Lucas Cranach the Elder

And one friendship would turn into an immensely powerful weapon.

That with Lukas Cranach, court painter of the Elector of Saxony and the richest man in Wittenberg.

His workshop churned out altarpieces, portraits and woodcuts by the hundreds.

There's a delicious irony here, since Cranach's biggest commission ever was for Albrecht of Brandenburg, the man who was in charge of the St. Peter indulgences and who was arguably, and Luther said that very many times, had caused all that kerfuffle.

Cranach had been in the business of advertising the old faith before he went into the business of advertising the new one.

In 1520 he would give Luther a face with his first portrait engraving.

Luther's words and Kranach's images, that combination would prove almost unbeatable.

You'll notice the crucifixion right in the center.

Then Jesus raised on the left the And all of these paintings, they're all Cranach paintings.

They're all so beautiful and so good to study.

One of the reasons I like this one, the Weimar piece so profoundly on the front cover is that people, when they talk about the crucifixion, they say, well, we believe Jesus rose from the dead.

And just yards from Melanchthon's dwelling is the apothecary and printer's workshop of the Reformation's most overlooked expositor, the painter of the early Reformation.

He was Lucas Cranach the Elder.

We know very little about the early life of Lucas Cranach.

A dated portrait from later in life seems to place his birth in 1472.

We know that he was born in Cranach, hence his name Cranach.

His father was called Hans Mahler, or Hans the Painter.

We know he learned art from his father early on before he made his way to Vienna by 1502.

There he made a name for himself amidst the booming art scene, enough of a name that in 1505 he was named the court painter to the new elector of Wittenberg, Frederick the Wise.

So they had their, they had their fall from the wonderful, uh, status of being a government-sponsored enterprise, which I'll talk a little bit more about, uh, to just being, being run by the government.

Now, uh, the, uh, the article starts off saying, "Consider this famous painting by Lucas Cranach of Adam being tempted by Eve." And there's the picture of the, the tree in the Garden of Eden, and Eve has the apple in her hand.

She's taken one bite out of it, and she's offering it to Adam.

And there is a evil-looking blue snake in the tree who is guiding them.