Cranach Magnified Tool on Getty Museum's Web Site
By STAN PARCHIN
January 27, 2010
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| Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553). Adam and Eve (1526). Oil on panel. 117 x 80 cm (46.1 x 31.5 in.). © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery. |
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| Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553). A Faun and His Family with a Slain Lion (ca. 1526). Oil on panel. 82.9 x 56.2 cm (32.6 x 22.1 in.). J. Paul Getty Museum. |
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| Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472-1553). Apollo and Diana (ca. 1530). Oil on panel. 83.8 x 56.3 cm (33 x 22.2 in.). Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Collection. |
One of 16th-century Germany's most prolific artists was Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553). On June 28, 2007, Los Angeles, California's J. Paul Getty Museum debuted a sophisticated feature on its Web site called Cranach Magnified. It enables Internet users to virtually examine details in 11 of the Northern Renaissance master's paintings in a way usually reserved for scholars, art historians and scientists.
Cranach's Life and Career
Lucas Cranach the Elder was born in the German town of Kronach in Upper Franconia, part of the Holy Roman Empire. Possibly trained as an artist by his painter father, Cranach later married Barbara Brengbier and went on to teach his sons John Lucas (d. 1536), Hans and Lucas (1515-1586). The two youngest brothers were employed in their father's workshop. In 1504/5, the elder Cranach was appointed pictor ducalis or court painter to Elector Frederick III the Wise of Saxony (1463-1525) and his family at Wittenberg, where the Christian ruler founded a university in 1502.
Cranach's altarpieces brought him notoriety early in his career. A talented painter, draftsman and engraver, he also became a bookshop owner, pharmacy proprietor and member of Wittenberg's city council. In 1509, he traveled to the Netherlands, where Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519) and his grandson, the future Charles V (r. 1519-1558), sat for their portraits.
As Frederick the Wise's court painter, Cranach was in close contact with Martin Luther (1483-1546), the excommunicated Protestant reformer whom the elector protected from execution for heresy by the Catholic Church. In fact, Cranach attended the Augustinian friar's betrothal ceremony to Katharina von Bora (1499-1552), a former Cistercian nun, in 1525. Luther relied on his friend to print his pamphlets and design the woodcuts for the theologian's vernacular translation of the New Testament into German. The artist's shrewd business acumen, political connections and vivid imagery made him a success.
The Cranach Magnified Tool
Cranach was keenly aware of the 16th Century's intellectual movements and religious controversies. Influenced by them, he produced a number of paintings whose subject matter was mythological and Biblical in theme. Among the works included in the Cranach Magnified tool are three important ones: Adam and Eve (1526) from London's Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery; A Faun and His Family with a Slain Lion (ca. 1526) from the J. Paul Getty Museum; and Apollo and Diana (ca. 1530) from London's Royal Collection.
Cranach maintained a very active workshop. His studio produced multiple versions of his popular paintings. Cranach Magnified allows scholars worldwide to study some of them more closely and help determine which ones were actually executed by the master.
With Cranach Magnified, the user can macroscopically examine a group of the artist's works two at a time and next to each other. The easy-to-use toolbar enables the viewer to pan across the oil on panel paintings in all four directions. The zoom in/zoom out feature allows for adjustable magnification of each composition's details. Cranach Magnified permits one to see the paintings' brushstrokes and details invisible to the naked eye.
Sources
Brinkmann, Bodo (ed.), et al. Cranach (exh. cat.). London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007, 340-343, 366-367.
Campbell, Caroline. Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach's "Adam and Eve". London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2007.
Moser, Peter. Lucas Cranach: His Life, His World and His Art. Bamberg: Babenberg Verlag GmbH, 2005.
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