Lucas Cranach (1472–1553) is today acknowledged equally 1 of the great painters of the Northern Renaissance, the creator of a large number of remarkable paintings in a distinctive, highly recognisable way. He was also responsible for the iconic series of images of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546), his friend and gimmicky who had also settled in the pocket-sized north German language city of Wittenberg. His images of Luther and friends provide the definitive pictorial chronicle of the reformer's life, from the time he first flare-up on to the public stage, and into old age. All of the many books that celebrate Luther in this run-upward to the 500th ceremony in 2017 of the publishing of his 95 Theses will draw on Cranach for their image of the reformer. So besides will the exhibitions organised under the aegis of the Luther Exhibitions United states 2016 projection: 'Discussion and Epitome: Martin Luther's Reformation' at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York (7 October–22 January 2017); 'Law and Grace: Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach, and the Promise of Salvation' at Pitts Theology Library, Emory Academy, Atlanta (xi Oct–16 January 2017); and 'Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation' at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (30 October–xv January 2017).

These were some of the most copied pictures of the 16th century; non least because Cranach deliberately developed a workshop practice which facilitated the product of multiple versions. Yet, these paintings would merely have had a relatively restricted contemporary reach. We can, yet, go further and say that despite the enduring magnificence of these images, in terms of his service to the Reformation Cranach's greatest achievement lay elsewhere, in other parts of his enormous output.

Here we need to exist aware of two great, but comparatively understudied innovations emerging from Cranach'southward workshop. The first was the transformation of the woodcut from a relatively undervalued medium of artistic expression, to a powerful tool of evangelism. The second was the evolution of a model of cultural industrialisation that enabled images to be produced on a sufficiently big scale to serve a movement of ideas growing at a quite remarkable rate betwixt 1517 and 1525. It was during these years that Cranach created the images that defined the new move, and organised their production in industrial quantities. It was an extraordinary deed of cultural innovation: all the more than so given it was achieved in a place, Wittenberg, that upwardly to this indicate had hardly registered on the cultural atlas of the Holy Roman Empire.

Lucas Cranach was built-in in 1472 in Kronach, Franconia. He spent his formative years as a master painter in and around Vienna. In 1504 he accustomed an invitation to bring together a team of distinguished painters working on the ornamentation of Frederick the Wise's newly remodelled castle and its church in Wittenberg. It was hither that he met Albrecht Dürer, another artist commissioned by the ambitious Elector to work on his prestige projection; the two painters became and remained friends. However when Dürer and the other contracted painters finished their assignments, Cranach stayed on to work every bit Frederick'south courtroom painter. This proved to be the ideal role for a man of Cranach'southward talents. Information technology required above all versatility; a court painter was expected to turn his hand to annihilation the employer required, whether this was painting walls, designing court entertainments, portraits, or, in Frederick's example, hunting scenes. Cranach rose to the challenge. He had the reputation of someone who worked very apace – ideal for answering the whims and fancies of a prince. He also proved adept at managing a squad. He soon became very close to his princely employer, a trusted counsellor as well as an admired artisan. In 1508, the year Cranach was sent to the Low Countries to negotiate a family marriage on the Elector's behalf, Frederick granted the painter his own coat of arms. Cranach, indeed, was on much more than intimate terms with Frederick the Wise than Luther would e'er be.

In the years earlier the Reformation we tin can place two seminal moments in the evolution of Cranach's business and career path. The showtime came early, with the committee in 1508 to create a catalogue of Frederick's growing collection of relics: it is often noted, usually for its delicious irony, that Elector Frederick had one of Europe's largest relic collections. The chore of compiling such a catalogue, which would be adorned with over 100 woodcuts of the major pieces, was a considerable undertaking, particularly in Wittenberg whose printers had, upwards until now, produced only cursory literary pamphlets and dissertation texts for the professors and students of the academy. No doubt Frederick underwrote the cost, merely Cranach was required to supply the illustrations. The press was contracted to Simprecht Reinhart, an employee of Cranach's who may too have incised the woodblocks. Cranach had experimented with woodcuts, and also engravings earlier, just this was his start sustained engagement with a medium that would come to define his contribution to the Reformation. The Reliquary Book opened his eyes to the potential of woodblocks as a ways of mass communication, and as a commercial opportunity: witness his subsequent series of prints on the passion, in competition to those of Albrecht Dürer.

