Martin Luther

The reformer Martin Luther faces us, settled and resolute in his black coat and cap against a pale ground. Lucas Cranach the Elder was Luther's close friend and godfather to his children, and his Wittenberg workshop turned out portraits like this by the score - the visual machinery of the Reformation, carrying Luther's face across Protestant Germany. This 1532 type shows the older Luther, no longer the gaunt rebel monk. Cranach's courtly mythologies and Durer's Four Apostles, both also in this collection, mark the two faces of German art in these years: princely delight and Protestant conviction.