Cranach biography

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553)

Cranach was born at Kronach in Upper Franconia in 1472.¹ From about 1502–4 he worked in Vienna, where he painted portraits of subjects associated with the university.

On 14 April 1505 he first received payment in the service of the Elector Frederick of Saxony at Wittenberg.² He was granted a patent to bear arms on 6 January 1508.³ In 1509 he travelled to the Low Countries.⁴ Cranach spent the rest of his career working in Wittenberg for the successive electors of Saxony: Frederick the Wise, succeeded by his brother Johann the Steadfast in 1525, and the latter’s son Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, who became elector in 1532.

In 1519 Cranach was elected a town councillor of Wittenberg and in 1537 and 1540 he was burgomaster. In 1550 he joined Elector Johann Friedrich at Augsburg, where the elector was the prisoner of Charles V.⁵ In 1552 Cranach followed him to Weimar where he died on 16 October 1553.⁶