel: The axis of biblical past and sixteenth-century present intersects with the axis of gospel and law. The presence of Cranach and Luther contributes a new dimension to traditional ideas about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and typology by incorporating a third era into the equation.26

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BETWEEN HUMAN AND HOLY: LUTHER, CRANACH, THE DONORS, AND THE VIEWER Luther Luther, dead for nearly a decade, is resurrected in the Weimar Altarpiece. Cranach had already painted many portraits of Luther, but the commemorative and reverential aspects of depicting him in the center of an altarpiece, a most public monument at the holiest site of the City Church of Weimar, is the strongest imaginable tribute.27 The book Luther holds is a polyvalent symbol. Within the context of Luther’s theology and Cranach’s fidelity to Luther’s ideas, the book signifies Luther’s literary accomplishments, including his translation of the Bible into German and his prodigious output of treatises, sermons, and letters. Luther’s book also recalls the text-centeredness of his understanding of Christianity. The words on the opened page of Luther’s book (see above) perfectly exemplify Luther’s idea of grace, the point of departure for Law and Gospel: Sacrificial blood, the source of grace, guarantees salvation and eternal life. The quotation from 1 Corinthians cited in the epigraph to this chapter—“Death is swallowed up in victory”—epitomizes this concept, demonstrating that the theology behind the painting is the vanquishment of death. Luther’s opened book offers legitimacy to the idea that the source of Christianity is the Word as it is written in the Bible, an authority that, from his point of view, a corrupt Catholic Church tried to supersede. This prominently painted vernacular text implicitly condemns the church that tried to keep the Word secret by encoding it in Latin. Luther’s proffering gesture invites the viewer to read scripture for her- or himself. Inadvertently, Luther’s book also reminds the viewer of the many layers of readings that have brought the painting to its current form: Luther’s interpretation of the Bible, Cranach’s reading of the Bible and of Luther’s ideas, and the donors’ readings of scripture and Lutheran thought.28 That Luther was dead by the time the Weimar Altarpiece was painted helped qualify him for his new role: As a new prophet. His book equates his own writing with the tablets of Moses, establishing his relationship to the Jewish prophet. Just as Moses was the Jewish prophet who furnished the law and the Baptist was the last prophet before Christ, Luther presented his prophecy of salvation, revealing scripture in accessible form.29 The formal strategies of the central panel emphasize this parallel. Like Isaiah and Jeremiah, who traditionally appear in images of the Annunciation sporting scrolls and pointing to the events unfolding in the main scene below (the canonical example in northern painting is the prophets and sibyls in the closed position of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s 1432 Ghent Altarpiece),30 Luther stands before the beholder with a text that proclaims the action in the panel. Moreover,

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Luther stands physically in front of Moses, the original lawgiver, suggesting the greater importance of Luther’s “law,” or at least of Luther’s interpretation of Mosaic law and scripture more broadly. Luther’s text rests on a point on a clear diagonal with the tablets in Moses’s hands, and Luther and Moses point to their respective texts with identical gestures. As Moses revealed the law, Luther prophesies salvation for Cranach or any Christian who abides by his teaching. Cranach The artist’s prominent placement signifies fresh and specific relationships among the artist, Christ, and the viewer. The most striking motif in the central panel is Christ’s blood falling on Cranach’s head (fig. 4.4). Cranach receives Christ’s blood not just passively, but almost dispassionately. Rather than reacting to such an extraordinary experience, he turns his focus to the viewer, whom he seems to scrutinize, forcing the viewer to ponder the artist’s unusual predicament. How is the beholder to respond to this curious scenario? The direct contact between sacrificial blood and human sinner signifies Luther’s interpretation of scripture. Situated among motifs unmistakably drawn from Law and Gospel, Cranach has taken the place of the saved human figure, who is, as Luther’s book promises, justified by faith alone. Cranach has learned to receive rather than attempt to earn salvation. Predicated on the ideas Law and Gospel is meant to crystallize, Cranach is saved not by action but by passive acceptance of grace. Cranach is hardly the first artist to place himself within a holy narrative. Just one famous example of an artist who included himself among holy company is Dürer, whose familiar features are recognizable in his well-known 1506 Feast of the Rose Garlands altarpiece in Prague.31 Whereas Cranach appears in the center and to the same scale as the holy figures as he attends the Crucifixion, Dürer placed himself in the back, in the corner, and in diminutive scale. These formal decisions effectively temper the conceit of placing himself among such exalted company. Another factor distinguishes Cranach’s inclusion in a holy narrative from Dürer’s. Rather than watching from a distance, as Dürer does, Cranach is actually incorporated into the religious scene, surrendering to the mystery of the purifying blood that lands on his head.32 Ironically, Cranach’s passive righteousness becomes a vehicle for his active participation in the main scene, allowing him to declare his salvation.33 In addition to the poignant drop of blood, other elements of the composition highlight Cranach’s passive righteousness. The damned sinner, familiar from Law and Gospel, is in his expected place, but the saved man is nowhere visible, because Cranach has taken his place.34

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Figure 4.4. Cranach, Weimar Altarpiece, detail of blood, 1553–55, panel. Photo credit: SLUB Dresden / abt. Deutsche Fotothek.

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The Weimar Altarpiece encourages the beholder to believe that Cranach is saved. In addition to proclaiming his salvation, Cranach makes other kinds of claims as well. Placing himself front and center in the company of Christ himself is a bold decision. Has the rhetoric of Lutheran salvation evolved into the artist’s boldest claims of identity and fame? Cranach’s position in the Weimar central panel has been the subject of some scholarly discussion. Joseph Koerner interprets the Weimar Altarpiece in terms of the status of the artist in the course of the sixteenth century, arguing that Cranach as the universal sinner, the naked sinner of Law and Gospel, undermines the notion of the artist as a unique genius. Koerner argues provocatively that “Cranach’s likeness in the Weimar Altarpiece marks not only the historical end of German Renaissance art . . . but also the end of an aesthetics that celebrates the power of images as the product of an individual personal talent.”35 I propose instead that what Koerner takes to be the end of individual artistic personality is rather a complicating adjustment to that identity: Cranach is the generic sinner and the individual artist simultaneously. The theology of salvation by grace through faith applies to every single person, even people who make beautiful paintings. Grace does not negate individual temperament and creativity; rather, it denies that individual talents offer exemption from the basic, sinful, human condition. Cranach is the naked sinner to be sure, but his artistic personality remains intact. Indeed, if the artist were literally devoid of artistic identity, there would be no reason to assign him a specific identity in the form of a portrait. Cranach in the Weimar central panel demonstrates a specific instance of a general idea. Cranach as naked sinner does not dissolve his personality into a theological concept. On the contrary, it particularizes the Lutheran concepts of sin and salvation, preserving the artist’s individuality. Cranach the sinner does not negate or eclipse Cranach the artist. Cranach’s place in the Weimar central panel declares the universal necessity of salvation at the same that it celebrates his individual talent. The viewer’s response is to vacillate between Cranach’s multiple declarations. First, Cranach represents himself in the company of Christ, a seeming display of arrogance. He also takes the place of the sinner or naked man from the Law and Gospel, allying himself with all humanity in an outward gesture of humility. However, he also created a major and important body of work, including the painting in which he appears. His placement in the center panel also commemorates his accomplishments. A comparison between the Weimar Altarpiece and Rogier van der Weyden’s Crucifixion Altarpiece in Vienna (c. 1440; fig. 4.5) clarifies Cranach’s distinctive role in the central panel of the Weimar Altarpiece. Both Cranach’s and van der Weyden’s paintings are triptychs with a Crucifixion in the center

Figure 4.5.

Rogier van der Weyden, Vienna Crucifixion, 1445, panel. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, N.Y.

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panel. Most important, in both paintings, contemporary figures intrude into the holy scene.36 The human figures in the Vienna central panel are donors who kneel in prayer at the foot of the cross. The saints in the wings, the Magdalene on the left and Veronica on the right, occupy the space typically reserved for donors and saints in fifteenth-century altarpieces. The iconography of the holy figures identifies them unmistakably. The Virgin clutches the cross and faints into John’s arms.37 Veronica holds her icon of Christ, and the Magdalene holds her ointment jar. The donors in the central panel are recognizable because of their prayerful postures, their more historically specific clothing, and the absence of symbols or body positions that would identify them as holy figures. Both van der Weyden and Cranach depict human figures attending the Crucifixion, but Cranach the artist is not the equivalent of the donors in Vienna. Cranach and the Vienna donors do not share a common theological motivation. The two images do not share the same significance or function. The patrons in van der Weyden’s panel have commissioned the triptych as a good work, an effort to make themselves worthy in the eyes of God. Their prayer is as active as the commission itself. Their proximity to Christ is the direct result of their financial and devotional efforts. In contrast, Cranach has placed himself in the holy narrative not as a donor but, rather, in the pioneering role of the particularized saved sinner, as an expression of a theology that explicitly rejects the kind of pious act the donors in the Vienna panel extol. Cranach in Weimar and the donors in the Vienna panel also represent different stages in the process of salvation. Whereas the Vienna donors (or any other late-medieval donor) participate in actions that they hope will lead to salvation, Cranach experiences salvation itself. The Vienna panel is a fragment of a lifelong effort to become justified in the eyes of God, a testament to effort and good works. In contrast, the Weimar Altarpiece concretely demonstrates salvation in process. The blood splashing on Cranach’s head and Luther’s text assure the viewer that this is not what the artist hopes for but, rather, what he is guaranteed. It remains uncertain whether Cranach the Elder chose to commemorate himself in the central panel or whether his son bestowed this honor upon him.38 Formally, the portrait is so fully integrated into the composition that one suspects Cranach’s presence had been planned from the inception. The importance of both Cranach and Luther to the meaning of the retable, as well as the central panel’s balanced composition, suggest that both artist and theologian always figured in the original plan. The cool color scheme on the outside panels characterizes the work of Cranach the Younger, while the warm palette on the inside implies the hand of Cranach the Elder, suggesting further

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that Cranach represented himself. However, in the absence of hard data, any ideas about attribution must remain speculative. More revealing for this discussion than tracking the hand of the master is considering how the meaning of the retable would be different if Cranach’s face in the center were a self-portrait or his son’s tribute. If it is a self-portrait, Cranach honors himself, his pictorial inventions, and his own salvation. If the younger Cranach painted his father’s portrait, Cranach, his salvation, and artistic accomplishments are also memorialized. Either scenario produces a commemoration of the artist’s life and salvation. Cranach as the saved man of Law and Gospel merges with the orthodox Lutheran pictorial type he invented. Luther’s legible text, combined with the display of Cranach’s actual salvation, encourages the viewer to accept Lutheran salvation in general and Cranach’s salvation in particular as demonstrated truth. Artistic identity is less important than Christian identity. Regardless of the status of Cranach’s image as portrait or self-portrait, the established strategies of Law and Gospel function even more emphatically in the Weimar Altarpiece because Cranach and Luther particularize and contemporize the prophet and naked sinner of the earlier pictures. In addition to “not Law but Gospel,” “not salvation by good works but salvation by grace,” and “not a condemned man but a saved man,” we have “not Moses’s law alone but Luther’s interpretation of law and gospel” and “not salvation alone but salvation as exemplified by Cranach.” Cranach was already dead by the time the Weimar Altarpiece was completed; the altarpiece presents him as certainly with Christ because he followed the right path in life. Cranach and Luther are represented next to Christ because they are truly with him; their pious Lutheran life has rendered any other possibility unthinkable. Donors and Viewers The innovative relationships among the figures in the central panel suggest new significance for the figures in the wings. Just as Cranach and Luther in the central panel signify different ideas than do earlier human figures who have intruded into holy spaces, the figures in the wings in Weimar function differently than do peripheral figures in earlier retables. Performing a good work was certainly not the donors’ incentive, as it would have been for the van der Weyden donors in the Vienna panel described above. The now-lost inscription offers the first clues about the figures in the wings. It identifies the sons of the electoral family—John Frederick III, John William, and John Frederick II—as the donors of the retable. The inscription further explains that the sons dedicate the retable to the memory of their parents.

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In English, the Latin text reads:39 To their very greatly missed parents His grace the most distinguished and renowned prince John Frederick duke of Saxony, born the elector of the Roman Empire, Landgrave of Thuringen, Margrave of Meißen, etc. and Lady Sibylle, born the princess of Cleves, Jülich, Berg. etc., the grieving sons John Frederick II, Johann William, and John Frederick III have erected this monument out of gratitude. To their parents, having confessed, through savage war, a faith that acts in unwavering piety [PIETATE], these brothers, with one heart, sons pleasing to the pious [PIIS], lovers of piety [PIETATIS] themselves, have erected this panel so that as the years pass by it may be a monument of their confessed faith and a pledge of love. Oh Christ, be present to your people, You Who offer safe shady retreats, so they may overcome even those things which they think are not to be overcome. Give peace and restrain the enemy, protect those who fear the father with you as mediator, Duke Father, with whose wisdom you shine. Be gone, impious wisdom of men; reliance on Christ makes one just before God on his throne.

The inscription emphasizes piety in both the sons and their parents. In the inscription, the triple variation of the words piety and pious—PIETATE, PIIS, PIETATIS—highlight the significance of faith for both the parents and the sons.40 The parents valiantly fought a war with “unwavering piety [PIETATE]”; the brothers are “pleasing to the pious [PIIS], lovers of piety [PIETATIS] themselves.” The inscription’s final sentence, “reliance on Christ makes one just before God on his throne,” highlights and underscores the role of faith. Because Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick were already deceased by the time the retable was completed, the Weimar Altarpiece functioned as their epitaph. The inscription declares that the Weimar Altarpiece is the sons’ tribute to their parents. The language of the inscription accentuates the memorial function, proclaiming that the sons are “full of sorrow” or “grieving” (LUCTUOSI). The parents, who are “very greatly missed” (DESIDERATISSIMIS PARENTIBUS), are eulogized as possessing superlative virtues of the “most distinguished and renowned” (ILLUSTRISSIMIS ET INCLITIS). Though both parents and sons were pious Lutherans, the relationships of their images to the central panel are not identical. The key difference is that the salvation of the sons is promised, whereas the salvation of Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick is already achieved; because they are dead, they have already attained salvation. Sibylle of Cleves and John Frederick both bear witness to Cranach’s salvation as their own salvation is actualized. The Weimar Altarpiece is a celebration of Lutheran piety and an epitaph. The

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figures in the wings proclaim their devotion to Lutheran Christianity and celebrate their salvation. The sons memorialize and commemorate their parents, whose salvation is certain. The figures in the wings do not have a visionary audience with Cranach, Luther, and the two manifestations of Christ. What the figures in the wings observe is neither mystical, like a vision, nor empirical, like a sensory apprehension of the physical world. Instead, their experience is testimonial; their faith has made them eyewitnesses to theological truth. They see not a vision, not the literal sight of Cranach and Luther in the presence of Christ, John, and Moses, but the truth of what this grouping signifies: Luther’s teaching and the salvation it ensures. The figures in the wings apprehend theological truth enacted on identifiable, familiar Christians whose experience testifies to the phenomenon of grace. By representing themselves glimpsing theological truth, the figures in the wings declare their confessional identity and ultimately their own salvation. They see the truth, they know it has vouchsafed Cranach’s salvation, and they believe with certainty that it will ensure their own. The testimonial relationships the Weimar Altarpiece proposes among human and holy figures expand to shape interactions between the viewer and the painted figures. Hans Belting’s concept of late-medieval devotio helps clarify the dialogue between the Weimar Altarpiece and the beholder. Belting defines devotion as “a religious dialogue that an individual or community conducts with a partner imagined in a particular way. When it was supported by an image that made the partner in the image present as a living participant in the dialogue, one can describe this as image devotion.”41 The dialogue a sixteenthcentury viewer of the Weimar Altarpiece might imagine differs markedly from conversations with “imagined” interlocutors in traditional Catholic retables. If we understand devotion as Belting defines it, as establishing an imagined dialogue with depicted holy figures, then we may understand the Weimar Altarpiece as a redefinition of devotion in Lutheran terms, as a new dialogue inspired by a new image of the imagined interlocutor.42 Three main variables define this new devotional equation: The first and most basic element is the content of the dialogue, which is an explication of Lutheran grace. The second is the role of the imagined interlocutors—Luther, who explains points of doctrine; Christ, who offers salvation; Cranach, who becomes an exemplar of piety by accepting salvation without works; and the donors and their parents, who follow Cranach’s example of faith. The final element of this new imagined dialogue is the response of the viewer, who is to accept Luther’s word, to recognize the grace Christ offers, and to accept this grace and be saved, like Cranach and the ducal family. Not only Christ, but also Luther and Cranach and the figures in the wings have become these “living participant(s) in the dialogue” with the viewer.

