Virgin Under the Apple Tree LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER 1530

Oil on canvas transferred from wood.
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

The artist was a German painter, who took his name from the small town of Kronach in South Germany, where he was born, and very little is known of his life before about 1500-01, when he settled in Vienna and started working in the humanist circles associated with the newly founded university until 1504. During this short time he painted some of his finest and most original works. They include portraits, notably the Rest on the Flight into Egypt [Staatliche Museen, Berlin], which shows the Holy Family resting in the glade of a German pine forest. It was painted in 1504, just before Cranach went to Wittenberg as court painter to Frederick III [the Wise], Elector of Saxony. We have shown this Holy Family in a previous gallery. Several religious works in which he shows a remarkable feeling for the beauty of landscape is characteristic of the Danube school, one of the finest examples is this image here. The painting has a lot of "ochre" tone; we slightly "desaturated" it, but not enough to actually change the image as such.

 





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