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拍品专文
This is a rare subject in the Cranach oeuvre showing the infant Christ standing in a landscape trampling on Death, represented by a skeleton and a demonic monster as the Devil. Only one other treatment of the subject is known – the picture of the same dimensions, which is generally dated to circa 1534 and attributed to the Workshop of Lucas Cranach I (Schleswig, Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf; Friedländer and Rosenberg, 1978, op. cit., no. 222E; Cranach Digital Archive no. DE_SHLM_1996-208).
Holding the apple from the original sin in one hand – the symbol of mankind’s fall and demise, and the cross in the other – the instrument of human salvation used here to subjugate the Devil, Christ asserts the redemptive effect of his miraculous birth and sacrifice through his triumph over Death and Evil. This sophisticated iconography illustrates the prophetic Old Testament passage from Hosia 13:14: ‘O Death, I will be your plagues!’ (‘O Mors Ero Mors Tua’), which was inscribed along the lower edge of the Schleswig version. This was a common Lutheran theme and the risen Christ vanquishing the Demon also appears to the right of Cranach’s famous Gospel and Law. Furthermore, Christ graceful contrapposto pose is a direct reference to the ancient Greek sculpture of the Doryphoros by Polykeitos and provides evidence of Cranach’s erudite engagement with Renaissance humanism and the rediscovery of antiquity.
This picture once formed part of the remarkable collection assembled by the successful Parisian music publisher Henri Heugel, with the help of Charles Sedelmeyer, in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Breaking from collecting patterns of the day, Heugel showed a particular taste for early Netherlandish and German art, owning prime examples by Michel Sittow and Simon Bening (now in Paris, Musée du Louvre), along with a masterpiece of Renaissance portraiture – Dürer’s Portrait of Katharina Fürlegerin (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie).
We are grateful to Dr. Dieter Koepplin and Dr. Michael Hofbauer for independently proposing the attribution to Lucas Cranach I with the participation of his studio, on the basis of photographs. Koepplin proposes a date of circa 1535, while Hofbauer believes it to have been painted in 1533. Dr. Werner Schade, to whom we are also grateful, on the same basis, has suggested an alternative attribution to Lucas Cranach II, with workshop assistance.
Holding the apple from the original sin in one hand – the symbol of mankind’s fall and demise, and the cross in the other – the instrument of human salvation used here to subjugate the Devil, Christ asserts the redemptive effect of his miraculous birth and sacrifice through his triumph over Death and Evil. This sophisticated iconography illustrates the prophetic Old Testament passage from Hosia 13:14: ‘O Death, I will be your plagues!’ (‘O Mors Ero Mors Tua’), which was inscribed along the lower edge of the Schleswig version. This was a common Lutheran theme and the risen Christ vanquishing the Demon also appears to the right of Cranach’s famous Gospel and Law. Furthermore, Christ graceful contrapposto pose is a direct reference to the ancient Greek sculpture of the Doryphoros by Polykeitos and provides evidence of Cranach’s erudite engagement with Renaissance humanism and the rediscovery of antiquity.
This picture once formed part of the remarkable collection assembled by the successful Parisian music publisher Henri Heugel, with the help of Charles Sedelmeyer, in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Breaking from collecting patterns of the day, Heugel showed a particular taste for early Netherlandish and German art, owning prime examples by Michel Sittow and Simon Bening (now in Paris, Musée du Louvre), along with a masterpiece of Renaissance portraiture – Dürer’s Portrait of Katharina Fürlegerin (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie).
We are grateful to Dr. Dieter Koepplin and Dr. Michael Hofbauer for independently proposing the attribution to Lucas Cranach I with the participation of his studio, on the basis of photographs. Koepplin proposes a date of circa 1535, while Hofbauer believes it to have been painted in 1533. Dr. Werner Schade, to whom we are also grateful, on the same basis, has suggested an alternative attribution to Lucas Cranach II, with workshop assistance.