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SYNTHESIS An image that introduces an interaction between human and holy figures puts forward categories of religious experience. The Weimar Altarpiece introduces and defines new categories appropriate for the new religion, connecting the two-dimensional image and the experience of the viewer in radically new ways, marking the convergence of testimony and didacticism that exemplify Lutheran art. By rejecting the representation of visionary claims and the value of human effort in the eyes of God, features that were so prevalent among Catholic triptychs, the Weimar Altarpiece demonstrates salvation as the experience of the donor, the viewer, and the artist himself. The Weimar Altarpiece reconfigures the structure and the conditions of religious experience. This deconstruction and restructuring of conventions within the image are comparable to the course of the Reformation itself, which broke with religious tradition, violated the conventions of late-medieval piety and theology, and built a new faith out of this transgression. Art in the service of the new faith, an art that portrays its founder as well as its most famous and devoted adherents, follows a similar pattern of transgression and renewal.

NOTES 1. Scholars have speculated that Cranach the Elder began the altarpiece, although it was probably completed by Cranach the Younger. Ernst Grohne believes that Cranach the Elder probably made the sketches for the Weimar Altarpiece. Grohne, Die bremischen Truhen mit reformatorischen Darstellung und der Ursprung ihrer Motive, Abhandlungen und Vorträge der Bremer Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (Bremen: Geist, 1936), 17. In 1556, probably in May, Cranach the Younger received 77 florins, 16 groschen for costs associated with an altarpiece in the City Church; see Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 1:218, and Schade, Family, Document 421. 2. My thanks to Professor Claudia Swan, who graciously included me in her session, “The Social Order of Phantasia,” at the Renaissance Society of America in Chicago in March 2001. The paper I presented in that session, “Luther and the Reconstruction of the Visionary,” became the basis for this chapter. For a discussion of the history of the City Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Weimar, see Reinhold Jauernig, “Die Geschichte,” in Die Stadtkirche zu Peter und Paul in Weimar, ed. Eva Schmidt (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1955), 27–58. For a description of the Weimar Altarpiece as well as other church furnishings, see also Hanna Jursch, “Die Kunstdenkmäler,” in Schmidt, Stadtkirche Weimar, 65–106. Jursch’s scrupulous collection of the available data is a sturdy foundation for subsequent scholarship. 3. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 406; for a discussion of the Weimar Altarpiece, see 406–10. Two recent and brief discussions of the Weimar Altarpiece include

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Susan R. Boettcher, “Von der Trägheit der Memoria: Cranachs Lutheraltarbilder im Zusammenhang der evangelischen Luther-memoria im späten 16. Jahrhundert,” in Protestantische Identität und Erinnerung, ed. Joachim Eibach and Marcus Sandl (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 65–67, and John Dillenberger, Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 105–6. 4. Some of the best known include Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern, and Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, Reformation in Nürnberg Umbruch und Bewahrung: [Ausstellung im German. Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, 12. Juni-2. September 1979 zum 18. Dt. Evang. Kirchentag] (Nürnberg: Verlag Medien & Kultur, 1979); Werner Hofmann, ed., Luther und die Folgen für die Kunst (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1983); Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Martin Luther und die Reformation in Deutschland: Ausstellung zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983); Günter Schade and Klaus-Peter Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR: Ausstellung im Alten Museum vom 26. August bis 13. November 1983 (Berlin [West]: Elefanten Press, 1983); Claus Grimm, Johannes Erichsen, and Evemaria Brockhoff, eds. Lucas Cranach: Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1994); Allmuth Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen (Gotha: Schlossmuseum Gotha, 1994); Jutta Krauss and Günter Schuchardt, Aller Knecht und Christi Untertan: Der Mensch Luther und sein Umfeld; Katalog der Ausstellungen zum 450 Todesjahr 1996, Wartburg und Eisenach (Eisenach: Die Stiftung, 1996). See also Reiner Haussherr, “Jubiliäumsmaßnahmen. Rückblick auf einige Ausstellungen des LutherJahres 1983,” Kunstchronik 37 (1984): 421–37. 5. For a clear and concise exposition on the proper function of images in Christian devotion in the period before the Reformation, see Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980; 3d printing, 1985), 50–54. 6. FR, Cat. 184; Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–118. Two other important and fundamental studies of visionary experience in painting are Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), and James Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69. The question of what donors literally experienced matters less than the convention of representing themselves having visions, as explained in chapter 2. 7. According to Hans Belting, the Weimar Altarpiece depicts not just Luther’s thought but also his exegesis. The beholder reaches the picture intellectually rather than affectively. The triple repetition of Christ in the image precludes any emotional connection. Belting, “Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder,” in Macht und Ohnmacht der Bilder: Reformatorischer Bildersturm im Kontext der europäischen Geschichte, ed. Peter Blickle, Historische Zeitschrift, new series, vol. 33 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), 17–20.

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8. Patrons commissioned works of art for multiple emotional, spiritual, and social reasons, including asserting status, creating an enduring memory of their lives, expressing their sincere desire to repent for sin, and honoring the church. See Corine Schleif, Donatio et Memoria: Stifter, Stiftungen, und Motivationene an Beispielen aus der Lornzkirche in Nürnberg (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1990). 9. For a discussion of a late portrait (1551) of John Frederick holding a pomegranate and bearing the scar he received in the Schmalkaldic defeat, see Bernd Bunsche, “Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Das Porträt des Kurfürsten Johann Friedrich der Großmutige,” Weltkunst 73 (2003): 1900–1902. Bunsche argues that this portrait is by Cranach the Elder. 10. The coats of arms of John Frederick and Sibylle of Cleves are identifiable in comparison with the coats of arms on their respective epitaph memorials in the Weimar City Church (Schmidt, Stadtkirche Weimar, fig. 18 for John Frederick and fig. 19 for Sibylle of Cleves). 11. Jursch, “Kunstdenkmäler,” 74. Oskar Thulin translates “Verbum domini manet in aeternum” as “Gottes Wort bleibt in Ewigkeit.” Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 164 n. 34. See also Carl C. Christensen, Princes and Propaganda: Electoral Saxon Art of the Reformation, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 20 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992), 34. 12. On John William, John Frederick II, and John Frederick III, see Jursch, “Kunstdenkmäler,” 74. Eva Schmidt, “Die Inschriften,” in Schmidt, Stadtkirche Weimar, reproduces the text of the memorials and epitaphs of John Frederick III, 109 and 123, and John William, 110 and 123–24. 13. Thulin explains that the predella, which had an inscription composed by Johann Stigel, was destroyed in 1945 (Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 57). 14. For Friedrich Ohly, the placement of the holy figure Moses and the sixteenthcentury theologian Luther in antithetical positions, pairing human and holy figure as type and antitype, is a unique invention of the Weimar Altarpiece. Ohly, Gesetz und Evangelium: Zur Typologie bei Luther und Lucas Cranach zum Blutstrahl der Gnade in der Kunst, Schriftenreihe der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, new series, no. 1. (Münster: AschendorffscheVerlagsbuchhandlung, 1985), 44. 15. Ohly, Gesetz, 21. 16. Jursch, “Kunstdenkmäler,” 65. Ohly observes in Gesetz (29) that this date occupies the same position as Cranach Elder’s signature in the signed Law and Gospel panels of 1529. 17. “ . . . das Blut Jesu Christi reinigt uns von allen Sünden. Darum laßt uns hinzutreten mit Freudigkeit zu dem Gnadenstuhl, auf daß wir Barmherzigkeit emfangen innen und Gnade finden auf die zeit, wann uns Hilfe not sein wird. Gleich wie Moses in der Wüste eine Schlange erhöhet hat, also muß auch des Menschen Sohn erhöhet werden, auf daß alle, die an ihn glauben, nicht verloren werden, sondern das ewige Leben haben.” (1 John 1:7; Heb. 4:16; John 3:14–15). In Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 56. See also Jursch, “Kunstdenkmäler,” 69–70. 18. On the Altarpiece of the Princes, see Günter Schuchardt, Lucas Cranach der Ältere Orte der Begegnung (Leipzig: Kranichborn Verlag, 1994), 70–72; Sibylle

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Harksen, “Fürstenaltar,” in Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, 109–10; Schade and Arnold, Kunst der Reformationszeit, image reproduced on 92–93; and FR, Cat. 20. Harksen explains that a bill or receipt (Rechnung) from Wittenberg in the State Archive, Weimar B. 2756 Bl. 83–100, documents that a small chapel was built into the western end of the church and completed in November 1510 (“Fürstenaltar,” 109). 19. For instance, all three of the Reformation-period Saxon electors, Frederick the Wise, John the Constant, and John Frederick the Magnanimous, are represented in a Hamburg triptych; see FR, Cat. 338. 20. Schuchardt, Orte der Begegnung, 70. 21. Harksen, “Fürstenaltar,” 109. 22. I am using the term “veneration” to signify a visible representation of belief in or devotion to God or the saints, often involving music, offerings or donations, rituals, meditations, or physical or emotional displays of belief. See “Anbetung,” in Kleines Bibellexikon, Bibel Kirche Gemeinde, vol. 2 (Constance: Christlich Verlagsanstalt, 1991), 23. Susan Boettcher suggests that the images of Luther in Cranach’s altarpieces resemble the pictures of saints he so resolutely rejected, but she does not explore this idea (“Trägheit,” 48). This is precisely the point of the current discussion. Formal similarities mask the functional differences between Catholic and evangelical art. 23. Especially in Rogier van der Weyden’s Prado Deposition (c. 1435) and the Crucifixion Diptych (c. 1455), now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 24. Some examples of official debates among the reformers include Luther’s Marburg Colloquy on the Eucharist (1529), LW 38:3–89, and Heidelberg Disputation (1518), LW 31:39–58. 25. Though the bibliography on this subject is large, two important sources include Paolo Berdini, The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), especially the introduction, and Oskar Bätschmann, “Text and Image: Some General Problems,” Word and Image 4, no. 1 (1988): 11–23. 26. Ohly, Gesetz, 42 and 44; Ohly uses the term “antitype” to designate Luther (43). See Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 368, 407. Boettcher suggests that Cranach takes the place of Adam, or “Everyman” (Jedermann) (“Trägheit,” 66). 27. Earlier portraits include, for example, the famous ones of Luther as Junker Jörg (c. 1521), in Leipzig (FR, Cat. 148) and Weimar (FR, Cat. 149). For a more elaborate discussion of Cranach’s portraits of Luther, see Martin Warnke, Cranachs Luther: Entwürfe für ein Image (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1984). Two basic and wellknown works on early-modern identity are Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance SelfFashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), and Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture. 28. Boettcher identifies Luther as a “bringer of the Holy Script” (Vermittler der Heiligen Schrift) rather than a “bringer of holiness” (Vermittler des Heils) (“Trägheit,” 66). 29. Cf. Koerner, Moment of Self-Portraiture, 408. Thomas Kaufmann argues that Lutheran is the only confession in which pictures actually explicate scripture, and re-

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formers, in their portraits, become protectors of truth in the tradition of prophets and apostles. Kaufmann, “Die Bilderfrage im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum,” in Blickle, Macht und Ohnmacht, 449. On Luther as prophet, see also Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, Hero: Images of the Reformer, 1520–1620, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999). 30. Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (1515) is another example. 31. Koerner discusses Dürer ’s presence in the Prague panel in comparison to Cranach’s Weimar Altarpiece (Moment of Self-Portraiture, 408). Dürer also represents himself in his Adoration of the Trinity (1511, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and in the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). 32. I am grateful to Dr. Richard Kieckhefer, who clarified my murky thinking on the difference between Dürer’s observation and Cranach’s participation. 33. “There is yet another righteousness which is above all these: to wit, the righteousness of faith, or Christian righteousness. . . . This most excellent righteousness, of faith I mean (which God through Christ, without works, imputeth unto us), is neither political nor ceremonial, nor the righteousness of God’s law, nor consistent in our works, but is clean contrary: that is to say, a mere passive righteousness, as the other above are active.” Martin Luther, Letter to the Galatians (1531), in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), 101. The Letter to the Galatians is especially interesting because of the distinctions it makes between law and gospel (Dillenberger, introduction to Selections, xxx). 34. Boettcher points out that the stream of blood landing on Cranach’s head describes salvation without the intervention of the church as an institution (“Trägheit,” 67). 35. Koerner, Self-Portraiture, 408; cf. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, 56; Dillenberger, Images and Relics, 105–6; and Boettcher, “Trägheit,” 52. 36. Two canonical examples of human intrusion into holy space are Jan van Eyck’s Rolin Madonna (c. 1435) and van der Weyden’s Bladelin Madonna (c. 1455). 37. The Virgin swooning in John’s arms is familiar from van der Weyden’s other images, for instance, the Crucifixion Diptych in Philadelphia. For further discussion of the role of the Virgin at the Crucifixion, see Amy Neff, “The Pain of Compassio: Mary’s Labor at the Foot of the Cross,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 2 (1998): 254–73. 38. Jursch, in “Kunstdenkmäler” (82–83), states with certainty that the portrait of Cranach the Elder is Cranach the Younger’s tribute. 39. Eva Schmidt reproduces the entire Latin inscription in “Die Epitaphien,” in Schmidt, Stadtkirche Weimar, 143. My thanks to Dr. Jody Pinault, who translated and patiently guided me through the Latin version of this text: “ILLUSTRISSIMIS ET INCLITIS PRINCIPIBUS D. JOANNI FRIDERICO I. / DUCI SAXONIAE, IMPERII ROM. NATO ELECTORI, LANDTGRAVIO THURINGIAE, MARCHIONI MISNIAE ETC. ET D. SIBYLLAE NATAE DUCI CLE/ VENSI JULIACENSI, BERGENSI etc. DESIDERATISSIMIS PARENTIBUS / LUCTUOSI FILII, JOANNES FRIDERICUS II JOANNES WILHELMUS, JO- / ANNES FRIDERICUS III. GRATITUDINIS ERGO, POSUERUNT. / CONFESSIS STABILI, PER SAEVA PARENTIBUS ARMA / JUSTIFICAM PIETATE FIDEM, PIETATIS AMANTES, // GRATA PIIS SOBOLES, UNO TRES PECTORE FRATRES, /

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HANC TABULAM POSUERE. ANNIS UT EUNTIBUS ESSET / ADSERTAE FIDEI MONUMENTUM, ET PIGNUS AMORIS.

/

CHRISTE TUIS PRAESENS, QUI TUTA UMBRACULA PRAEBES,

ENT ETIAM QUAE NON SUPERANDA PUTANTUR,

/

/

UT SUPER-

DA PACEM, ATQUE HOSTES COMPESCE,

TUERE TIMENTES / TE MEDIANTE PATREM, CUJUS SAPIENTIA SPLENDES. / I PROCUL INFOELIX HOMINUM SAPIENTIA, JUSTUM / ANTE DEUM IN SOLO REDDIT FIDUCIA CHRISTO. / ANNO DNI M.D. LV.”

