Judgement of Paris Lucas Cranach the Elder

A Judgment of Paris by CranachAuthor(s): Harry B. WehleReviewed work(s):Source: Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Nov., 1929), pp. 1-12Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522753 .Accessed: 19/11/2011 12:48

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A JUDGMENT OF PARIS BY CRANACH

By HARRY B. WEHLE

A painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, of the

Judgment of Paris, recently acquired by the

Metropolitan Museum, came from the Marc- zell de Nemes Collection' in Munich, where for some years it has been familiar to students and amateurs of art. It is on a wood panel 40i by 28 inches, and exhibits qualities characteris- tic of the years about midway in Cranach's ac-

tivity. It is not altogether incorrect, however, to classify such works as examples of the art- ist's late style. His forms, which followed an active evolution when he was a younger man, began to crystallize when he reached his fifties, so that the years are no longer so readily dif- ferentiated one from another, or even the decades.

The color of Cranach's late style is well il- lustrated in the Metropolitan Museum's pic- ture. The actors in the scene are strongly re- lieved against a complicated screen of heavy green foliage. To this green the principal re-

sponse is from the deep crimson velvet of Paris' cloak. The hat worn by one of the goddesses is of the same red. Mercury's fantastic corselet is

golden brown, and there is much glitter of steel armor, gold necklaces, and hair orna- ments. Cupid with ruddy wings appears from a dark cloud. The flesh exhibited so generously by the goddesses is rosier than Cranach would have painted it before I520.

The landscape also is characteristic of the later period. There is less intensity in the blue

sky and a more silvery delicacy in the distant

landscape with its placid lake, its romantic Gothic city and castled rocks, and its lovely hills. Aside from the charm of the landscape

1 De Nemes Sale, Amsterdam, November 13, 1928. 2 Glaser, p. 98.

the chief sensuous appeal of the picture may be said to lie in the neat, firm modeling and the sinuous interplay of linear surprises afford- ed by the three slender nudes. The head of

stern-visaged Mercury with its luxuriant beard is a tour de force worthy of the grand old Ger- man tradition.

Story-telling, above all the telling of tales from classical mythology, was the special prov- ince of the mature Cranach and his busy work-

shop, and the claim that he introduced such

subjects into Germany is a pardonable exag- geration. They were the craze of the time, these painted myths of Greece and Rome, and Diirer had already shown Hercules Slaying the

Stymphalian Birds in I500, and had engraved the fascinating Apollo and Diana (related somehow to works of Jacopo de' Barbari), and those glorious copperplates, the Sea-Mon- ster and Hercules.

The surviving partial list2 of pictures which

hung in the castle at Wittenberg in I507 re- cords many classical subjects and may well in- clude unidentified works by Jacopo de' Barbari and Mabuse, for both had been in the employ of the Saxon dukes before Cranach's appoint- ment. The list shows us that homiletic virtues were not then thought to reside only in biblical stories. The bedroom of Friedrich der Weise contained, besides several scenes illustrating the journey of the Argonauts, a picture of Py- ramus and Thisbe, arch examples of amorous devotion. The room which had belonged to Duke Johann's first wife, Sophia of Mecklen-

burg, was thickly hung with storied paintings which presented classic examples of modesty, chastity, true love, and faithfulness in wives.

A few years later (I515) at the Torgau cas- tle, Johann der Bestandige married Margareta

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JUDGMENT OF PARIS, BY LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER, ABOUT 1528 THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

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of Anhalt. The festal marriage bed, made for the occasion, was elaborately carved and paint- ed by Cranach, presumably with the aid of ap-

trating the power of women over men, such as Hercules and Omphale and the Judgment of Paris. Also, there were to be seen pictures of

VENUS AND CUPID, PROBABLY I509 (WOODCUT). METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

prentices and journeyman assistants. The Wit-

tenberg poet, Philipp Engelbrecht von Engen,3 describes the bed as painted with scenes illus-

3 Bauch, pp. 424 ff., quotes the contemporary wit-

ness, Magister Andreas Meinhard.

the virtuous Lucretia stabbing herself, Venus instructing Cupid, Apollo and Marsyas, Triton surrounded by Nereids and Naiads, and sev- eral of the labors of Hercules.

