Lucas CRANACH the Elder (Kronach 1472-Weimar 1553) and his w - Lot 20

Lucas CRANACH the Elder (Kronach 1472-Weimar 1553) and his workshop Portrait of Frederick III the Wise (1463-1525) Blackened beech panel, one board, unparqueted, trimmed on the lower edge Monogrammed and dated 1525 on the left (Minor damage, unframed.) Height 27.8 cm; Width: 23.7 cm A humanist and scholar, Frederick III was one of the great patrons of the arts of his time. Elector of Saxony from 1486 to his death in 1525, he has gone down in history as an enlightened and peaceful prince. In addition to Cranach the Elder, he commissioned works by Jacopo de Barbari, Conrad Meit and Albrecht Dürer. In 1502, he founded the University of his principality, where Martin Luther was appointed professor of theology in 1512. Although he was a fervent Catholic, he nevertheless protected Luther by welcoming him to Wartburg Castle after he was ostracized at the Diet of 1521. In 1505, Lucas Cranach became court painter to the Electors of Saxony in Wittemberg. Three years later, Frederick the Wise bestowed on him the coat of arms with the winged dragon bearing a ruby, which became the mark he used as a signature on his paintings. The earliest version of the bust portrait of an elderly Frederick the Wise dates from 1522, and was formerly housed in the Gotha Castle Museum; the model sports a chestnut brown beard. Of the seven replicas of the master painted around 1525, our version, which has never been seen before, is signed and dated by Cranach the Elder, as is the one from the former collection of Prince George of Saxony. We should also mention one in a similar format (28.7 x 23.5 cm), also dated 1525, in the Schloss Gottorf, Landesmuseum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte, Schleswig (Max Julius Friedländer, Jakob Rosenberg, Les peintures de Lucas Cranach, Paris, Flammarion, 1978, p.108 and p.206 and reproduced on plate no. 180). When Frederick III's nephew, Johann Frederick I, also known as the Magnanimous, received the title of Elector in 1532, he commissioned Cranach and his studio to produce sixty dytics depicting his two predecessors, his uncle and his father, on a smaller scale than the originals of the 1520s, of which thirty-one are known today. One is in the Musée du Louvre (13.3 x 14 cm, Inv. 1181), another at the Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles (dated 1532, 12 x 11 cm, see catalog of the exhibition Peintures Germaniques des collections françaises (1370-1550), Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie, Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden, Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, éditions Faton, INHA, 2024, p. P. 354-355). Some of these copies often feature inscriptions on the lower part. We are grateful to Professor Dieter Koepplin for confirming the autograph nature of this painting to Lucas Cranach the Elder, on photograph, by letter dated June 6, 2024. According to Professor Koepplin, our painting is a variant of the same quality as the Schleswig painting, produced by Cranach and his workshop for the friends of Frederick the Wise. A copy of his letter may be given to the buyer.