Schmidt also provides the following German translation (see also Schuchardt, Cranach des Aeltern, 1:214–15): “Den Durchlauchtigsten und Hochgebornen Fürsten Herrn John Frederick Herzog von / Sachsen, geboren Kurfürsten des Römischen Reichs, Landgrafen von Thüringen, Mark- / grafen von Meißen usw. und Frau Sibylle, gebornen Fürstin von Cleve, Jülich, Berg, etc., / ihren seher geliebten Eltern, setzten die tiefbetrübten Söhne Johann Friedrich II., / Johann Wilhelm, Johann Friedrich III. aus Dankbarkeit dieses Denkmal. // Ihren im flammenden Krieg standhaft dem Bekenntnis getreuen / Eltern, den redlich frommen, zu danken in frommer Gesinnung, / Haben die liebenden Kinder, drei Brüder aus einem Gemüte, / Diese Tafel geweiht, daß sie fürder im Wandel der Jahre / Denkmal sei von der Glaubenstreu’, und der Liebe ein Pfand sei. / Christus, Du, der mächtig die Wege der Seinigen schirmet, / Daß sie auch das überwinden, was unüberwindlich erscheinet. / Schenk uns Frieden, bezähme die Feinde, hilf denen, die Deine / Mittlung suchen zum Vater deß leuchtende Weisheit Du selbst bist! / Weg mit der Menschen unfrommender Weisheit! Rein vor dem Throne / Gottes macht uns allein das reine Vertrauen auf Christus. / Im Jahre des Herrn 1555.” 40. Again, I am indebted to Dr. Jody Pinault’s coaching. 41. Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990), 3. 42. According to the Kleines Bibellexikon, prayer (Gebet) is the way a person directs herself or himself toward God; see “Gebet,” in Kleines Bibellexikon, 115. Worship (Anbetung) is an act of devotion to God (Gottesverehrung), often associated with offerings, music, and the singing of Psalms; see “Anbetung,” in Kleines Bibellexikon, 23.

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Public Worship to Private Devotion: Cranach’s Reformation Madonna Panels

The age of Dürer thus remained one in which many different ways of seeing were possible. Bob Scribner, “Ways of Seeing in the Age of Dürer”1 Even the iconoclasts must allow me a Crucifix or a Madonna image, or even an idol, even under the strictest law of Moses, provided I carry it or look at it, as long as I don’t worship it, but only keep it in my memory. Martin Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets2

CRANACH AT THE CROSSROADS Most scholars agree that the Virgin Mary assumed a central role in the visual culture and devotional practices of the late Middle Ages.3 Most scholars also agree that the redirection of worship back to Christ marks a critical change in art and devotion during the Lutheran Reformation.4 It therefore seems surprising that Lucas Cranach, a personal friend and theological ally of Martin Luther, continued to paint pictures of the Madonna, probably for a clientele with Lutheran sympathies, well into the sixteenth century.5 Scholars of Reformation theology have begun to explore the role of the Virgin in Lutheran (or evangelical) thought. Walter Tappolet has furnished the clearest and most comprehensive study of the role of the Virgin in the theology of Protestant reformers.6 Tappolet’s abundant references to the Kritische Gesammtausgabe (WA) build a solid bibliography for expanded research. Although art historians have included Madonna panels in more-general studies of his work, Cranach’s Madonna pictures have received scant scholarly attention.7 163

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One notable exception is the work of Jan Wittmann, whose study has established that Cranach produced Madonna images consistently, both before the Reformation and after his confession of the new faith.8 In this chapter I will put forward an explanation for the continued production of Cranach Madonna pictures into the Reformation. I will do this with reference to both the theological functions of these pictures and their possible audience. I shall argue that Cranach continued to produce Madonna paintings not only for Catholic patrons but also for viewers with Lutheran sympathies. Broadly speaking, for late-medieval Catholic viewers, the Virgin had filled many roles. She was a divine intercessor. Her image was an object of pious meditation. She served as an exemplar for metaphysical experience. However, for Luther, the Virgin became a model of uniquely Lutheran faith and the paragon of Lutheran humility.9 Unlike Wittmann, I am not making a case for the invention of overtly Lutheran iconography of the Madonna.10 As we shall see, Cranach’s later Madonnas are too consistent with pre-Reformation models to assign them a confessional identity based exclusively on their iconography. Rather, my purpose is to describe a context in which viewers with Lutheran sympathies accepted and continued to look at fairly traditional Madonna paintings. These pictures would not necessarily have appeared polemical; rather, they were basic enough to satisfy a range of heterogeneous viewers.11 Like the altarpieces discussed in previous chapters, Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonna panels rely on beholders’ bringing with them some knowledge of Lutheran theology. Of course, as noted in earlier chapters, all images, Lutheran or Catholic, required from beholders some previous knowledge, for instance, of theological ideas, compositional conventions, or symbols. The issue here, though, is that beholders were expected to be able to summon new, Lutheran concepts, even when they appeared in a pictorial type with a pre-Reformation history. But Madonna images are more flexible than the retables discussed in earlier chapters and are capable of suiting the needs and expectations of viewers with varied confessional sympathies. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Luther’s more radical colleague in Wittenberg, advocated iconoclasm, and his views contributed to riots and the destruction of large numbers of images in 1525.12 In contrast, Luther rejected iconoclasm and offered a qualified defense of religious images, provided that the pictures themselves and the way viewers understood them did not contradict his rigorously text-driven theology. Luther’s preconditions allowed certain traditional pictorial types, such as portraits of the Madonna, to persist well into the sixteenth century. Luther’s conditional acceptance of images of the Madonna, along with Cranach’s workshop practices, which favored producing the maximum number of pictures as simply as possible, suggest that

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these Madonna panels had a wide audience of viewers with both Catholic and Lutheran religious sympathies.13 As we have seen, Cranach was a friend and supporter of Luther from the outset of the Reformation. As we have also seen, Cranach served the Catholic cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg.14 Scholars have struggled to discern Cranach’s personal and professional stance in the context of his service to both his Lutheran friends and their theological adversaries.15 As I suggested in the introduction, the timing of Cranach’s work for the cardinal does much to resolve this issue, because that work predates both the definitive split between Albrecht and Luther and the invention of distinguishably Lutheran types of pictures. Still, the question of Cranach’s allegiances reemerges when we consider the varied clientele for his numerous Madonna panels. Individual Madonna pictures may not express the artist’s own personal convictions, but Cranach did respond to Lutheran reform broadly by adjusting certain aspects of his production. Specifically, though Cranach continued to paint the Virgin throughout his career, he modified his production of Marian pictures after about 1520. Around this time, Cranach ceased painting Mariological subjects, that is, subjects based in legend rather than scripture.16 Luther found such subjects abhorrent and discouraged believers from giving credence to Mariological legends.17 Before 1520, Cranach painted fewer Madonnas than Mariological images; after he completed his last Mariological altarpieces in 1522, the only Marian images Cranach produced were Madonnas. Over fifty Madonna panels came out of the Cranach workshop from about 1525 until the end of his career. In fact, Cranach painted more Marian panels after the Reformation than in the first two decades of the sixteenth century.18 No surviving textual or pictorial evidence suggests that he painted any Mariological subjects after this time.19 The Madonna paintings Cranach continued to produce fall into the category of Merckbilder, or images that simply remind the viewer of their subject, in this case the Virgin. For Luther, such images were never superstitious.20 As we will see, Merckbilder differ markedly from the devotional images of the Virgin of the late-medieval period, including those that Cranach himself had painted earlier in his career. Though much archival information on Cranach’s career survives, documentation on specific Madonna pictures and other smaller panels is negligible. Financial accounts, such as receipts or tax records, rarely report the purchase of a specific image; rather, they refer to works generically as, for example, a Madonna panel or a Judgment of Paris.21 Furthermore, while no documents so far discovered unambiguously connect a Lutheran patron to a Cranach Madonna, circumstances suggest that Cranach’s conservative Madonna panels were intended for viewers with Lutheran sympathies. Confessional categories

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were fluid in the sixteenth century. Because these categories were still evolving, it is not surprising that pictures, either by default or by design, accommodated the expectations of viewers with various, inchoate, and shifting beliefs.22 Any painting is subject to varied interpretations, but Cranach’s Madonna panels appear to set this flexibility as their objective.23 Cranach’s Madonna images typically depict the Virgin in half-length and in a frontal pose with the Christ child on her lap. Christ frequently handles an apple or a bunch of grapes; an example of the latter is a panel probably from 1537 or later, formerly in Berlin (fig. 5.1).24 No obvious clues, such as a halo or gold background, indicate her miraculous motherhood. Apart from stylistic variations perhaps having more to do with the expansion of the workshop and the extent of assistants’ participation, Madonna panels on either side of the turbulent 1520s are striking for their similarities, not for their differences. Three pictures in particular epitomize the consistency among Cranach’s Madonna panels throughout his career. The Munich Madonna (c. 1525; fig. 5.3)25 shares formal and iconographic features with the later Berlin Madonna (fig. 5.1). In the Munich panel, the holy figures appear before a landscape, close to the picture plane, seemingly in but not of the world. Two putti hold a thick cloth behind the figures, obscuring part of the landscape, presenting the figures to the viewer, and further separating the figures from the quotidian world.26Christ picks a grape from the cluster in the Virgin’s hand and gently offers one up to her as the she inclines her head tenderly toward her precocious infant.27 In the Berlin panel, the Virgin, Christ, and an infant John the Baptist appear before a simple, dark background, as though the curtain from the earlier panel had been pulled closed, concealing any landscape from view and placing the holy figures in splendid isolation.28 The Virgin coyly inclines her head to her right while John the Baptist presents a cluster of grapes to Christ, who plucks one from the top. In both the Berlin and Hague panels, the Virgin appears in half length, her hair clinging to her head and falling over her shoulders. She tilts her head as she frankly and quietly gazes at the viewer. The presence or absence of landscape matters less than the direct engagement this holy figure offers up to the beholder. A third example of a Madonna panel, this one from the Hague (c. 1520; fig. 5.2), presents a variation on the same essential elements.29 Two putti hold a curtain that partially obscures a landscape receding into the distance. A rather melancholic Virgin sits in front of the curtain as Christ reaches toward a bunch of grapes on the lower-left portion of the composition. The Berlin, Munich, and Hague Madonna panels, which span the decades before and during the Reformation—and like many other panels throughout Cranach’s career— consistently employ a finite number of variables: grapes, the infant John the

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Figure 5.1. Cranach, Berlin Madonna, after 1537, panel. Photo credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, N.Y.

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Figure 5.2. Cranach, Hague Madonna, 1520, panel. Photo credit: Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague.

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Figure 5.3. Cranach, Munich Madonna, 1525, panel. Photo credit: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

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Baptist, putti, curtains, unadorned black backgrounds, and landscape.30 More striking than the fairly narrow iconographic variation are the common elements, especially the small scale, the half-length format, and the direct eye contact between beholder and Virgin, which persist in Cranach’s Madonna panels throughout his career. Most significant is the conspicuous absence of halos, crowns, or gold backgrounds, all of which would suggest the Virgin as Queen of Heaven. Cranach’s Madonnas are all earthly, human mothers. These Madonnas contrast strikingly with Cranach’s Mariological pictures, in which the Virgin appears with other saints or donors in subjects with no clear scriptural origin. One example is a print from circa 1513 in which Frederick the Wise has a private audience with the Virgin and Christ (fig. 5.4); Frederick kneels glassy-eyed as he venerates the Virgin.31 Another example is the painting Madonna with Four Female Saints, from circa 1510, in which Catherine receives her wedding ring from Christ in her mystic marriage.32 The absence of Mariological subjects, the preponderance of Madonnas, Luther’s acceptance of the Virgin, the flexibility of Cranach’s iconography— all indicate the potential for the continued existence of an audience with Lutheran sympathies for Reformation-period Madonna panels. The iconographic and compositional similarities among these panels obscures the differences that context or viewer expectations might have imparted. For example, if a Catholic patron commissioned or purchased the Berlin Madonna (fig. 5.1), Catholic theology would inform its meaning. This obvious point deserves reiterating because the traditional iconography could retain its significance only if the viewer accepted the parameters of that tradition. The same iconography would transform the Madonna into a different image for a viewer with Lutheran sympathies.33 Christiane Andersson observes three subjects that Cranach employed both before and during the Reformation in which a change in audience and context redefined the meaning of a picture so that it functioned differently: paintings of Christ and the Adulteress and Christ Blessing the Children and a woodcut of The Holy Kinship, an image of the Virgin and Christ with Saint Anne and the extended Holy Family. Andersson explains that Cranach probably produced the first version of The Holy Kinship (c. 1510; fig. 5.5) in conjunction with new indulgences sanctioned by Pope Julius II. Pilgrims who participated in masses and processions dedicated to Saint Anne at the Stiftskirche Allerheiligen in Wittenberg received indulgences for their efforts. These pilgrims to Wittenberg may have taken a Holy Kinship print home with them as a souvenir.34 After the Reformation, the same picture received a new meaning, one in keeping with Lutheran thought. Hallmarks of Lutheran reform included a vernacular Bible and a literate laity. Families were responsible for teaching children to read and study the Bible.35 The Holy Kinship as prototypical family, especially with Saint Anne holding a prominently visible book, was reinvented

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Figure 5.4. Cranach, Frederick the Wise Venerating the Virgin, 1513, woodcut. Photo credit: Warburg Institute.

Figure 5.5.

Cranach, Holy Kinship, c. 1510, woodcut. Photo credit: Warburg Institute.

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to exemplify lay literacy. An inscription appended to the souvenir prints (written by Philip Melanchthon) in Latin and in German translation, emphasized the importance of literacy in Lutheran Christianity. This inscription refers to the Festival of Saint Gregory on May 1, a month that also correlated with the beginning of the school year. The picture that began as an indulgence image was transformed into a declaration of Lutheran education.36 The Holy Kinship is a well-documented instance of the continuity of traditional subjects despite the shift to a Lutheran context, but other examples abound. The Crucifixion, the Last Supper, the Flood, and Lot and His Daughters, all subjects familiar before the Reformation, persisted throughout the sixteenth century, created in response to Cranach’s unequivocally Lutheran commissions, as we have seen in the previous chapters.37 Thus, Lutheran art does not necessarily consist of an entirely new set of subjects and symbols. Rather than extirpating all pictorial remnants of the old faith, Lutheran art preserved familiar, traditional subjects and reinvented their meaning.38 Though no texts accompany late-sixteenth-century Madonna panels, unlike the Holy Kinship prints, the theological points implicit in the greater context of Cranach’s productions from the 1530s onward offer indirect yet compelling evidence of Lutheran meaning.

LATE-MEDIEVAL DEVOTION TO THE VIRGIN: THE FAIR MARY OF REGENSBURG Devotion to the Virgin before the Reformation had become feverish and obsessive, and Luther reacted against it vehemently.39 For Luther, devotion to and representations of the Virgin based on theological speculation or legend rather than scripture were not only categorically unacceptable but outrightly blasphemous. One particular event crystallizes Luther’s opposition to Mariological legend: the famous Fair Mary of Regensburg. Though other scholars have analyzed this incident in depth, it merits summarizing here because it unambiguously illustrates the forms of devotion that were characteristic of late-medieval practice and that became unacceptable to Luther. Well into the sixteenth century, the Jews in the German city of Regensburg lived in relative peace. This situation changed with the death of their protector, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, in 1519. In that year the town council razed the synagogue and expelled the Jews from the city, perhaps as scapegoats for recent economic hardships. As the synagogue was being dismantled, a stonemason fell from the scaffolding but then recovered “miraculously” from his injuries. This miracle was attributed to an image in the city known as the Fair Mary icon, and a new church was to be built in her honor on the site of the

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former synagogue. The artist Albrecht Altdorfer, also a member of the town council, painted a panel after the “miracle-working” icon and produced souvenir woodcut copies for the Regensburg pilgrims.40 One certain reward for going on pilgrimage to Regensburg was one hundred days’ indulgence.41 A woodcut by Michael Ostendorfer (c. 1519–20; fig. 5.6) documents the provisional wooden church that was erected at the site of the former synagogue. The image presents a scene of ecstatic belief, complete with pilgrims fainting and collapsing around the statue of the Virgin in front of the wooden building.42 Luther bewailed the behavior and expectations of the pilgrims as well as the institutions that supported them. His objections were manifold. First, instead of focusing on Christ’s forgiveness, the believers who traveled to Regensburg placed the Virgin as benevolent intercessor at the center of their beliefs.43 Second, when the Virgin assumed the role of benevolent intercessor, Christ became more judging than forgiving. This perception of the judging Christ and the concomitant emphasis on the Virgin’s powers to bestow divine favor epitomized much of the piety, for Luther the blasphemy, of the late Middle Ages.44 Third, this notion of the judging Christ derives from a belief that salvation can be earned through good works, which are the subject of God’s judgment. This constellation of beliefs—a judging Christ, the Virgin as intercessor, and salvation as a reward for good works—is precisely the kind of contractual theology Luther rejected. He abhorred the notion of a bargain between God and the Christian whereby making a pilgrimage and honoring the Virgin constituted “good works” that helped guarantee salvation. The fourth and perhaps most intriguing reason for Luther’s disapproval of the excesses in Regensburg was the possibility of satanic influence in the purported miracles. In an angry letter to the city council, Luther did not deny that miracles attributed to the Virgin actually happened. His point was that Satan could just as easily have caused the wounded man’s inexplicable recovery.45 The believer’s vulnerability to satanic deception and influence was the core risk of deviating from scripture and participating in the cult of the saints. Belief in the Virgin as an intercessor, in contractual salvation, and in the possibility of demonic influence cannot coexist with the notion of unearned salvation by grace through faith, the essence of Lutheran belief. Even though the case of the Fair Mary of Regensburg is extreme, it exemplifies the role of the Virgin in the period just before the Reformation. Fifteenth-century art is replete with multifaceted images of the Virgin. Mary may reign as the Queen of Heaven, as she does famously in Jan van Eyck’s canonical Van der Paele Madonna and Rolin Madonna, as well as in less familiar images by Cranach himself,46 but she is also represented as the earthly and maternal Mary of Mercy protecting the devout against the fury of divine wrath. A clear example of the Mary of Mercy is a sculpture attributed to Peter Koellin (c. 1470; fig. 5.7) in which all manner of humanity, male and

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Figure 5.6. Michael Ostendorfer, Fair Mary of Regensburg, 1519-20, woodcut. Photo credit: Warburg Institute.