In the Metropolitan Museum's Judgment of Paris, Cranach tells the story with the accus-

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tomed capriciousness of his mature years. The

young oak tree under which Paris sits has been placed to the side of the picture so as to leave the tableau uninterrupted, but the thin trunk is bent simply and without apology to the mid-

VENUS AND CUPID, I509 LENINGRAD, HERMITAGE

dle of the picture in order that the silhouette of its leafy top may add interest to the sky. Paris, the royal shepherd boy of Mount Ida, has become a mature German knight, elegant, modish, and fully accoutred, holding his war- hammer in his gauntleted hand as casually as a swagger-stick. Mercury, become an elderly

country squire with only the feasting birds on his hat to suggest his identity, holds the golden apple now transformed into a crystal ball.

Cranach has clung to the version of the story which finds Paris asleep and Mercury awaken- ing him to advise him of the ticklish office which Jove has imposed on him. Paris' look of dazed wonderment is only partly due to the glories that he sees before him. In two other variations of this favorite theme Cranach (or members of his workshop) shows Paris either fast asleep or half-awakened with Mercury shaking him by the shoulder.4 Altdorfer in his woodcut of 1511 shows Paris in full armor and prostrate on the ground, while Cupid's explo- sion from a cataclysmic cloud testifies to the momentousness of the occasion.

Ovid in his Epistle of Paris describes the scene:

Here soft-reclined, I view th' adjacent plain, Troy's glitt'ring turrets, and the heaving main.

When o'er the bending grass, the Queen of Love, Heav'n's awful Empress, and stern Pallas move.

Aghast I look'd, erect my bristling hair, 'Till Jove's wing'd messenger forbad my fear. "Hail, beauty's Critic! heal our feuds, (he crys) "Give to the fairest of the three the prize." Which office lest I shou'd decline, he show'd Jove's mandate, and resum'd th' aerial road.

My fears depart, new courage I resume, And view with steady eyes the heavenly bloom.5

In the figures of the three goddesses Cra- nach's waywardness and humor as a story-tell- er reveal themselves delightfully. Three young German ladies, scarcely more than girls, as their slim bodies indicate, stand idly noncha- lant, posturing as gracefully as models in a fashion show. The gold chains adorning their necks, the wide fashionable hat which one of them wears, and the veil draped across her

4 Ameseder illustrates the version in the Copenhagen Museum, dated 1527 and closely related to the Metro-

politan Museum example, and also the crowded pic- ture at Gratz. 5 Lines 57-58, 65-74.

4 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

A JUDGMENT OF PARIS BY CRANACH

body are nicely calculated to heighten the pi- quant nakedness of the figures which the ut- ter propriety of the men's attire has already called attention to. Familiar attributes are lack- ing and there is little clue to the identity of the goddesses. The one evidently explaining to Paris the advantages of her bribe over those of the others may well be the intellectual Miner- va. But Juno, too, could argue upon occasion. As to the tall young woman wearing a hat, she is probably Venus, for the adornments testify to her consciousness of physical charms. Fur- thermore her finger points gracefully to her dangerous infant son, who further establishes the relationship by aiming his arrow directly at her breast.

A little nonsense now and then, according to the old saying, is relished by the wisest men. No one seeing Cranach's self-portrait at the age of seventy-seven (in the Uffizi) could fail to recognize his wisdom and his fundamental seriousness. The impression is deepened by the sight of the solemn Allegory of the Redemp- tion (in Weimar) which shows Cranach, now still older, standing at the foot of the bleeding Cross between his old friend Martin Luther and John the Baptist.

