The Artist as Reformer

Lucas Cranach the Elder, a close friend of Martin Luther, not only produced the definitive visual record of the history of the Reformation but also became a major leader in the movement to transform Christianity. From 1518 onward, he designed art to advance the Reformation of the church across Germany and Europe. The Bible stood at the center of his media campaign. Cranach and his workshop designed the first Protestant Bible (1522) as well as subsequent imprints of Luther’s translations. He also developed innovative biblical propaganda (most importantly in the anti-papal Passion of Christ and Antichrist). Frequently in his immense oeuvre (including works designed for both Protestant and Catholic contexts) Cranach anchors the new biblicism in a humanist ideal of the authority of philology. A major accomplishment was his development of the portrait type of the professor of the Bible (preeminently Luther and Philipp Melanchthon) as an icon of the authority of humanist biblical philology for the Reformation.