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Figure 5.7. Peter Koellin, Mary of Mercy, c. 1470, polychrome wood. Photo credit: North Carolina Museum of Art.

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female, wealthy and poor, assemble under the protective cloak of a giant Virgin who offers shelter against divine retribution.47 The contrast between this humble Virgin as a universal mother and the sublime Virgin as Queen of Heaven reveals the stunning range of aspects of the Virgin in the period before the Reformation.48

ART AND THE VIRGIN ACCORDING TO LUTHER In unambiguous contrast to the role of the Virgin in late-medieval belief, the function of the Madonna panel in Lutheran theology is much more constrained. Despite the many forms of Marian devotion Luther rejected, his theology abundantly defends a continued, specifically defined role for the Virgin Mary. Even in his very last sermon on January 17, 1546, Luther praised the grace that had been bestowed upon the Virgin Mary.49 For Luther, the Virgin deserved admiration because of her humility and acceptance of grace.50 According to Luther, divine love and forgiveness granted to undeserving believers is the fulcrum of salvation. Accepting unearned grace is the defining problem for a human believer who knows she or he is unworthy. The Virgin Mary, however, was able to accept grace in its most intense form; conceiving the messiah required even more faith than what is necessary merely to receive salvation. This extraordinary acceptance of grace renders her worthy of admiration, though emphatically not of devotion.51 The Virgin is no more pure than other Christians, nor does she have the power to intercede or to help a believer justify her- or himself before God. Rather, she acts as a model to all Christians. Christ remains the only object of prayer, and the Virgin must never supersede him. This characterization of the Virgin and her place in Christianity rests securely in Luther’s understanding of scripture, especially his exegesis of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–56). Luther began his Exposition on the Magnificat before the Diet of Worms, where he defended his beliefs before the emperor, and completed it at the Wartburg during the crucial period in the early 1520s when he was composing the critical three treatises that defined his theology.52 According to Luther, Mary herself recognized that she was a vehicle for the events of Christ’s life and death.53 Luther writes in Exposition on the Magnificat: Mary confesses that the foremost work God did for her was that He regarded her, which is indeed the greatest of His works, on which all the rest depend and from which they all derive. For where it comes to pass that God turns His face toward one to regard him, there is nothing but grace and salvation, and all gifts and works must follow. . . .

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Note that she does not say men will speak all manner of good of her, praise her virtues, exalt her virginity or her humility, or sing of what she has done. But for this one thing alone, that God regarded her, men will call her blessed. That is to give all the glory to God as completely as it can be done.54

For Luther, the Magnificat teaches the lesson of the Virgin’s humility and her acceptance of divine promise.55 Luther employed the Magnificat in subsequent writings on the Virgin. For instance, Luther warned in his personal prayer book, “Let not our hearts cleave to her but through her penetrate to Christ and to God himself.56 The Immaculate Conception, the idea that the Virgin is free from original sin, is critical to Luther’s theology of the Virgin.57 Luther’s acceptance of this belief hinges on the idea that the Virgin Mary was conceived not once but twice. As he explained in 1527 in Sermon on the Days of the Conception of Mary, the Mother of God, Mary’s first conception was biological but her subsequent, spiritual conception purged her of original sin. This second conception separates her from the rest of humanity. Regardless of Mary’s status at the moment of her biological birth, she became pure at the moment of Christ’s conception.58 For Luther, defending Mary’s sinlessness becomes a way of asserting Christ’s divinity.59 In the same 1527 text where Luther defined Mary’s twotiered conception, he also explained that only Christ was conceived differently from other human beings from the very beginning, that is, “without the help of a man.”60 Christ did not need to be purified with a second conception because he was never tainted with original sin. Luther’s understanding of the relative purity of the Virgin and Christ is summarized in the following quotation: “Every human being who is not personally God, like Christ, has sinful desires; but Christ has no sinful desires, because he is God, and Mary’s flesh and blood was purified in [his] conception, so that nothing sinful remained.”lxi For the purposes of this discussion, the critical feature of Luther’s limited recognition of the Virgin is his selective approval of certain types of pictorial representations of the Virgin. Luther accepted the Virgin in the new faith with certain qualifications. She was to remain subordinate to Christ, she was purified only in her second conception, and it was her faith and humility, as demonstrated in the Annunciation, that made her worthy of admiration. All these elements come together in Cranach’s Madonna panels, which participate in a law-and-gospel paradigm of Lutheran art. Luther distinguished between gospel and law, and between Lutherans and non-Lutherans (Papists and Jews). In a similar way, Cranach makes analogous distinctions in his Marian pictures. Mariological subjects are on the law side. They are based on legend rather than on scripture and are

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predicated on the expectation that prayers to the Virgin can bring the believer closer to God or move the Virgin to intercede before a judging Christ. They exemplify contractual theology that Luther utterly rejects. In contrast to Mariological images, Madonna pictures exemplify grace. The Virgin appears only with Christ, in an image that emphasizes her motherhood rather than her independent power or holiness. The idea of fundamental human guilt is traditional, but the key to reconciliation is new. Attempting to earn salvation entirely through obedience to the law will not bring the believer to salvation. Imploring the Virgin to intercede on behalf of sinful humanity is unacceptable because it endows her with power she does not have and denies divine mercy itself. Praying to the Virgin as though she were a deity and could offer forgiveness violates Luther’s most basic notions of God’s direct and spontaneous gift of undeserved salvation. The only way to respond to her is to admire and try to imitate her humility and faith. As Christ’s mother, the Virgin is the vehicle of Christian salvation and the model of faith that makes that salvation possible. The Virgin plays a role in Law and Gospel, the earliest and certainly the most polemical of Cranach’s Reformation images. One motif within a woodcut version of Law and Gospel from circa 1530 is particularly pertinent to this discussion: The Virgin Annunciate standing on a hillside in the middle ground of the gospel side of the composition (fig. 5.8).62 Cranach literally places the familiar motif of the mother of Christ into a new theological context within a pictorial type that proclaims the new doctrine. The Virgin Annunciate in Law and Gospel demonstrates perfectly Luther’s notion of the Virgin as a vehicle of salvation and model of faith. The small and passive Virgin looks heavenward as she receives the Incarnation, literally allowing the Christian narrative to occur through her. She is the quintessence of passive grace. Christ, the protagonist of the picture, looms large and in the foreground, visible not once but three times (including as the Lamb of God), the essential focus of the picture. The Virgin, passive and on the periphery, is an element of a narrative about Christ, not the main figure in a Mariological legend. The inclusion of the Virgin Annunciate on the gospel side of Law and Gospel—and ultimately the single Madonna panels themselves—demonstrates the transformation of familiar subjects based upon Luther’s hermeneutic. The Reformation-period Madonnas are individual pictures, but they participate in a theology the Law and Gospel images were meant to clarify, as though the Virgin had stepped out of Law and Gospel and onto an individual panel, carrying with her the theology that determines her function. The Lutheran Madonna emerges out of Law and Gospel and quietly, seamlessly, transforms the meaning of a pictorial type inextricably associated with late-medieval piety. In a sense, the Lutheran thought that gave rise to the Madonna panels

Figure 5.8.

Cranach, Law and Gospel, c. 1530, woodcut. Photo credit: Warburg Institute.

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parallels the iconographic environment surrounding the Virgin in Law and Gospel. For a viewer with Lutheran sympathies, the independent Madonna panels assume the same clarity as the motif within Law and Gospel. In both Law and Gospel and the Madonna panels, Mary’s role is reoriented to underscore the miraculous conception of Christ.

FUNCTION AND PATRONAGE OF THE REFORMATION MADONNA IMAGE Among Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonnas, versions depicting the Virgin and Child with bunches of grapes, such as those discussed at the beginning of this chapter (figs. 5.1–5.3), are worthy of particular attention.63 These Madonnas from the 1530s and later may bear specifically Lutheran meaning. Of course grape clusters are a pervasive and familiar element of Catholic and late-medieval Madonnas, but they are also prominent in Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonna panels, which viewers with either Lutheran or Catholic sympathies may have owned.64 Beyond supporting Luther’s ideals of admiration of the Virgin for her faith and humility, the Madonna with grapes also asserts the reformer’s conviction that the laity should receive the Eucharist in both kinds, both the bread and the wine. Luther’s insistence that the laity should take the Eucharist in both kinds contrasts starkly with Catholic tradition.65 As already discussed (in chapter 3, in the section “Wittenberg Altarpiece Opened Position: Reshaping the Sacraments”), Catholic practice restricted lay participation in the Eucharist to merely receiving the bread. This exclusion deemed the laity both separate and inferior. In keeping with his fundamental contention that grace was bestowed on any believer, regardless of social or ecclesiastical rank, rather than earned through virtue, piety, or holy vows, Luther insisted that all Christians, clergy and laity alike, must fully participate in the sacrament. A viewer sympathetic with Lutheran beliefs may have understood the grapes to signify the Eucharist in both kinds, whereas a viewer with Catholic sympathies may have experienced the iconography in more traditional ways, seeing the Virgin as an object of veneration and the grapes as an allusion to the priestly Mass. The possibility of varied responses goes to the heart of the thorny and complex issue of audience. While the exact identity of the viewers of Cranach’s Madonnas must remain uncertain, what is clear is that Cranach consistently served patrons on both sides of the Reformation. Cranach was a friend and supporter of Martin Luther from the outset of the Reformation. Cranach also served and befriended the Lutheran electors of Saxony, a conclusion that both pictorial and textual evidence

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supports.66 Toward the end of his life, Cranach even followed the deposed John Frederick into custody in Augsburg after the elector’s defeat at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547.67 Cranach had also accepted a substantial number of commissions from Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg earlier in his career, including a cycle of paintings for the Stiftskirche in Halle. In addition, Cranach filled a number of single-panel commissions for this cardinal who was Luther’s adversary. Cranach’s ability to supply both sides of the Protestant divide with religious images underscores his entrepreneurial interests in general.68 As I noted in the introduction (in the section “Cranach and His Patrons”), Cranach was a successful and respected businessman with wide-ranging enterprises.69 For the present discussion, the most important facet of Cranach’s productivity is his efficient repetition and reinterpretation of basic models. Scholars have pointed out that repetition of compositional patterns is especially characteristic of Cranach’s Madonna panels.70 Cranach produced as many pictures as possible, getting the most out of the fewest compositional models. Prudent reconfiguration of familiar compositions saved time and money, sparing Cranach the effort of training his assistants in a completely new type of picture. That Cranach produced pictures for audiences with both Catholic and Lutheran sympathies in his well-run workshop makes a dual audience for his Madonna panels all the more plausible. The iconography of the Madonna with grapes and other traditional kinds of iconography suited viewers with a variety of theological proclivities, allowing the Cranach workshop to satisfy a range of buyers with a finite number of compositional variations. As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, over fifty Madonna panels came out of the Cranach workshop from the mid-1520s until the end of his career. The sheer number augurs well for the possibility that efficiency motivated repetitive iconography. The multifaceted iconography of Cranach’s many Madonna pictures was a diplomatic and shrewd way of supplying an extremely varied audience. The iconography of Cranach’s Madonnas, especially those with grapes, accommodated a range of responses. Far from being expressions of an artist’s heartfelt and personal convictions, these pictures were mass produced in great numbers. The simple fact that people take comfort in the familiar may also explain Cranach’s adaptation of recognizable iconography. Recycling a very wellknown subject may have made the transition from Catholic to Lutheran belief easier for the first generation of German Protestants. Preserving a place for the Virgin in Lutheran thought and art provided the neophyte follower of Luther with a reassuring and familiar maternal figure. Luther’s reform was

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conservative relative to those of the more radical Karlstadt or of the reformers in Switzerland. In Cranach’s art, everything that was not overtly antithetical to Lutheran theology was allowed to remain, including Madonna pictures, which were not yet clearly identified as Catholic or Lutheran. At this historical point, when boundaries between denominations were inchoate, permeable, and ill-defined, a cagey businessman such as Cranach found an economical way to produce pictures to satisfy this heterogeneous audience. The adaptation of the Madonna with grapes for a Reformation context supports my basic contention that the denominational identity of a picture resides in large measure in the mind of the viewer and the way the image triggers certain theologically structured responses. Luther made clear that to bow down and pray to the Virgin instead of to God is idolatry, but he considered contemplating an image of the Virgin without superstition entirely acceptable.71 The epigraph to this chapter reinforces this idea: “Even the iconoclasts must allow me a Crucifix or a Madonna image,” provided it remains a mnemonic tool rather than an idol.72 The association between grapes and the Lutheran Eucharist in both kinds would have been clear for a viewer such as John Frederick, the Ernestine elector of Saxony, Cranach’s employer and patron, and a committed supporter and practitioner of Lutheran Christianity. A text known as Tischreden, or Table Talk, suggests the possibility that John Frederick may have owned a Madonna panel. Table Talk is the redaction of Luther’s personal conversations with students around his dinner table. Because it consists of recollections of discussions, possibly edited, changed, or written after the fact, Table Talk requires some nuanced interpretation and should be read with a touch of skepticism, though some scholars have taken its contents at face value.73 Still, with qualifications, Table Talk provides useful insights into the question of audience. Table Talk reports that John Frederick obtained a Madonna panel in 1525. The writer of this anecdote in Table Talk emphasizes that he saw the picture himself: “The prince of Saxony, Duke John Frederick,” said Dr. Martin, “obtained a picture, which he still owns, during the Peasants’ War in 1525. I have seen it, this Mary with her child. When a wealthy man approached it, and prayed before it, the child turned to his mother, as though he didn’t want to look at the sinner.”74

This anecdote is illuminating in many ways. First, it specifies a Lutheran viewer for Madonna panels, lending credibility to my assertion—in harmony with Luther’s own emphasis on pictorial function—that these traditional panels may become Lutheran through the theological sympathies the beholder brings to them. John Frederick, the ur-Lutheran viewer, the ruler who fought

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against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and went to prison in defense of Lutheran Christianity, is said to have owned a Madonna panel. Even if John Frederick’s purported ownership is fictional, the inclusion of this story in Table Talk involves the theoretical placement of a Madonna panel in the possession of this revered defender of the faith, thus legitimizing both the ownership and the viewing of Madonna pictures. Second, the writer highlights the importance of pictorial function. The picture did not want to be misused, that is, made into an object of veneration: It was happy to be on display, in a Lutheran place, provided it was not misunderstood. Of course the story of Christ’s turning to his mother is pure fabrication, but the loyal group of Luther’s followers responsible for a major undertaking such as the Table Talk clearly chose to include a story whose moral does not preclude the possession or viewing of Madonna pictures, provided they are used properly. Another excerpt from Table Talk suggests that Luther himself had a Cranach Madonna panel from circa 1530 in his study. In what is given to be a quote from Luther, the text reads: “The child Christ” he said, (indicating with his hand to the painting on the wall) “sleeps on his mother’s arm. Were he to awaken he will ask what we have done.” [My emphasis]75

Although Table Talk is a tricky source for the reasons given, this particular excerpt is nonetheless resoundingly significant. The reader learns that Martin Luther himself owned a painting of the Madonna in his home; not the Mary of Mercy, the Virgin surrounded by female saints, or as the Queen of Heaven, but a Madonna. Even if Luther never spoke the precise words quoted in the text, he still may have had a picture of the Madonna on the wall. The writers of Table Talk were the reformer’s faithful followers who lovingly transcribed these discussions. They may have been the very people who purchased images from Cranach. They clearly identify the Madonna on the wall in the Luther’s home, indicating to future generations that such pictures are acceptable. Though no text or other evidence can tell us explicitly how the Cranach Madonna panels were displayed, this anecdote from Table Talk reveals an acceptance of Madonna pictures among Luther’s followers, and shows also that the pictures were displayed in a domestic space, regardless of whether or not Luther literally had a picture of his own. The small size and intimate scale of Madonna panels, before and after the Reformation, made them well suited for domestic display.76 Cranach’s 1526 painting of Albrecht of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome in his study (fig. 5.9) displays a picture of the Madonna on the wall. Ironically, this painting of Luther’s adversary may have suggested the appearance of Luther’s own study

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Figure 5.9. Cranach, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1526, panel. Photo credit: Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida.