As artist to the ducal court of Saxony, Cra- nach was responsible for official portraits, for panel pictures, prints, and wall paintings, for the decoration of the rooms in the castles of Torgau, Weimar, and Lochau, for coats of arms, banners, and costumes on festive occa- sions, and for the painting of fences, houses, and sleighs.6 Furthermore his advice was ex- pected in all undertakings having to do with castle architecture, and he was occasionally sent on diplomatic journeys. When we add to all this his private life as father of a family, head of a workshop, owner of a book-shop and an apothecary shop, and burgomaster of Wit- tenberg (for several years), not to mention the serious thoughts which his friendship and en-

6 Bruck, p. I78.

thusiasm for Luther must have entailed, we need not wonder that his mind sought relaxa- tion in the creation of sportive paintings peo-

EVE, 15I8-1520 BRUNSWICK, PICTURE GALLERY

pled with gentle, winsome human and animal creatures. In the quality of his popular appeal he may be thought of as the forerunner of such beloved German painters as Ludwig Richter, Carl Spitzweg, and Moritz von Schwind.

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But if his pictures contain naive actors and whimsically anachronistic costumes, it should not therefore be assumed, as it often is, that Cranach was a naive old fellow. Indeed, his gentle, indulgent burlesques would seem to be

treatment of the goddesses' forms, which here appear as those of solid, mature, and dignified women. In swinging later to the gracile types Cranach reverts, perhaps unconsciously, to the sweet, youthful forms and faces of such Gothic

VENUS, I532. FRANKFORT, STADEL INSTITUTE

quite consciously aimed at and decidedly so- phisticated. In normal persons naivete does not increase with age, yet it is Cranach's later works which appear to some to have this quali- ty.7 His woodcut version of the Judgment of Paris, dated as early as 1508, though already somewhat playful, shows decidedly serious 7 An interesting study of Cranach's probable style

prior to I504 is published by Dr. Benesch. (See list of publications at end of this article.)

artists as Master E. S. and the Master of the Housebook.

A comparative study of his female forms can throw considerable light upon the evolution of Cranach's style and even upon the dating of his works. Parallel with his increasing inner need for gaiety goes a constantly greater fond- ness for girlish figures characterized by slen- derness and length of limb. In the woodcut

Judgment of Paris of 1508 the sober influence

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A JUDGMENT OF PARIS BY CRANACH

of Diirer's engraving of the Four Naked Women is clearly seen. The bodies are heavy, clumsy, and long-waisted. A year later in his two versions of Venus, the woodcut8 and the

painting, the change is already manifest. Still

the Metropolitan Museum's version here under discussion. The latter picture bears on a rock near its base the familiar Cranach signature, the crowned and winged serpent, in damaged condition but identifiable. No date appears,

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later, the charming and modest Eve of the Brunswick gallery and the provocative little Venus at Frankfort carry the slenderizing process much farther. The Judgment of Paris in the Kunsthalle at Karlsruhe, dated 1530, seems already a little further developed than

8 The date, I506, which Lippmann (p. io) accepted was later rejected as spurious by Flechsig (p. 294), by Dodgson (vol. II, p. 296), and by Friedlander (Der Holzschnitt, p. I5).

but the year 1528 would be about correct, for that is the year of the closely related Judgment of Paris in the Baron Robert von Hirsch Col-

lection, Frankfort-on-the-Main. If we were then to reduce to a mathematical

statement our observations on the development of Cranach's nude forms (not without some uneasiness lest we be thought pedantic or in-

decorous), a chronological table might be pre- pared covering the most important of Cra-

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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

nach's pictures of nude women - such as lend themselves to measurement. The table gives the proportionate length of the lower limbs to the total distance from heel to chin, as follows:

I508. Judgment of Paris (Engraving) 52:1oo

I509. Venus and Cupid (Engraving) 55:I00 I509. Venus and Cupid (Leningrad) 55.3:100 1518-20. Eve (Brunswick Gallery) 57:100 1528. Judgment of Paris

(R. von Hirsch coll.) 58.I:Io0

1527-30. The Silver Age (Cassel) 60:ioo

1532. Venus (Frankfort, Stadel Inst.) 58.4:I00 1533. Death of Lucretia (Berlin) 60:ioo

i537(?). Venus and Cupid (Honey-Thief) (Berlin, no. 1190) 65:o00

The Cassel Silver Age is undated, but similar versions of the subject date from 1527 to I530. The late Venus and Cupid (Honey-Thief) is an interesting product of the Cranach shop in which the mannerisms are carried extremely far. The form of the signature dates it I537 or after.

