Lot 2006 Dα

The two paintings are listed in the Cranach Digital Archive under the numbers PRIVATE_NONE-P264 and PRIVATE_NONE-P264, and in the Corpus Cranach with the numbers CC-POR-160-058 and CC-POR-280-044.



These lifelike portraits of the prince elector brothers Frederick the Wise (1463-1525) and John the Steadfast (1468-1532) by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his Wittenberg workshop are dated 1532, thus created in the year in which John died - seven years after his elder brother. The two depictions were therefore probably created in memory of the Saxon electors, who were among Lucas Cranach the Elder's earliest and most important patrons.

Frederick the Wise was the eldest son of Elector Ernst of Saxony, the progenitor of the Ernestine line of the Wettins, with whose death he became Elector in 1486. He ruled together with his brother John the Steadfast. In the election of the emperor in 1519, he would have had a good chance of being elevated to emperor as a compromise candidate, but he rejected a candidacy in advance. As Frederick remained unmarried and left no children entitled to inherit, his brother John the Steadfast became sole reigning Elector after his death. He received his epithet because of his insistence on upholding the Protestant creed.



The two electors are depicted in half-figure before a radiant light blue ground, forming counterparts with their bodies turned in opposite directions. Their hair and beards are almost identical and their clothing is also very similar with a white shirt, black doublet, fur-trimmed bonnet and a black beret on their heads. Thus the two sovereigns are rendered in the attire of scholars rather than as princes - coats of arms or references to their high dignity are absent. Physiognomically, the two are distinguished in particular by the characteristically narrow, almond-shaped eyes with which John the Steadfast is shown.



It was Frederick the Wise who summoned Lucas Cranach the Elder to his Wittenberg court in 1505. The artist remained in the service of three Wettin electors for almost 50 years and became the founder of so-called Protestant iconography as well as the wealthiest citizen of Wittenberg with his productive workshop.