The Wittenberg Reliquary Book

The Wittenberg Reliquary Book (1509), text by Georg Spalatin and illustrations by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt

By the time he had completed the Reliquary Book Cranach was doing extremely well. The role of court painter was well paid, and, crucially, not sectional; Cranach was at liberty to accept other commissions. As the most distinguished painter in northward-due east Federal republic of germany, work was not hard to find. It was in these years that Cranach began to assemble the remarkable portfolio of Wittenberg properties that were the most tangible symbol of his authority of the local economy. Betwixt 1511 and 1517 he purchased and renovated the two well-nigh substantial of these properties, at Schlossstrasse 1 and Am Markt 4, both in the middle of town. Hither he would create an elegant town house and, at Schlossstrasse i, a gigantic building that would be both a residence and a mill/workshop for his growing workforce. Past 1517, when he took total possession of the rebuilt Schlossstrasse property, Cranach had the means to create not merely corking art, just smashing art in bulk.

By now Cranach had most certainly met Martin Luther, the 2d seminal event for the artist during these years. Luther settled in Wittenberg in 1511 and by 1514 he was combining his responsibilities in the university with preaching in the town's just parish church. As a member of the congregation, Cranach would first take come into contact with Luther hither: the two became firm friends. In 1517 Luther would stand as godfather to Cranach'due south concluding kid, and Cranach would render the favour when Luther began a family. In fact Cranach and his wife were two of the very small number of witnesses at Luther's controversial marriage in 1525. From the beginning Cranach was a firm and important supporter of the Reformation. This was a human relationship of mutual respect, mutual affection and mutual do good. Cranach provided the Reformation with some of its most memorable images; in render, Luther took a potent line against the radical rejection of pictorial fine art promoted by some of his Wittenberg colleagues.

Cranach was a crucial marry, and not only because of his artistic talents. By this point he was ane of Wittenberg's leading citizens, firmly established amid the city's ruling elite. He would play a crucial role in this regard when Luther was absent from Wittenberg in 1521, and over-enthusiastic supporters, led by Andreas Karlstadt, pressed for radical changes to the order of worship thatLuther would not have approved. Cranach, civic leader and artistic entrepreneur, was one of the rocks on which the Wittenberg Reformation was built. He too had the managerial skills and resources to excogitate a solution to the problem that might otherwise take stopped the Reformation in its tracks: how to build a mass move from a pocket-sized place with extremely limited infrastructure. Until 1517 Wittenberg had only one commercial printing shop, run by the patient Johann Rhau-Grunenberg who had undertaken the routine printing of a small provincial university, but who was utterly unprepared for the gear alter required by the firestorm fix off by Luther's 95 Theses criticising indulgences.

By 1518, when Luther's works began to be reprinted in big numbers in other parts of Deutschland, it was already clear that Rhau-Grunenberg's work was far inferior to that of printers undertaking their own editions of Luther elsewhere. He was likewise dreadfully irksome. Aware that the situation could non be immune to go along, Luther intervened. An experienced printer from Leipzig, Melchior Lotter, was persuaded to open a branch office in Wittenberg, to exist managed by his son, Melchior Junior. And Cranach was closely involved in this whole scheme; he gave the new workshop space in his swell mill at the Schlossstrasse. The await of Wittenberg's Luther imprints improved immeasurably, but this was even so substantially the expect of Leipzig: at that place was null detail to Wittenberg in the appearance of Lotter's books. This required a more decisive intervention on Cranach'south function.

Cranach was in these years intimately involved in the printing industry. As ever, he had prepared the basis carefully. To secure access to the necessary raw materials he purchased a paper mill; to facilitate marketing he entered into a partnership with Christian Döring, who ran a trucking business organization. Having achieved this precocious feat, Cranach and Döring even published a few books on their own initiative, but this was soon allowed to lapse. Cranach did not need to publish his own books to boss the market: because of his monopoly of woodcut illustrations, Cranach before long made himself indispensable to anyone active in the growing Wittenberg publishing manufacture, both to Rhau-Grunenberg and Lotter, and the new generation of printers who arrived in the mid 1520s. And by doing so he transformed the await of the Reformation book and the fortunes of the Wittenberg press industry.

Title-page from That Jesus was Born a Jew

Title-page from That Jesus was Born a Jew 1523, text by Martin Luther and illustrations by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt

Up until this signal Wittenberg imprints had by and large been associated with the spare utilitarian texts of Rhau-Grunenberg. Printers exterior Wittenberg had improved the look somewhat, using decorative borders to frame the title. Cranach offered a radically new solution: a championship-page frame, made upwards not of divide panels merely a single woodcut. Here the illustrative features were blocked around a blank central panel into which the title could and then be inserted. It was a masterpiece of design innovation, solving a complex problem of integrating text and decorative material while assuasive infinite for imaginative creative expression on the front of the book. It was a major and decisive breakthrough in the history of the volume, and for the Reformation. Cranach's exquisite piece of work at present adorned pamphlets that might sell for no more than than a few pence. Stylistically this was the part of Cranach'south artistic oeuvre that near self-consciously adhered to the principles of Renaissance fine art. A statement was being made: the message of the Reformation – Luther's message – deserved to be magnificently arranged. In the procedure, and thanks to Cranach's decisive intervention, the Wittenberg book led the fashion in terms of artful appeal.