The entire matter of the Cranach workshop, involving the question of the immediate share the master may have had in its productions, has been much debated. Is the Metropolitan Museum's Judgment of Paris by Lucas Cra- nach himself, by his son Hans, or by some un- identified journeyman-painter employed in the establishment? It is a question which is apt to occur immediately to the student versed in the contentious Cranach literature. An attempt to

supply the answer indicates a brief review of the Hans Cranach controversy.

In his impressive Cranachstudien, published in I90oo Eduard Flechsig makes the first seri- ous attempt to sort out all known Cranach

paintings, separating those painted by Lucas himself from those by his sons Hans and Lu- cas, Junior, and those which should simply be classified under the headings Cranach Work-

shop, or School of Cranach. Briefly, the con- tention was made that, since Cranach early be- came a man of multifarious activity, a situa- tion which would have precluded his painting much, and since the style and quality of Cra-

nach pictures after 1522 are not what they had been when Lucas was still in his thirties and forties, very few paintings after that date can be from his own hand. There is plenty of evi- dence of a good-sized workshop which might have produced the rest. Notices are frequent enough of Cranach's taking ten Gesellen with him to Torgau or eleven Knechte to some oth- er place for the execution of an altarpiece or some other large decorative project. The names of some of these assistants are preserved in the records. But especially there was the master's eldest son Hans, the date of whose birth is un- known. To him Flechsig gives practically all Cranach paintings of respectable quality from 1522 to I537. In the latter year Hans died and a good many subsequent works are attributed

by Flechsig to the father. But, for those fifteen

years at least, Hans is credited with the author-

ship of many atypical works issuing from the shop and all such typical paintings in the lighter vein as those which we have been discussing.

Subsequent criticism has emphatically re- jected Flechsig's theories, arguing that Hans could not have painted the works attributed to him and that his father could. Several of Lucas Cranach's contemporaries testify to his enor- mous activity. In I508 he was publicly praised for "never being idle - not so much as a single hour" and for "working more rapidly than any other painter." Forty-two years later, when he was getting on toward eighty, his son-in-law marveled at the old man's constant busyness, "even writing out all his bills with his own hand." Finally, the epitaph on his gravestone praises him as "den schnellsten Maler." He could easily have painted pictures, it is argued, besides attending to his public duties and di-

recting the activities of his studio and his pri- vate undertakings.

Conversely, the case for Hans Cranach's

prime share in the workshop production from 1522 until his death is much weakened by the existence of a single work, a Hercules and Omphale. This painting, which is signed H. C.

IO

A JUDGMENT OF PARIS BY CRANACH

with the usual serpent and the date 1537, be-

trays defects in the drawing of heads and hands which are not found in the better products of the shop. In 1537 Hans was probably only twenty-five years old at the utmost-a dozen

years younger than Flechsig's estimate.9 He was unmarried and about to set off to Italy on his first Studienreise from which he never re- turned. He was the eldest of Lucas' five chil- dren. The second child (Lucas the Younger) was born in I515 and the fifth in 1520. In I535 when they were both at work in the castle at

Torgau, Hans was getting the same wages as his twenty-year-old brother.10 His immaturity is further indicated by the reference to him in a letter of condolence from Martin Luther to the elder Cranach. As Luther saw him, Hans had been a pious and obedient son who had been "sent" to Italy by his parent and had died there in the flower of his youth. Assuming its date to be 1528, the Metropolitan Museum's

Judgment of Paris must have been painted when Hans was about sixteen years old, which makes it unlikely that he was its author. The entire case of Hans versus Lucas has been summed up, in these few non-committal words, by Friedlander:1' "The line which sep- arates the father's personality from the son's is not visible in their works."