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with its ostensible Madonna picture to readers of Table Talk.77 Even though the composition is obviously based on a Dürer print of Saint Jerome in his study, the inclusion of the Madonna panel is the critical detail. The excerpt from Table Talk and the decoration of Albrecht’s study imply that small, single panels of the Madonna during and after Lutheran reform adorned the private spaces of those on both sides of the confessional divide, who bought them or received them as gifts, as they did in the pre-Reformation period. These pictures are far too small to adorn a major altar. The earliest Lutheran churches in Weimar, Schneeberg, and Wittenberg currently have no pictures of the Virgin at all, and records of their earlier furnishings provide no suggestion that Madonna pictures were ever present after the Reformation.78 No study of sixteenth-century Madonna painting of northern Europe would be complete without some mention of the fine work of Reindert Falkenburg. Falkenburg’s study, which examines a group of Madonna paintings from the southern Netherlands from about 1450 to about 1550,79 offers a counterpoint to Cranach’s Madonna panels. Falkenburg contends that the iconography of these late-medieval Madonnas, in which the Virgin offers fruit and flowers to Christ, derive from metaphors in the Song of Songs. Devotional writings contemporary with the paintings used comparable metaphors of fruits and flowers. Word and image interpret the love between the bride and bridegroom in the Song of Songs as symbolic of the love between the Virgin and Christ or between the soul and God. This polyvalent love between the Virgin and Christ became an ideal toward which the viewer was to aspire. In short, late-medieval Madonnas of the southern Netherlands exemplify an ideal of mystical union with God, based in large measure on the symbolism of the Song of Songs and its medieval exegesis. Such mystical union is the reward for the beholder’s virtue and piety. Falkenburg writes, “The union with God, at least in its full and definitive form, is usually sketched as a reward for virtues displayed.”80 These Flemish Madonna pictures exemplify ideals specific to late-medieval Catholicism—and utterly incompatible with the ideals of Lutheran belief and devotion—such as the cultivation of virtue as a means of identifying with and becoming worthy of union with God.81 These notions of virtue and worthiness contrast utterly with the theology of a Madonna picture in a Lutheran context. Though the Flemish Madonnas in Falkenburg’s study and the Lutheran Madonnas at issue here all present the Virgin in half-length and include fruit iconography, the meanings of these two groups of images could not be more divergent. Rather than requiring virtuous acts or celebrating mystical rewards for piety and virtue, Lutheran Madonnas encourage passive reception of grace, as exemplified in the Virgin Annunciate in Law and Gospel. They emphasize the Eucharist in both kinds and encourage admiration for the Virgin’s faith.

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SYNTHESIS This chapter has described the historical context of Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonna paintings. The iconography of Cranach’s Madonnas is pliable, versatile, and suited to the devotional needs of viewers sympathetic with Luther. Several factors suggest that Cranach produced Madonna panels meant to be acceptable to Lutheran viewers. First, he ceased painting Mariological pictures, which would have been most offensive to Luther and those sympathetic with his reform. Second, he continued to paint the Madonna, the one Marian subject Luther condoned. Third, the iconography of extant Madonnas, flexible enough to serve viewers with a range of theological opinions, accommodates the beliefs of Lutheran viewers by providing iconographic cues to Lutheran belief, specifically grapes. The grapes became iconographic signs that informed viewers could understand according to Lutheran principles. Fourth, Cranach served both groups not only with different commissions, but perhaps even with the same subject. Cranach produced the maximum number of Madonnas (as well as other subjects) from a limited set of pictorial models in his well-run workshop. Fifth, the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic were not yet sharply defined when it came to Madonna panels, which remained acceptable to both groups, though each approached the picture in its own way. Even though beholders with Catholic and Lutheran sympathies may have understood Madonna pictures differently, the basic genre itself remained acceptable in qualified ways to both groups. Finally, Table Talk places Madonna paintings literally in the possession of both the reformer himself and John Frederick of Saxony, Cranach’s employer and Luther’s defender. Even if the stories in Table Talk are not literally true, they suggest an acceptance of Madonna pictures among Luther’s followers, opening up the possibility that Cranach’s copious output of Madonna panels was intended at least in part for this group of viewers. This versatility (or ambiguity) of Cranach’s Madonna panels epitomizes the “many different ways of seeing” that Robert Scribner identifies in the epigraph to this chapter. Neither overtly Catholic (like a Mariological subject) nor insistently Lutheran (like Law and Gospel), Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonnas accommodated the evolving beliefs regarding the Virgin and her pictorial representation in the first decades of Lutheran reform. Madonna pictures are a fitting subject for the final chapter of this book. They demonstrate the scope of Lutheran art over the course of the twentysix years between 1529 and 1555. Cranach’s Lutheran painting began with Law and Gospel, an overtly didactic picture that later accommodated a variety of formats and connected to a spectrum of subjects. With the Madonna

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panels, we conclude with open-ended images that permitted greater flexibility of audience and interpretation. Ultimately these Madonna pictures suggest a subtler stage of the Reformation itself, less concerned with dogmatic assertions of identity and more concerned with working out a place in the context of coexistent systems of belief.

NOTES 1. Bob Scribner, “Ways of Seeing in the Age of Dürer,” in Dürer and His Culture, ed. Charles Zika and Dagmar Eichberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 117. 2. Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments (LW 40:79–223); “So werden mir auch meine Bilderstürmer ein Kruzifix oder Marienbild lassen müssen, ja sogar eines Abgotts Bild, auch nach dem allerstrengsten Gesetz Moses, daß ich’s trage oder ansehe, sofern ich’s nicht anbete, sondern (nur) zum Gedächtnis habe.” Wieder die himmlischen propheten, von den Bildern und Sakrament (1525) (WA, vol. 18, p. 70, lines 33–36), cited in Walter Tappolet, Das Marienlob der Reformatoren (Tübingen: Katzmannverlag, 1962), 146, my translation. 3. Of the vast literature on the Virgin Mary, perhaps the most famous work is Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex (1976; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1983). 4. On Luther’s Christ-centered theology and its expression in visual culture, see Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979) and Princes and Propaganda: Electoral Saxon Art of the Reformation, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 20 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992). 5. Because the circumstances of production and audience are different for graphic media, Cranach’s prints are a subject for separate study. Dürer also had Lutheran sympathies and continued to represent the Madonna after 1517 (though because he died in 1528, his images are too early to be relevant to this discussion). He represented the Virgin in fifteen pictures between 1495 and 1520. Theodore B. Donson, Ltd., Albrecht Dürer: Twenty-five Years of His Art: The Engravings of the Madonna and Child, 1495–1520, Christmas exhibition December 1, 1979–January 15, 1980 (New York: Theodore B. Donson, 1979), especially the introduction. 6. For Luther’s opinions on various aspects of the Virgin, see Tappolet, Marienlob, especially “Lob der ewigen Jungfräulichkeit” [Praise of Eternal Virginity], 49–55; “Himmelfahrt Mariens” [Mary’s Assumption], 55–57; and “Lob des Glaubens” [Praise of Faith], 58–65. In addition to Tappolet, see Hans Düffel, Luthers Stellung zur Marienverehrung. Kirche und Konfession, vol. 13 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1968), which is also fundamental. Düffel’s most useful sections explore Luther’s later thought on the Virgin Mary, from 1524 to 1546 (163–226). Also important is his discussion of the Song of Mary (Marienlied) and the Image of Mary (Marienbild) (227–46). I am grateful to Professor Beth Kreitzer for sharing her paper “Lutheran Preaching on the Virgin Mary in the Sixteenth Century,” given at the Six-

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teenth Century Congress in St. Louis in October 1999. See also Kreitzer’s book, Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 7. Schuchardt documents Cranach’s Madonnas but offers little interpretation; see Cranach des Aelter, 1:11, 25, 207; 2:39, 59, 63, 74, 76, 77–78, 80–81, 94, 95, 98; 3:129–30, 143, 155, 169–70, 198–99. Koepplin and Falk (522–41) were the first scholars to have begun analyzing rather than simply documenting Cranach’s Marian images. They primarily discuss images from relatively early in Cranach’s career, before the emergence of distinguishable Lutheran pictorial types. 8. Jan Wittmann, “Die Bedeutung des Marienbildes im Schaffen Cranachs,” in Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund: Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen, ed. Ingo Sandner, with the Wartburg-Stiftung Eisenach and the Rachhochschule Köln (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1998), 169. “Confession” is an anglicized version of the German word Konfession, “denomination.” 9. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 522. 10. Wittmann, “Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 176–77. 11. Scholars have noted the intended multiplicity of meaning in northern works of art. Cranach’s paintings are intended to suggest or invoke a spectrum of meanings, possessing, as they do, what Falkenburg calls “semantic openness.” See Reindert L. Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emergence of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Landscape Art—A Critical Evaluation,” in Seeing beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, ed. Paul Corby Finney (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), 356. See also Craig Harbison, “Sexuality of Christ in the Early Sixteenth Century in Germany,” in A Tribute to Robert A. Koch: Studies in the Northern Renaissance (Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1994), 70–81, esp. 75. 12. For a concise description of Karlstadt and iconoclasm in the context of art making, see Jeffrey Chipps Smith, German Sculpture of the Later Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University, Press, 1994), 31–37. 13. See the discussion of Cranach’s expanding workshop in Claus Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” in Lucas Cranach: Ein Maler-Unternehmer aus Franken, ed. Claus Grimm, Johannes Erichsen, and Evemaria Brockhoff (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1994), 27–29, and Monika and Dietrich Lücke, “Lucas Cranach in Wittenberg,” in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 59. 14. Martin Warnke explains that Luther’s Ninety-five Theses of 1517 were addressed specifically to Albrecht of Brandenburg. Warnke, Cranachs Luther: Entwürfe für ein Image (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1984), 22. Cranach accepted a substantial number of commissions from Albrecht of Brandenburg. See also Andreas Tacke, Der katholische Cranach (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1992), 71–169, and more recently, Gerhard Ermischer, “Cranach im Exil—Porträt einer bewegten Epoche,” in Cranach im Exil: Aschafenburg um 1540 Zuflucht. Schatzkammer. Residenz, ed. Gerhard Ermischer and Andreas Tacke (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2007), 13–53. 15. Tacke, Katholische Cranach, 45–47; FR, Cat. 182; Warnke, Cranachs Luther. 16. Wittmann declares that Cranach accepted a substantial number of commissions from Albrecht of Brandenburg (“Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 169).

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17. Wittmann, “Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 171. On Luther’s strident objections to the Virgin as intercessor, particularly in her guise as the Mary of Mercy, see Tappolet, Marienlob, 150–52; WA, vol. 47, p. 257, lines 9–25. See also Tappolet, Marienlob, 151; Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 238; WA, vol. 47, p. 276, lines 17–27. Düffel also reports that Luther opposed representations of the Mary of Mercy together with images associated with pilgrims (Luthers Stellung, 234–35). In response to the tendency to fear Christ and run to Mary, Luther writes, “That I no longer see Him, who was born, suffered, died and rose from the dead for me . . . , but instead that he wants to judge my life and works, to see if I have paid for my sins and done enough or not. When I look at Him in this way, I cannot run to Him, but I must flee from him and take refuge in Mary and the other saints. See, this is the people, that are called the ‘Christian church,’ whom we obey, who throw Christ away, whose excommunication and judgment we should fear, not that of Christ Himself.” (My translation of “Daß ich also nicht mehr ihn sehe, der für mich geboren, gelitten, gestorben und auferstanden sei . . . , sondern allein also, daß er mich richten wolle nach meinem Leben und Werken, ob ich für die Sünde bezahlet und genug getan habe oder nicht. Wenn ich ihn also ansehe, kann ich nicht zu ihm laufen, sondern muß von ihm fliehen und mehr Zuflucht haben zu Maria und andern Heiligen denn von Christo und seiner Erlösung. Siehe, das ist das Volk, das ‘Christliche Kirche’ heißen will, und doch Christum gar hinweg wirft, der wir gehorchen und deren Bann und Urteil wir mehr fürchten sollen denn Christum selbst!”) (WA, vol. 46, p. 8, line 37 through p. 39, line 9), cited in Tappolet, Marienlob, 98. Luther demands complete, childlike trust in Christ’s mercy; see Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 219–20. See also Heiko Oberman, “The Virgin in Evangelical Perspective,” in The Impact of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 242 and n 64. 18. Wittmann, “Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 171. 19. Wittmann, “Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 171. Cranach’s last Mariological subjects are altarpieces in Erfurt and Prague, circa 1520–22. See also Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 245–46. Most important, Mariological subjects had disappeared by the time Cranach was making his most polemical single panels (1529) and his altarpieces in Schneeberg (1539), Wittenberg (1547), and Weimar (1553–55). 20. Tappolet, Marienlob, 147. See WA, vol. 28, p. 677, line 21 through p. 678, line 28. 21. Archival information is reproduced or summarized in Schade, Family, 401–52 and Walter Scheidig, “Urkunden zu Cranachs Leben und Schaffen,” in Lucas Cranach der Ältere: Der Künstler und seine Zeit, ed. Heinz Lüdecke (Berlin: Herschelverlag, 1953), 156–77. These documents disclose only the most general references to pictures the Madonna. 22. I am indebted to Professor Thomas Brady for pointing out to me, in a discussion at the Medieval and Early Modern Germanist Society in Durham, North Carolina, on September 22, 2001, that Lutheran theology worked like a filter, allowing certain types of art and ideas through while trapping and keeping others. 23. Wittmann explains that Madonna pictures could satisfy the expectations of both Lutheran and Catholic viewers (“Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 180). 24. The Madonna with Grapes (FR, Cat. 392) formerly in Berlin, was destroyed in World War II. Many of Cranach’s paintings may be dated before or after 1537 because

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his insignia changed that year, perhaps to honor the death of his son Hans Cranach, who was also a painter. See FR, p. 23. 25. Munich Madonna, FR, Cat. 163. 26. This cloth superficially resembles a cloth of honor, which is typically associated with the Virgin as Queen of Heaven; in such images, Mary appears on a throne, wearing a crown and frequently set before a gold background. None of the iconography of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven is present in the Cranach Madonna panels at issue here. 27. Reindert L. Falkenburg notes the presence of fruit and flowers in Madonna panels in the southern Netherlands and observes that the Virgin invariably offers and Christ receives flowers, fruit, or other foods. Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the Imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450–1550, trans. Sammy Herman (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 1994), 5. In contrast, Christ offers the grapes to the Virgin in Cranach’s panel. 28. Wittmann interprets the curtain as a Lutheran motif (“Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 176). However, the curtain appears with regularity in Madonna panels before the Reformation. 29. Hague Madonna, FR, Cat. 130. 30. These iconographic elements appear in various permutations throughout Cranach’s career. As a counterpart to the Berlin panel, see a Madonna with Grapes before a black ground from circa 1512–14 (FR, Cat. 38). And compare the 1520 Hague Madonna panel to a 1525 Madonna with Grapes in front of a landscape (FR, Cat. 162), in the Hermitage. 31. FR, Cat. 36 32. FR, Cat. 37. The story of the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine is told in Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 708–16. 33. Wittmann explores the shifting valences of iconographic meaning in different theological contexts (“Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 180). The methodology of the present chapter builds on the foundational work of Christiane Andersson, who explains that the persistence of familiar, traditional forms may obscure shifting functions. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder Cranachs im Dienst der Reformation,” in Humanismus und Reformation als kulturelle Kräfte in der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 43–79, especially 45. See also James Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69, on the importance of pictorial function. Lawrence Goedde explains how observing systematically repeated and omitted motifs assists interpretation, especially in the absence of textual evidence. See his Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art: Convention, Rhetoric, and Interpretation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989). 34. Luther despised indulgences. See Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 117, for a succinct explication of Luther’s objections to indulgences. That opposition, among other factors, inspired the posting of the Ninetyfive Theses.