The distinctive look provided by Cranach'south title-page designs was the final component of a puzzle that had been taxing Germany'southward printers since the early on days of the Reformation: how to capitalise on their most marketable property, the new phenomenon that was Martin Luther. In the design of the Reformation title-page we likewise come across printers gradually waking up to the authority of Luther's personal reputation as a writer and teacher. Early works often bury Luther's name in the midst of a dumbo block of text; not infrequently his name is split over ii lines (Lu- / theri), if that is what is dictated by the blocking. This obscured the book's most obvious selling point, which printers soon recognised. They learned to move Luther'due south name on to a line of its own, separated from the main body of the title. The proper noun is often in a bold type of larger size, intended to jump off the page to catch the eye of purchasers surveying a mass of titles piled up on the bookseller's stall.

Passion of Christ and Antichrist

Passion of Christ and Antichrist 1521, texts by Philip Melanchton and Johannes Schwertfeger; illustrations by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt

The last element of brand identity was Wittenberg itself. In most parts of Europe it was now common practice for the printer'south address to exist printed in neat small blazon at the bottom of the championship page. Not and so in Wittenberg. Hither the printer's name was mostly relegated to the end (the colophon) or omitted birthday. Instead the city was given pride of place, oftentimes on a single line at the lesser, separated from other text by several centimetres of white space.

Of class there were other images: the Passion of Christ and Antichrist (1521), a pictorial encapsulation of the Protestant reason for rejecting the Pope, created in partnership with Melanchthon, and the Law and Grace, a powerful representation of the old and the new police force, and developed by Cranach both as a painted panel (1529) and as a book title-page (1528). Cranach'south other signal service to the Reformation was the fashioning of the portraits of Luther that outset made his physical features known beyond the relatively narrow grouping of those who had encountered him in person. The initiative for the commencement portrait – an engraving – seems to take come from Albrecht Dürer. A passionate admirer of Luther from his starting time reading of the preacher's works, Dürer regretted the lack of a true likeness of the reformer. He wrote suggesting such a likeness exist created, enclosing copies of his magnificent portrait of Albrecht of Brandenburg equally a model. Cranach studied the portrait of Albrecht advisedly before embarking on his own rendition of Luther. The issue was a triumph, simultaneously a magnificent propaganda piece and a lifelike rendering of the reformer at a seminal moment of his career (1520). Cranach depicts Luther as a simple monk, lean but not gaunt, staring impassively outward, resolute and monumental in the face of adversity: the simple man of God strong against the marshalled forces of the institutional church building.

Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk

Martin Luther every bit an Augustinian Monk (1520), Lucas Cranach the Elder. Thrivent Financial Drove of Religious Art, Minneapolis

This image was not destined for immediate circulation. In the months before Luther's advent at the Nutrition of Worms in 1521, many at the Elector'due south court feared that this portrait of heroic resolution might strike the wrong note. Asked to respond, Cranach produced a second image that, while capturing Luther's inner essence in the same manner, gives the appropriate hint of humility. Luther, now shown within a wall niche, places a hand across his eye in a traditional sign of friendship and sincerity; in his other paw is an open up book. Over again he wears the monk's habit. The impact of these images, and of unauthorised images with less iconographic allegiance, is clearly attested by gimmicky witnesses. But Luther besides played his part in establishing his own celebrity. We know this from a fascinating petty vignette in an otherwise routine letter to Georg Spalatin in early March 1521, while Luther was pending his summons to the Nutrition of Worms. With this letter he enclosed some copies of Cranach's early engraved portrait of himself, which at Cranach's request he had also autographed.

Luther understood his own importance to the Reformation'south boggling success. Although he mused in his letters and sermons on his office every bit the humble instrument of God'southward purpose, he was fully enlightened that his own personality and the drama of his struggle with the church authorities was what had piqued public interest, and had furnished the movement with its most powerful shield confronting those who would destroy it. This undisguised self-knowledge was a fundamental attribute of Luther's movement which, in partnership with Cranach's artistry and exceptional business competence, played a major part in its success.

Luther Exhibitions USA 2016 project: 'Discussion and Epitome: Martin Luther'due south Reformation' at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York (7 Oct–22 January 2017); 'Law and Grace: Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach, and the Hope of Salvation' at Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, Atlanta (11 October–sixteen January 2017); and 'Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation' at the Minneapolis Plant of Art (30 Oct–xv January 2017).

From the October issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe hither.