(Wittenberg 1515–1586 Weimar)
Portrait of Martin Luther, bareheaded, with grey hair, wearing a black cloak, holding a book,
bears signature with winged serpent and date centre left 1546,
oil on panel, 62.2 x 47.6 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Findlay Galleries, Chicago (as by Lucas Cranach, the Elder);
where purchased by Ruth Mcclymonds Maitland (1885–1958), Los Angeles, in 1944;
thence by descent to her daughter Flora Maitland Dean and her son-in-law John Gilbert Dean, Rhode Island;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2006, lot 266 (as Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop);
where acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Los Angeles, Art Galleries of the University of California; San Francisco, Palace of the Legion of Honor, California Collects: North and South, 20 January – 6 April 1958, no. 4 (as Lucas Cranach the Elder);
Los Angeles, Art Galleries of the University of California, Ruth McC. Maitland Collection, 5 October – 1 November 1959 (as Lucas Cranach the Elder);
Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, 1980, on loan;
Trento, Museo del diocesano tridentino, L’uomo del concilio, 4 April – 26 July 2009, no. 9 (as Lucas Cranach the Younger)

Literature:
California collections: North and South, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 1958, no. 4 ill. (as Lucas Cranach the Elder);
R. Pancheri, D. Primerano, L’uomo del concilio. Il cardinale Giovanni Morone tra Roma e Trento nell’età di Michelangelo, exhibition catalogue, Trento 2009, pp. 170-171 no. 9 (as Lucas Cranach the Younger) 

The present painting is registered in the Digital Corpus Cranach under no. CC-POR-510-106 (with an attribution to Lucas Cranach the Elder or within his Workshop).

This lot is accompanied by photocopies of letters from Max Friedländer, dated 1927, and W. R. Valentiner, dated 1944, ascribing the portrait to Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The present painting belongs among a series of portrayals of Martin Luther (1483–1546), half-length. He is dressed in dark clothes to which only the scarlet stripe at his collar lends a dash of colour; he holds a small book in his hands, an allusion to the translation of the bible, or perhaps to one of his own writings. With a sure gaze, Luther is silhouetted against a clear blue ground which foregrounds his solid form. 

This portrait belongs among a production of images representing Luther created during the sixteenth century. In the majority of these portraits Luther is represented as a priest, or a doctor of theology, in others he appears with his wife Katharina von Bora, and in some he is shown on his death bed.

The model for the present painting was made by Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of the first German artists to support the Protestant Reformation. The painter became Luther’s friend and even served as witness at his wedding. He first painted Luther’s portrait in 1520 and subsequently created the prototypes for many of the portraits. The present painting derives from a prototype developed in Cranach’s studio at Wittenberg in the year of Luther’s death, 1546, of which there are other versions. One of these is conserved in the Catharijnecovent Museum, Utrecht while other similar versions are in the Klassik Stiftung Weimar Museum, the Lutherhaus at Wittenberg, the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Cranach’s studio specialised in the serial production of this type of portrait, produced in various formats and usually bearing the date of the prototype, as opposed to the actual date of the painting’s execution. Cranach entrusted much of the management of his studio to his son Lucas, who took over as director in 1550. Before that date however it is not possible to assign works to Lucas the Younger with any certainty. Indeed, all the works that were released from Cranach’s studio maintained a uniformity of quality and style with the father’s work and were branded with the sign of the dragon.

Technical analysis by Gianluca Poldi:

IR reflectography shows a thin underdrawing in the head, almost certainly made with a sharp black chalk, with some small hatched areas to better mark the shape of the face and the small shadows, or half shadows. The hatching is made from four to six short parallel lines, to suggest areas to create the shadow with the final colour. Some of the underdrawn outline black traces are quite freely handled, with more than one line to create them, as is apparent in the neck, other areas such as the eyes and the nose are drawn with certainty with a single line.

The flesh tones, based on lead white mixed with vermillion and brown ochre, as non-invasive spectroscopies and optical microscopy determine, are accurately shaded with thin glazes of pigment containing carbon black particles. The grain size of vermillion is very thin, and also the azurite mixed with lead white contained in the background is finely grinded. The peculiar tone of the blue is due to the presence of some small copper green particle in the paint, perhaps green impurities of the mineral, like malachite. The bright vermillion is also used in the collar and in the top edge of the book held by the sitter, where it overlaps the lead-tin yellow of the text.