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35. Luther addressed his concerns about Christian education in 1520 in the foundational work To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (LW 44:115–217), and in other texts during the early 1520s (Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 48–49). 36. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 45–49. 37. Thulin, Cranach Altäre der Reformation, devotes chapters to Cranach’s Wittenberg, Schneeberg, and Weimar altarpieces, all of which contain some combination of these familiar subjects. Portraits of the Saxon electors and of Luther himself identify these retables as unambiguously Lutheran. 38. Andersson, “Religiöse Bilder,” 49. See also Falkenburg, “Calvinism and the Emergence,” 360–63. In reference to seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings, Falkenburg critiques the idea that iconographic meaning remains consistent over time. He observes the loosening of symbolic meaning in paintings over time, noting “a growing tendency toward ‘semantic openness’” (363). Craig Harbison observes, “I would in part like to erode the notion, often espoused since the 1940’s, that a work of art should be seen above all as fulfilling the requirements of a single, specific text, or a single, consciously articulated iconographic program” (“Sexuality of Christ,” 75). 39. For a brief discussion of the excesses of medieval devotion to the Virgin, see Christa Grössinger, Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 20–28. 40. Giulia Bartrum, German Renaissance Prints, 1490–1550 (London: British Museum Press, 1995), Cat. 196, 190–191, and Cat. 207, 200. For a general discussion of the events at Regensburg, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 100–104 and 141–42, and Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 83–84. See also Hans Mielke, Albrecht Altdorfer: Zeichnungen Deckfarbenmalerei Druckgraphik (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 1988), 312–13. 41. Pope Leo X issued a bull on June 1, 1519, promising one hundred days’ indulgence. Freedberg, Power, 101, and Baxandall, Limewood, 84. 42. Bartrum, Renaissance Prints, Cat. 207, 200. 43. Tappolet, Marienlob, 99–101. Tappolet quotes one of Luther’s lectures in which he excoriates belief in the Virgin’s power of intercession (99–100, quoting “Vorlesung über das 1. Buch Mose,” WA, vol. 42, p. 134, lines 29–32). See also Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 205, and WA, vol. 30, part 1, p. 3, lines 3, 11. Düffel reviews Luther’s opinions on the veneration of the Virgin, explaining that she functions as the vehicle of redemption, not its source (Luthers Stellung, 245–46). 44. See the quotation in note 17 above. Luther demands a childlike belief in Christ, with complete trust in divine mercy (Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 219–20; Oberman, “Virgin,” 242 and n 64; WA, vol. 41, p. 199). On Luther’s objections to the Catholic notion of an unforgiving Christ, see Steven Ozment, Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). 45. Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 237. Luther wrote, “After the Jews were expelled, the devil put himself in their place, and made false signs through the highly praised name of Mary and deceived you as well as many others” (my translation of “Der teuffel,

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nach dem die Juden vertrieben sind, sich selbs an yhre statt, gesezt und duch den hochgelobten namen Maria falsche zeychen thutt und euch sampt vielen anderen betrugt”). See the section dedicated to Luther’s letters in WA, WABr, vol. 3, pp. 141–42. Luther’s objective is to dismantle what he perceives to be superstition. The parallel he draws between the Jews and the devil who takes their place brings his anti-Semitism into high relief. Clearly the destruction of the synagogue and the expulsion of the Jews do not count as part of his perception of the evil of the events at Regensburg. 46. One example of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven by Cranach is the painting Frederick the Wise Viewing the Virgin (c. 1516) (FR, Cat. 83), in which she appears crowned and full-length, responding to the kneeling patron’s glassy-eyed veneration. On Luther’s objections to the Virgin as Queen of Heaven, see his 1521 exposition on the Magnificat (LW 21:297–355). 47. See note 17 above. Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 238. Düffel reports that Luther opposed representations of the Mary of Mercy together with images associated with pilgrims (Luthers Stellung, 234–35). 48. Carol J. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 8–15. 49. Oberman, “Virgin,” 242; WA, vol. 51, p. 128. 50. Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 2:8. 51. Tappolet, Marienlob, 58, Sermon of March 25, 1534 (WA, vol. 37, p. 337, lines 29–38). On the Virgin’s humility, see Tappolet, Marienlob, 66–75; on the Virgin’s purity, see Tappolet, Marienlob, 76–77, Luther’s Lecture on the First Book of Moses, 1535–45 (WA, vol. 43, p. 590, lines 17–19); Tappolet, Marienlob, “Lob des Glaubens” [Praise of Faith], 58–65. A later example is Luther’s Sermon on the Annunciation of 1527, in which he praises the Virgin for her faith. 52. The Magnificat begins: “My soul magnifies the Lord, / and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior / for he had regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. / For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” On Luther’s interpretation of the Magnificat as well as on his sermons on Christmas and Marian feast days, see Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 113–34. See also Oberman, “Virgin,” 235. On Luther at the Wartburg, see Graef, Mary, 2:7. On the Diet of Worms, see Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 67–68. Luther’s three treatises were The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which attacked the Catholic sacraments, especially the Mass (LW 36:11–57); The Freedom of a Christian, which explains and defines Christian faith (LW 31:333–77); and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which calls upon the German rulers to reform the church (LW 44:115–217). Cf. John Dillenberger, introduction to Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), xiii. 53. Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 239–40. 54. Martin Luther, Exposition on the Magnificat, LW 21:321–22. 55. Heiko Oberman writes that grace makes the Virgin pure; it does not reward her purity (“Virgin,” 235). I would counter that grace does not make one pure; rather, it makes it possible for God to save one as though one were pure. Alister McGrath

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expertly explains this basic concept of divine grace as the mechanism that places the sinner in a relationship with God as though she or he has become truly pure (Reformation Thought [1988], 84). 56. LW 43:39. 57. For a recent discussion of the Immaculate Conception, see Penny Howell Jolly, “Learned Reading, Vernacular Seeing: Jacques Daret’s Presentation in the Temple,” Art Bulletin 82, no. 3 (2000): 428–52. See also Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 237–38. On the purity of the Virgin, see Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 173, 190, and Tappolet, Marienlob, 93–103. The Council of Basel proclaimed the Immaculate Conception in 1439 (Oberman, “Virgin,” 241). The Immaculate Conception did not become doctrine until 1854, under Pope Pious IX (Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 237–238). 58. See Graef, Mary, 2:11–12, and Tappolet, Marienlob, 28–30. 59. Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 173. For instance, in “Vom Schem Hamphoras . . .” (1543), Luther speaks of the Virgin’s sinlessness because God himself entered into her and left no room for sin. Luther refers to the Virgin as the vehicle, the Werkstatt (workshop), the Herberge (dwelling, abode) (Düfel, Luthers Stellung, 173). Luther explains that the feast day of the Annunciation celebrates the conception of Christ and should not inspire veneration of the Virgin (Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 173–79, esp. 174). 60. “Ohne Zutun eines Mannes”; Tappolet, Marienlob, 29. See also Tappolet, Marienlob, 28, and Luther’s 1527 Festpostille (Devotional Books), WA, vol. 17, part 2, pp. 287–89. 61. My translation of “Jeder Mensch, der nicht personhaft Gott ist wie Christus, hat die sündhafte Begierde; aber Christus had sie nicht, da er personhaft Gott ist; und in der Empfängnis ist all jenes Fleisch und Blut mariens gereinigt worden, so daß nichts sündliches übrig geblieben ist” (Disputation on the Humanity of Christ [1540, originally in Latin]; Tappolet, Marienlob, 32; WA, vol. 39, part 2, p. 107, lines 4–13). 62. The Virgin Annunciate also appears in the 1529 Prague Law and Gospel (fig. 1.2), as well as in other painted versions of the subject in the 1530s. 63. Wittmann, “Bedeutung des Marienbildes,” 179, also observes that grapes begin to appear in Cranach Madonnas in the 1530s. Possibly this type of Madonna actually conflates the Virgin with Caritas (an image of a woman with grapes). Allmuth Schuttwolf, Gotteswort und Menschenbild Werke von Cranach und seinen Zeitgenossen (Gotha: Schlossmuseum Gotha, 1994), 30, Cat. 1.12. 64. Pre-Reformation Madonnas with bunches of grapes include a panel from circa 1510 (FR, Cat. 30); and a version from circa 1525 (FR, p. 162.). On images of the Madonna with fruit and flowers in the southern Netherlands from 1450 to 1550, see Falkenburg, Fruit of Devotion. 65. For a concise explanation of Luther’s insistence that the laity partake of the Eucharist in both kinds, see McGrath, Reformation Thought (1988), 119. See also Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36:19–27, where Luther states, “But what carries most weight with me, however, and is quite decisive for me is that Christ says: ‘This is my blood, which is poured out for you and for many of the forgiveness of sins.’ Here you see very clearly that the blood is given to all those for whose sins it was poured out. But who will dare to say that it was not poured out for the laity?”

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66. For a discussion of the Ernestine electors’ support of Luther and their patronage of Cranach, see Christensen, Art and the Reformation and Princes and Propaganda. 67. On the Schmalkaldic League, see Christensen, Princes and Propaganda, 57–91. 68. Source documents provide an excellent overview of the activities of all Cranach’s enterprises. See Grimm, “Lucas Cranach, 1994,” 29. Monika and Dietrich Lücke examine Cranach’s economic status based on tax and other financial documents (“Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59–65). 69. See Lücke and Lücke, “Cranach in Wittenberg,” 59ff. The research supplements the compilations of Scheidig, “Urkunden”; Schade’s useful overview of Cranach-related documents in Family; and Rainer Hambrecht’s more focused examination of holdings in Coburg, “Die Kursächsischen Rechnungsbücher im Staatsarchiv Coburg und ihr Quellenswert für die Person Lukas Cranachs,” Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung 32 (1987): 53–96. 70. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 522–23. Berthold Hinz calls the workshop a factory (“Manufaktur”), emphasizing the compositional repetition of Cranach’s Madonna panels. Hinz, “‘Sinwidrig zusammengestellte Fabrikate’? Zur VariantenPraxis der Cranach-Werkstatt,” in Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 174–79, esp. 174–75. See also Joseph Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 238. 71. “ . . . wenn man meinet, Gott helfe um des Bildes willen, . . . da ist ein kleines Marienbild auf ein Papier gemalt gewesen, darauf ist das Vertrauen gerichtet (worden), Maria helfe in dem Bild, und haben in dem Bilde Maria und nicht Gott angerufen, das heißt ein abgöttisch Bild!” ( . . . when one thinks that God helps for the sake of the picture . . . there was a small image of Mary painted on paper, there one directed one’s trust that Mary in the picture helps, and called on the picture of Mary and not God, that is an idolatrous picture!). And he continues in the same text, “Aber daß ich ein gemalt’ Bild an der Wand habe, das ich schlicht betrachte ohne Aberglauben, ist mir nicht verboten” (But that I have a painted picture on the wall, and that I simply contemplate it without idolotry, that is not forbidden to me) (Tappolet, Marienlob, 147–48, citing WA, vol. 28, p. 677, line 21 through p. 678, line 28, from October 31, 1529). 72. Christiane Andersson explains that in his Sermon on the First Commandment, Luther states that the problem is not with pictures themselves but with the hearts of people who venerate them (“Religiöse Bilder,” 43) (“In der Predigt über das erste Gebot von 1525 erlkärte er weiter, der Fehler liege nicht bei den unschuldigen Bildern, sondern im Herzen der Menschen, die sie anbeten”). Furthermore, with reference to the Holy Kinship images, she observes that Luther’s influence on Cranach’s art begins not with the art object but with the function of existing pictures (45) (“Der Einfluß auf Cranachs Schaffen zeigt sich zu Beginn nicht im Werk selbst, sondern in der nachträglichen polemischen Verwendung schon bestehender Bilder”). Hans Georg Thümmel observes that in response to the 1525 iconoclasm, Luther asserted that pictures are good for the memory, and he especially noted the Crucifix and Madonna images. Thümmel, “Lucas Cranach d. Ä., die Reformation und die Altgläubigen,” Kunst und Kirche 19, no. 1 (2002): 55.

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73. Among those who have taken Table Talk at face value are Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk; see their Lukas Cranach, 522. Also see Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesammtausgabe; Abteilung Tischreden, 6 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1912–21) (hereafter cited as Table Talk). 74. My translation of “Der Kurfürst zu Sachsen, Herzog Johann Friederich, sagte Dr. Martinus, hat ein Bild im Bauern-Aufruhr 1525 bekommen, welches er noch hat. Das hab ich gesehen, nämlich Maria mit ihrem Kinde. Wen ein Reicher dahin ist kommen, und davor gebetet (hat),so hat sich das Kind zur Mutter gewandt, als wollt’ es den Sünder nicht ansehen” (Table Talk, vol. 6, conversation 6848, cited in Tappolet, Marienlob, 152). For a clear and concise explication of religious art after the iconoclasm, see Smith, German Sculpture, 31–37. 75. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 522; FR, Cat. 229; cf. Table Talk, vol. 2, conversation 1755, dated 1532. The text of Table Talk states, “‘Das Kindlin Jesus’, sprach er (weisete mit der Hand aufs Gemälde an der Wand), ‘schläfet der Mutter Maria am Arm; wird er dermaleinst aufwachen, er wird uns wahrlich fragen, was und wie wirs gemacht und getrieben haben!’” (quoted in Düffel, Luthers Stellung, 239 and n 41; further quotation in German and Latin n 42); for further discussion of Luther’s Madonna picture, see Tappolet, Marienlob, 148–49. 76. Grimm, Erichsen, and Brockhoff, Maler-Unternehmer, 332–33, Cat. 153. 77. Koepplin and Falk, Lukas Cranach, 522; FR, Cat. 186. 78. On documents in Wittenberg, see Fritz Bellmann, Marie-Louise Harksen, and Roland Werner, Die Denkmale der Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1979), 176–93. On Weimar, see Eva Schmidt, Die Stadkirche zu St. Peter und Paul, Herderkirche zu Weimar: Festschrift zu ihrer Wiedereinweihung 14 Juni 1953 (Jena: Wartburg Verlag Max Keßler, 1953), 57–71. On Schneeberg, see Richard Steche and Cornelius Gurlitt, Amtshauptmannschaft Schwarzenberg, Beschreibende Darstellung der Älteren Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Königsreichs Sachsen, 8 (Dresden: C. C. Meinhold, 1887), 40–53, and Rudolf Zießler, Die Wolfgangskirche zu Schneeberg, 3d ed., Christliche Denkmal, vol. 81 (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1984), 21–24. Because church furnishings may have disappeared with no surviving written record, these data can only suggest, rather than prove, that Madonna pictures formed no part of the furnishings of a sixteenth-century evangelical church. 79. Falkenburg, Fruit of Devotion, 1. Falkenburg summarizes the art historical scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of pictorial function (80–84), noting particularly the work of Craig Harbison, “Visions and Meditations in Early Flemish Painting,” Simiolus 15 (1985): 87–118, and F. O. Büttner, Imitatio Pietatis: Motive der christlichen Ikongraphie als Modelle zur Verähnlichung (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1983). 80. See especially Falkenburg, Fruit of Devotion, 8, 9, 77, 80–82, and 99; quotation on 51. 81. Falkenburg makes this point in reference to texts that make use of the same metaphors found in the pictures: “These texts are manuals for achieving an identification with God in virtue—not a union in essence with God” (Fruit of Devotion, 51).

