1555
Portrait of Martin Luther
Lucas Cranach the YoungerGerman (active Wittenberg) , 1515 - 1586
The spread of Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) religious reforms, which led to the Protestant Reformation, generated an increasing demand for his likeness. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) was a friend of Luther’s, and from the 1520s onward the artist, his workshop, and his son—Lucas Cranach the Younger—painted portraits of the theologian in numerous variations and replicas. This composition is based on a gray-haired depiction of Luther that Lucas Cranach the Elder first produced in the late 1530s.
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