Conclusion

This study has examined Lutheran painting from the Cranach workshop from 1529 to 1555. Over the course of approximately twenty-five years, the overtly didactic Law and Gospel theme broadened in form and function to embrace and redefine the familiar polyptych altarpiece, as evidenced in Schneeberg, Wittenberg, and Weimar. The theme of Law and Gospel ultimately became the conceptual base for the reception of Cranach’s Madonna panels, which offered more extensive interpretive possibilities. Law and Gospel initiates an interpretive response to Lutheran thought by reducing complex theological issues into a (pictorial) slogan, albeit with an imperfect translation from word to image. The visual cues and the space between Luther’s writings and the actual appearance of Law and Gospel open the door to a variety of interpretive scenarios, despite the best efforts of artist and theologian. Bible citations included in Law and Gospel are themselves problematic, despite Luther’s claims about the transparency of scripture. The complex language of scripture, plus the intricacies of visual interpretation and polemics of sixteenth-century theology, result in an image that is complex despite its professed simplicity. Law and Gospel became the signifier of Lutheran art, asserting confessional identity when it came into contact with other subjects, for instance, when it took its place among other, more traditional subjects within polyptychs. Later retable altarpieces have the benefit of physical context that enables them to insist on a singular, Lutheran reading more effectively than could Law and Gospel. The presence of Law and Gospel in the Schneeberg Altarpiece transforms the traditional retable into a specifically Lutheran monument. Only after the new faith was proclaimed and established verbally and visually could it be safe to place these new ideas within the traditional polyptych. The sophisticated blend of Lutheran thought and Catholic pictorial form in the Schneeberg Altarpiece reveals dramatic theological and artistic change in the ten years after Law and Gospel. The Schneeberg Altarpiece perpetuated the ideals of a religion sure enough of its own identity to employ the 197

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deeply traditional polyptych as a vehicle for the expression of Lutheran theology. While all the scenes in the Schneeberg Altarpiece had been subjects in earlier art, Luther’s hermeneutic, and the pictorial function it supported, proclaimed the confessional character of this first Lutheran retable. The aspects of the Wittenberg Altarpiece that make its interpretation most vexing for a contemporary beholder are probably the very things that made the retable effective for the original viewers. Specific potent motifs—Luther grasping the chalice, Christ on the cross looming in the predella, Judas receiving the morsel, and Bugenhagen distributing keys—tightly bundle multiple ideas not easily distilled and interpreted without intricate reference to one another. The interlocking ideas of community identity, fidelity to scripture, reformers’ apostolicity, the Eucharist in both kinds, Christ’s physical presence in the Mass, infant Baptism, and right Confession form a satisfying iconographic and theological gestalt. Fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century retables could serve many functions in Catholic theology: ensuring the release of a tormented soul from purgatory, distinguishing between rites for the laity and for the clergy, representing a believer’s mystical vision, marking a pilgrimage destination, or serving as an object of devotion. In contrast, the Wittenberg Altarpiece resists these functions in favor of proclaiming and celebrating communal and confessional identity by showing its leaders enacting freshly codified rituals consistent with scriptural mandate and grounded in Lutheran exegesis. The fortuitous confluence of Luther’s death, John Frederick’s deposition, and the imminent factionalizing of Luther’s followers make the installation of this monument to Lutheran community all the more poignant. An image that introduces an interaction between human and holy figures postulates categories of religious experience. The Weimar Altarpiece introduced and defined new categories appropriate for the new religion, connecting the two-dimensional image and the experience of the viewer in radically new ways, marking the convergence of testimony and didacticism that exemplify Lutheran art. By rejecting the visionary claims and insistence on the value of human effort in the eyes of God that were so prevalent in pre-Reformation triptychs, the Weimar Altarpiece proposes a demonstration of salvation as the experience of the donor, the viewer, and the artist himself. The Weimar Altarpiece reconfigures the structure and conditions of religious experience. This deconstruction and reconstruction of conventions within the Weimar Altarpiece recapitulate the course of the Reformation itself, which broke with religious tradition, violated the conventions of late-medieval piety and theology, and built a new faith out of that transgression. Art in the service of the new faith, which portrays its founder as well as its most famous and most devoted adherents, follows a similar pattern of transgression and renewal. Cranach’s continued production of Madonna images reveals the unexpected variety of art tolerated within a Lutheran context. Neither overtly Catholic (like a Mariological subject) nor insistently Lutheran (like Law and Gospel), Cranach’s Reformation-period Madonnas accommodated the evolving beliefs in the Virgin and her pictorial representation in the first decades of Lutheran reform.

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The iconography of Cranach’s Madonnas is pliable enough to suit the devotional needs of viewers in sympathy with Luther. Several factors suggest that Cranach produced Madonna panels meant to be acceptable to Lutheran viewers: First, he ceased painting Mariological pictures, which would have been most offensive to Luther and his sympathizers. Second, he continued to paint the Madonna, the single Marian subject Luther condoned. Third, the iconography of extant Madonnas, flexible enough to serve viewers with a range of theological opinions, accommodated the beliefs of Lutheran viewers by providing iconographic cues to Lutheran belief, specifically grapes. The grapes, by alluding to Luther’s insistence on the lay Eucharist in both kinds, became signs that informed Lutheran viewers could decode. Fourth, Cranach served both patrons with differing theological sympathies, not only with different commissions but also, perhaps, even with the same subject. Cranach produced a range of Madonnas (as well as other subjects) from a limited set of pictorial models in his well-run workshop, a fact that indicates not only his efficiency but also the range of interpretive possibility. Fifth, the boundaries between Protestants and Catholics were not yet sharply defined when it came to Madonna panels, which remained acceptable to both groups, though each approached such pictures in its own way. Even though beholders with Catholic and Lutheran sympathies may have understood Madonna pictures differently, the basic subject remained acceptable, in qualified ways, to both groups. And sixth, the Table Talk places Madonna paintings literally in the possession of both the reformer himself and John Frederick of Saxony, Cranach’s employer and Luther’s defender. Even if the stories in Table Talk are not literally true, they suggest an acceptance of Madonna pictures among Luther’s followers, opening up the possibility that Cranach’s copious output of Madonna panels was intended at least in part for this group of viewers. In the early sixteenth century, when religious identity was fervently debated, correlative issues about Christian art arose. New devotional practices necessitated changes in the traditional relationship between beholder and image. The intended or actual function of religious art in large measure defined the parameters of belief. We can best understand how believers constructed their relationship to God by interpreting the pictures that forged a path between believer and deity.

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Index

Against the Bishop of Brandenburg, Cardinal Albrecht (Luther), 12–13 Albertines (family), 73, 104 Albrecht of Brandenburg, 12–13, 81, 83, 165, 182 Albrecht of Brandenburg with a Crucifix (Cranach), 81, 82, 83 Altarpiece of George the Bearded (Cranach), 79, 80, 83 Altarpiece of the Holy Blood (Riemenschneider), 110 Altarpiece of the Princes (Cranach), 144, 145, 146 Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments (van der Weyden), 102, 106, 107, 108, 115, 122, 123, 123 altarpieces: changes in, 69, 74–75; Christ in, 116; function of, 3; polyptychs, 3, 4; triptychs, traditional, 144, 146. See also retables; individual works Altdorfer, Albrecht, 174 Anabaptism/Anabaptists: Luther’s attack on, 49; opposition to, 117 Andersson, Christiane, 3, 41, 170 art: and beliefs, 14; dichotomous compositions in, 46; function of, 2–3, 141; Luther’s attitude toward, 2, 3–4, 33–34, 75, 164; pre-

Reformation function of, 34; relationship to text, 4–5, 7, 27–28, 34; tolerated within Lutheran context, 198. See also art, Catholic; art, Cranach’s; art, Lutheran; images art, Catholic: apparent continuity with Lutheran art, 79; donors in, 81 art, Cranach’s: antithesis in, 50, 52; relationship with beliefs, 13–14. See also individual works art, Lutheran: adaptation of familiar forms in, 3; altarpieces, 67, 74–75; apparent continuity with Catholic art, 79; Cranach’s Madonna pictures as, 4; desire to limit interpretation in, 146–47; didactic function of, 87; donors in, 81; early, 87; functional definition of, 4; function of, 10–11, 33–34, 87; Last Supper in, 78; and Reformation’s attitude toward art, 3–4; Schneeberg Crucifixion as, 85, 87; scope of, 187–88; and traditional subjects, 173 art, Reformation, 27 art, religious, 28 Art and the Reformation in Germany (Christensen), 8 art history: concern with description, 6; iconographic method, 3, 5

219

220

Index

artists: included in holy narratives, 149, 151; status of, 151 Augsburg Confession, 41, 118 authority, of scripture vs. tradition, 115 Babylonian Captivity (Luther), 106 Bach-Nielsen, Carsten, 48 Baptism, 117–19. See also Anabaptism/Anabaptists Barbara of Meissen, 81 Bartholomew, Saint, 144 beliefs: Cranach’s, and art, 13–14; vs. donors’ wishes, 73 Belting, Hans, 156 Berdini, Paolo, 27 Berlin Madonna (Cranach), 166, 167, 170 Bible, German translation of, 15, 40 blood, Christ’s, 149 book, held by Luther in Weimar Altarpiece, 148 Bouts, Dirk, 110 Brazen Serpent: and contrast in Law and Gospel, 43; in Gotha version of Law and Gospel, 29, 38; and grace, 105; in Prague version of Law and Gospel, 32; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 105 Buchholz, Friedrich, 6–7 Bugenhagen, Johannes, 98, 103, 111, 114, 119, 121–22, 123 Catholicism: Baptism in, 118; Communion in, 76; Confession in, 119–20; transubstantiation in, 107, 109. See also theology, Catholic Catholics: dismissed from Schneeberg, 73; in Last Judgment pictures, 50 chalice: denied to laity, 76, 109; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 110–11. See also Eucharist Chevrot, Jean, 106, 109 choice: in Hercules at the Crossroads, 44; rejection of in Law and Gospel, 45–46

Christ: as judge, 37–38, 77; presence of in Eucharist, 78, 116–17; sinlessness of, 178; in Weimar Altarpiece, 142; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 116 Christ and the Adultress (Cranach), 170 Christ Blessing the Children (Cranach), 118, 170 Christensen, Carl C., 8, 27 clergy, 109, 111 Communion. See Eucharist community: and Baptism, 118; importance of education for, 121; and Last Supper, 78–79; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 111, 113–14 Concerning Baptism (Luther), 118 “Concerning the Letter and the Spirit” (Luther), 32–33 Confession: in Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, 122, 123, 123; in Catholic practice, 119–20; Luther’s views on, 120–21; as opportunity for instruction, 121; private vs. public, 120, 122; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 119–23 contrast: in Luther’s thought, 49, 50 Cranach, Lucas the Elder: Albrecht of Brandenburg with a Crucifix, 81, 82, 83; Altarpiece of George the Bearded, 79, 80, 83; Altarpiece of the Princes, 144, 145, 146; art of (see art, Cranach’s); association with Albrecht of Brandenburg, 12, 13; Berlin Madonna, 166, 167, 170; business endeavors, 14–15; Christ and the Adultress, 170; Christ Blessing the Children, 118, 170; Crucifixion pictures by, 84, 85; Crucifixion Triptych, 85, 86, 87; The Dying Man, 38, 39, 40; Frederick the Wise Venerating the Virgin, 171; Hague Madonna, 166, 168, 170; Hercules at the Crossroads, 44, 45; The Holy Kinship, 170, 172; identity of as Reformation artist, 27; Junker Jörg portraits, 12, 112; Law and

Index

Gospel (see Law and Gospel); Luther as Junker Jörg, 112; Madonna pictures by (see Madonna pictures, Cranach’s); Madonna with Four Female Saints, 170; Mariological images by, 165; Munich Madonna, 166, 169, 170; Passional Christi et Antichristi, 34, 50, 51; as politician, 15; relation with Luther, 11–12, 34; relative obscurity of, 1; Saint Jerome in His Study, 184, 185, 186; Schneeberg Altarpiece (see Schneeberg Altarpiece); scholarship on, 5–9; service to patrons on both sides of Reformation, 181–82; Weimar Altarpiece (see Weimar Altarpiece); in Weimar Altarpiece, 142–43, 149, 150, 151, 153–54; Wittenberg Altarpiece (see Wittenberg Altarpiece); in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 114 Cranach, Lucas the Younger: contributions to Wittenberg Altarpiece, 103; late sixteenthcentury painting of, 98, 101; role in Weimar Altarpiece, 153–54; The True and False Church, 50; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 113 Cranach Altäre der Reformation (Thulin), 7 Crucifixion: in Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, 107; pictures by Cranach, 84, 85; in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 84–85, 87; traditional, 85 Crucifixion Altarpiece (van der Weyden), 151, 152, 153 Crucifixion Triptych (Cranach), 85, 86, 87 damnation: in Dying Man, 40; and law, 37 Dessauer Fürstenaltar (Cranach), 144, 145, 146 devotion, 156 dichotomy, in art, 46

221

Diet of Worms, 11 Dillenberger, John, 9 donors: Catholic, 81, 139, 141; in Crucifixion Altarpiece, 153; Lutheran, 81, 83–84; and saints, 83; of Schneeberg Altarpiece, 79–84; of Weimar Altarpiece, 154–55; wishes of vs. artist’s beliefs, 73. See also patronage Dürer, Albrecht: Feast of the Rose Garlands, 149; Four Holy Men, 87 The Dying Man (Cranach), 38, 39, 40 Easter Sermon (Luther), 46 education, importance of for community, 121 Edwards, Mark, 42, 50 Ehresmann, Donald, 41 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 45 Ernestines (family), 73, 104. See also John Frederick the Magnanimous; John the Serious Eucharist: as intended for whole community, 110; in Lutheran service, 76; Luther’s conviction laity should receive, 181; notion of real presence in, 78, 116; withholding of chalice in, 76, 109 Exposition on the Magnificat (Luther), 177–78 Eyck, Hubert van, 148 Eyck, Jan van, 148, 174 Fair Mary of Regensburg, 173–74 Fair Mary of Regensburg (Ostendorfer), 175 faith: and Baptism, 118; and Sacrifice of Isaac, 105. See also grace Falk, Tilman, 7 Falkenburg, Reindert, 14, 42 Fall of Humanity: in Gotha version of Law and Gospel, 29; in Prague version of Law and Gospel, 32 Feast of the Rose Garlands (Dürer), 149

222

Index

figures. See human figures Finney, Paul Corbey, 8 Flood, in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 75 Four Holy Men (Dürer), 87 Frederick the Wise, 11, 73, 144 Frederick the Wise Venerating the Virgin (Cranach), 171 free will, 45, 46 Friedländer, Max, 7 George the Bearded, 81 Ghent Altarpiece (van Eyck), 148 Gnesiolutherans, 104 God: changed relationship with humanity, 143; relationship with humanity, 2, 35, 36, 38, 43, 83, 139 Golden Legend, 115 good works: in Catholic theology, 35; in Lutheran theology, 10, 37; patronage as, 81; and salvation, 35 gospel, division with law, 37–38 Gotha version of Law and Gospel, 30; Brazen Serpent in, 29, 38; description of, 29, 32; elements of in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 74; Fall of Humanity in, 29; law in, 37; nude figures in, 47; as showing consequences of decisions, 47 grace: acceptance of, and Mary, 177, 186; and Brazen Serpent, 105; exemplified in Weimar Altarpiece, 148; in Lutheran theology, 35; Mary as model of, 11, 179; as path to salvation, 10; in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 77. See also faith grapes in Madonna pictures, 181, 182, 183 Gregory the Great, 28 Grohne, Ernst, 40, 48 Grünewald, Matthias, 116 Hague Madonna (Cranach), 166, 168, 170 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 141 Harbison, Craig, 4, 83, 141

Hercules at the Crossroads (Cranach), 44, 45 Holbein, Hans the Younger, 32 The Holy Kinship (Cranach), 170, 172 holy narratives, inclusion of artists in, 149, 151 How Christians should Regard Moses (Luther), 36 human figures: in Crucifixion Altarpiece, 153; in Gotha version of Law and Gospel, 47; in Prague version of Law and Gospel, 43–44; in Weimar Altarpiece, 141–43, 154–56; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 103–4 humanity: as distinct from holy in traditional triptychs, 144, 146; relationship to God, 2, 35, 36, 38, 43, 83, 139; relation with holy in Weimar Altarpiece, 156 humility, of Mary, 177, 178 iconoclasm, 34, 101–2, 164 images: inability to impart fresh information, 28; as primary text, 4–5; relationship with text, 4–5, 7, 27–28, 34, 147; role in formation of religious identity, 2. See also art Immaculate Conception, 178 interpretation: and denominational identity of picture, 183; desire to limit in Lutheran art, 146–47; freedom of in Italian art, 47. See also meaning Isenheim Altarpiece (Grünewald), 116 John Frederick II, 142, 154 John Frederick III, 142, 154 John Frederick the Magnanimous, 70, 73, 79, 81, 104, 141, 155, 183 John the Constant, 73, 144 John the Serious, 70, 73, 79, 81 John William, 142, 154 Judas, in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 111, 113

Index

judgment, in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 75–76, 77 Junker Jörg: Luther disguised as, 11; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 111 Junker Jörg portraits, 12, 112 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von, 4, 34, 117, 164 keys, 121 The Keys (Luther), 120–21 Koellin, Peter, 174, 176 Koepplin, Dieter, 7 Koerner, Joseph: importance of in study of Cranach, 8–9; interpretation of Weimar Altarpiece, 151; interpretation of Wittenberg Altarpiece, 104; on Law and Gospel, 27, 44–45, 47; on Wittenberg Altarpiece, 98, 101–2, 104, 113–14 Kunst der Reformationszeit, 7 Last Judgment: Catholics in, 50; in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 75, 77; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 105–6 Last Supper: and Christian community, 78–79; in Lutheran art, 78; preReformation representations of, 110; in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 71, 78–79, 84; in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 101, 110–11, 113, 115 law, 36–38 Law and Gospel (Cranach): accompanying text and interpretation, 52; as antecedent to Weimar Altarpiece, 147, 154; as approximation of Lutheran theology, 43; Christ in Judgment in, 37–38; contrast in, 43; didactic function of, 10; differences in Prague and Gotha versions, 43, 48; differing interpretations of, 42–48; dividing tree in, 43; Ehresmann’s interpretation of, 41; freedom of interpretation in, 47; Gotha version of (see Gotha version of Law and

223

Gospel); influence on Wittenberg Altarpiece, 105; intended meaning of, 27, 28; intended to summarize Lutheran notion of salvation, 36; Koerner on, 27, 44–45, 47; as Lutheran, 41, 197; Mary’s role in, 179, 181; motifs in, 37 (see also Brazen Serpent; Fall of Humanity); as new type of picture, 4; Prague version of (see Prague version of Law and Gospel); production of, 29; relationship with Crucifixion, 85; relationship with Lutheran theology, 28, 197; rhetorical strategies in, 49–52; in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 67, 73–74, 77; scholarly opinions of, 48–49; scholarship on, 27–28; selection of text for, 40–41; self in, 46; typological interpretation of, 48; woodcut of, 180 Law and Grace. See Law and Gospel (Cranach) literacy, importance of, 173 Lohse, Bernhard, 41, 43–44 Longinus, 85 Lord’s Supper: as intended for whole community, 110; in Lutheran service, 76; Luther’s conviction laity should receive, 181; notion of real presence in, 78, 116. See also Eucharist Lot and His Daughters, in Schneeberg Altarpiece, 75 Louvain Altarpiece (Bouts), 110 Lucas Cranach (Schade), 7 Lufft, Hans, 34 Luther, Martin: on adherents of other religions, 49–50; Against the Bishop of Brandenburg, Cardinal Albrecht, 12–13; apostolicity of, 115–16; art, view of, 2, 3–4, 33–34, 75, 164; attack on sacraments, 106; attacks on pope, 50; Babylonian Captivity, 106; on Baptism, 117–18; collaboration with Cranach, 1; Concerning Baptism, 118; “Concerning the Letter and the

224

Index

Spirit,” 32–33; death of, 104; Easter Sermon, 46; Exposition on the Magnificat, 177–78; How Christians should Regard Moses, 36; identifiable in Wittenberg Altarpiece, 103, 111, 114; as Junker Jörg, 11, 111, 112; The Keys, 120–21; law, idea of, 36–37; as new prophet, 148; opposition to devotion to Mary, 173–74; opposition to saints, 174; Passional Christi et Antichristi, 34; presence of at Wittenberg Altarpiece Last Supper, 115; relationship with Albrecht of Brandenburg, 12–13; relation with Cranach, 11–12, 34; The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ— Against the Fanatics, 120; September Testament, 15; Small Catechism, 35; understanding of scripture, 32–33, 177; view of transubstantiation, 109; views of Christ’s presence in Eucharist, 116–17; views on Confession, 120–21; in Weimar Altarpiece, 142–43, 148–49, 150. See also Reformation Lutheranism: clergy in, 111; established in Schneeberg, 73; Eucharist in, 76 (see also Lord’s Supper); factionalism of, 104; importance of lay literacy in, 173; infant Baptism in, 118; practice of in Wittenberg, 104; reading of Brazen Serpent in, 105; reading of Sacrifice of Isaac in, 105. See also Luther, Martin; Lutheran thought; theology, Lutheran Lutheran thought: Cranach’s role in interpretation of, 1. See also theology, Lutheran Luther as Junker Jörg (Cranach), 112 Madonna painting: Cranach’s (see Madonna pictures, Cranach’s); Falkenburg’s scholarship on, 186 Madonna pictures, Cranach’s: appeal to varied audience, 182–83; audience

of, 181; Berlin Madonna, 166, 167, 170; compared to Mariological images, 170; consistency of, 166, 170; demonstration of Luther’s view of Mary in, 178–79; grapes in, 181, 182, 183; Hague Madonna, 166, 168, 170; iconography of, 182; intended to be acceptable to Lutheran viewers, 199; interpretation of, 181; John Frederick’s ownership of, 183–84; John the Baptist in, 166; as Lutheran art, 4, 183–84; Luther’s ownership of, 184; as Merckbilder, 165; modification of, 165; Munich Madonna, 166, 169, 170; participation of in law-and-gospel paradigm, 178–79; production of, 165, 182; reasons for continued production of, 164; role of for Lutherans, 164; scholarship on, 163–64; versatility of, 166, 187; and viewer expectations, 170 Madonnas, Lutheran: and reception of grace, 186. See also Madonna pictures, Cranach’s Madonna with Four Female Saints (Cranach), 170 Magnificat, Luther’s exegesis of, 177–78 man. See humanity Mariological images, 165, 170 Mariological legend, Luther’s opposition to, 173 Marrow, James, 3, 83, 141 Marxism and interpretation of Cranach, 7 Mary: and acceptance of grace, 177, 186; acceptance of pictures of among Luther’s followers, 183–84; conception of, 178; in Crucifixions, 85; humility of, 177, 178; as intercessor, 174; Luther’s opposition to devotion to, 173–74; Mariological images, 165, 170; as model of grace, 11, 179; picture of included in Saint

Index

Jerome in His Study, 184, 186; place in Christianity, according to Luther, 177–78; range of aspects of, 177; role of before Reformation, 174, 177; role of in Law and Gospel, 179, 181; role of in Protestant thought, 163; sinlessness of, 178. See also Madonna painting; Madonna pictures, Cranach’s Mary of Mercy (Koellin), 174, 176 McGrath, Alister, 41 meaning: and audience and context, 170, 173; construction of, 5; intended vs. received, 42. See also interpretation Melanchthon, Philip, 6, 40, 98, 103, 104, 111, 114, 117, 118, 173 Merckbilder, 42, 165 Michalski, Sergiusz, 8 The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Koerner), 8 Moses: Luther’s relationship to, 148; in Weimar Altarpiece, 149 motifs, evolution of, 38, 40 Munich Madonna (Cranach), 166, 169, 170 Ninety-five Theses, 9 Ohly, Friedrich, 36, 48 On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Luther), 106 Ostendorfer, Michael, 174, 175 Ozment, Steve, 9–10 The Paintings of Lucas Cranach (Friedländer and Rosenburg), 7 Panofsky, Erwin, 3 Passional Christi et Antichristi, 34, 50, 51 patronage: as good work, 81; motivation for, 10, 123, 141. See also donors pharmacist, Cranach as, 14 Philippists, 104

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polyptychs, 3, 4. See also altarpieces Pommer, Dr. See Bugenhagen, Johannes pope, Luther’s attacks on, 50 Prague version of Law and Gospel, 31; Brazen Serpent in, 32; description of, 32; Fall of Humanity in, 32; human figures in, 43–44; inscriptions on, 32; Koerner’s interpretation of, 44–45; Lutheran theology in, 44; rejection of freedom of choice in, 45–46; variations/copies of, 32, 33 Preuß, Hans, 6, 14 prophet, Luther as, 148 Protestants, and Christ’s presence in Eucharist, 116–17 publisher, Cranach as, 14–15 Reformation: attitude toward art, 3–4; and interpretation of scripture, 32–33; outline of, 9–10; as personal event for Cranach, 34 religion: purpose of, 2; role of images in, 2, 28; worship in Middle Ages, 10. See also beliefs retables: definition of, 74; description of, 3; functions of, 124, 146, 198; as tools of religious instruction, 3. See also altarpieces; individual works Riemenschneider, Tilman, 110 Rolin Madonna (van Eyck), 174 Rosenberg, Jacob, 7 The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics (Luther), 120 sacraments, Catholic: Luther’s attack on, 106; portrayed in Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, 106–9; Wittenberg Altarpiece as refutation of, 109 Sacrifice of Isaac, 105 Saint Jerome in His Study (Cranach), 184, 185, 186 saints: in Cranach’s art, 13; and donors, 83; Luther’s opposition to, 174

226

Index

salvation: and Baptism, 118; in Dying Man, 40; and good works, 35; and law, 37; in Law and Gospel, 40; in Lutheran theology, 10, 11, 37, 81, 105; in Weimar Altarpiece, 149, 151, 157 Sandrart, Joachim von, 6 Schade, Werner, 7 Scheurl, Christoph, 6 Schmitburg, Heinrich, 38, 40 Schneeberg, Germany, 73, 78–79 Schneeberg Altarpiece (Cranach): as active, 69; and apparent continuity between Catholic and Lutheran art, 79; changes represented by, 75; in closed position, 69; commission of, 70, 73; Crucifixion in, 72, 84–85, 87; description of, 67–68; donors of, 79–84; Flood in, 75; grace in, 77; judgment in, 75–76, 77; Last Judgment in, 77; Last Supper in, 71, 78–79, 84; Law and Gospel in, 67, 73–74, 77, 197; Lot and His Daughters in, 75; as Lutheran, 197; obscurity of, 68; in opened position, 70; predella, 78–79; rear panels, 68, 75–77; relationships among panels in, 76–77; scholarship on, 68–69; as shift in Luther art, 87 Schuchardt, Christian, 6 Scribner, Robert, 187 scripture: interpretation of and Reformation, 32–33; Lutheran interpretation of, 149; in Lutheran theology, 35, 115; Luther’s understanding of, 32–33, 177; vs. tradition, 115 self, 46 September Testament, 15 Seven Sacraments (van der Weyden). See Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments Sibylle of Cleves, 141, 142, 155 simul justus et peccator, 43–44 Small Catechism (Luther), 35

sola fides, 35 sola gratia, 35 sola scriptura, 35 soldiers, in Crucifixions, 85 Stephaton, 85 Der Sterbende (Cranach), 38, 39, 40 Stirm, Margarete, 8 Table Talk, 183–84 Tappolet, Walter, 163 text: relationship with image/art, 4–5, 7, 27–28, 34; relationship with image in Cranach’s works, 147; selection of for Law and Gospel, 40–41; in Weimar Altarpiece, 143 theology, Catholic, 35. See also Catholicism theology, Lutheran: and German translation of Bible, 40; good works in, 10, 11, 35, 37; grace in, 35; Law and Gospel as approximation of, 43; and notion of real presence in Eucharist, 78, 116; relation of God and humanity in, 83; relationship with Law and Gospel, 28; salvation in, 37, 81, 105; scripture in, 35, 115; simul justus et peccator, 43–44; slogans of, 35–36. See also Lutheranism; Lutheran thought Thulin, Oskar, 7, 69, 113 Tory, Geoffrey, 32 transubstantiation, 107, 109, 116 triptychs: traditional, 144, 146. See also altarpieces; individual works The True and False Church (Cranach the Younger), 50 Van der Paele Madonna (van Eyck), 174 Vienna Altarpiece (van der Weyden), 151, 152, 153 Virgin Mary. See Madonna; Madonna painting; Madonna pictures, Cranach’s; Mary visions, 83

Index

Weimar Altarpiece (Cranach): attribution of, 153–54; central panel, 147; and changes in traditional retable, 146–47; Christ in, 142; Christ’s blood in, 149, 150; in closed position, 139; Cranach in, 142–43, 149, 150, 151, 153–54; Cranach the Younger’s role in, 153–54; description of, 141–43; detail of blood in, 150; donors of, 154–55; figures in, 141–43, 154–56; grace exemplified in, 148; inscription, 154–55; and introduction of new categories for new religion, 198; Koerner’s interpretation of, 151; Law and Gospel as antecedent to, 147, 154; layers of interpretation in, 147; location of, 138; Luther in, 142–43, 148–49, 150; Moses in, 149; in opened position, 140; relation of humanity and holy in, 139, 156; salvation in, 149, 151, 157; texts in, 143; tradition and innovation in, 143 Weyden, Rogier van der: Altarpiece of the Seven Sacraments, 102, 106, 107, 108, 115, 122, 123, 123; Crucifixion Altarpiece, 151, 152, 153 Wittenberg, Germany, 104 Wittenberg Altarpiece (Cranach): assertion of real presence in, 116; Baptism in, 117–19; Brazen Serpent in, 105; Bugenhagen in, 98, 103, 111, 114, 117, 119, 121–22, 123; central panel, 109, 111–13, 114–16,

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117; chalice in, 110–11; Christ in, 116; commission of, 103; community in, 111, 113–14; Confession in, 119–23; Cranach the Elder in, 114; Cranach the Younger in, 113; Cranach the Younger’s contributions to, 103; description of, 98; exterior panels, 99, 104–6; front panels, 100; function of, 124; and iconoclasm, 101–2; identifiable portraits in, 111; influence of Law and Gospel on, 105; installation of, 103, 104; interpretation of, 198; Judas in, 111, 113; junction of past and present in, 114; Junker Jörg in, 111; Koerner on, 98, 101–2, 104, 113–14; Last Judgment in, 105–6; Last Supper in, 101, 110–11, 113, 115; as Lutheran, 198; Luther in, 103, 111, 114, 115; Luther’s family in, 113; payment for, 8; predella, 102, 113–14, 116–17; presence of local people in, 114; as refutation of Catholic sacraments, 109; rejection of transubstantiation in, 116; retable format of, 103; role of human figures in, 103–4; Sacrifice of Isaac in, 105; scholarship on, 98, 101–2; wings, 117 Wittmann, Jan, 164 word, written. See text Worringer, Wilhelm, 27, 46 Zwingli, Huldrych, 117, 118