But if Hans Cranach can no longer be

thought of as the author of the finer pictures issuing from the workshop during the fifteen

years, 1522-1537, to whom should these works be attributed? The natural and simple answer would be to Lucas Cranach himself, and this answer would seem to be borne out by the

gradual evolution of his forms and the spirit of his work to which attention has already been called, and also by what we know of his ceaseless activity.

It is natural to the human mind, governed as

9 Flechsig thought Hans was born in I500. 10 See H. Michaelson's monograph, pp. I-21, for a well-marshaled argument on this subject. 11 Thieme-Becker, "Lucas Cranach der altere."

it is by the ever-human heart, to resist the idea that an admired or beloved person might be

guilty of a thought or a painting not quite to

VENUS AND CUPID (HONEY-THIEF), 1537 OR AFTER

BERLIN, KAISER FRIEDRICH MUSEUMN

its taste. And, since there are many persons who do not care for an art which is merry and

indulgently ironical, we can well understand that such persons might resent the idea of a

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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM STUDIES

comparatively serious and reverent young Cra- nach growing up to be an almost frivolous

middle-aged Cranach. For similar reasons of taste comparatively few serious lovers of art have much liking or respect for typical French

pictures of the eighteenth century, though rec-

ognizing the excellence of their workmanship. Hermann Voss12 seems to recognize the in- ward springs of much of the pro-Hans ration- alization when he writes, "The catastrophe of this development [i.e., the growth of the work-

shop] has been greatly exaggerated by some

persons who ignore the peculiar excellence of the later Cranach while glorifying the earlier in an unseemly manner."

But shall we ourselves be charged with ra-

tionalizing if we fail to recognize and confess the negative quality of much of the evidence here presented in favor of Cranach's share in these later works? So long as the existence of the workshop remains indisputable and our

knowledge of the individual capacities of its members remains a blank we cannot with cer-

tainty say of any specific late work that it is a

genuine Cranach. What we may conclude with sufficient reasonableness is that the Cranach

workshop was completely dominated by its master's personality. Its output was his crea- tion, the embodiment of his ideas and attitudes

through the medium of his peculiar and logi-

cally developing repertory of forms. If under the clamorous demand of a great popularity, the finest workmanship failed of being always achieved, there were also the very rewarding high moments. These each beholder will insist

upon being permitted to recognize for himself. In dealing with the later productions desig-

nated as by Cranach, Friedlander is content with simply giving a chronological list"3 of "some good signed and dated works," without

dogmatizing as to their authorship. His cour-

teously supplied opinion of the Metropolitan Museum's Judgment of Paris as a "Cranach, genuine and fine," should not be construed as a surrender of this delicately suspended deci- sion. The term "genuine Cranach" may be taken in this case to mean any one of several

things. But, in view of the beautiful workman-

ship exhibited by Lucas Cranach's early paint- ings, would it not under the circumstances seem reasonable to conclude that the best late

paintings also are by him? And if we agree with Friedlander, in recognizing fine quality in the Judgment of Paris here under discus- sion, would it not therefore seem to be the part of common sense to label it as by Lucas Cra- nach the Elder, utterly omitting the cautious

question mark ? 12

Page 107. 13 Thieme-Becker. "Lucas Cranach der altere."

REFERENCES USED

Ameseder, Rudolf. "Ein Parisurteil Lukas Cranachs des iltern in der Landesgalerie zu Graz." Reper- torium fur Kunstwissenschaft, I9IO, vol. XXXIII, pp. 65-84.

Bauch, G. "Zur Cranachforschung." Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1894, vol. XVII, pp. 424 if.

Benesch, Otto. "Zur alt6sterreichischen Tafelmalerei." Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, 1928, N. F., vol. II, pp. 77-101.

Bruck, Robert. Friedrich der Weise als F6rderer der Kunst. Strassburg, 1903.

Dodgson, Campbell. Catalogue of German and Flem- ish Woodcuts in the British Museum, vol. II. Lon- don, I911.

Flechsig, Eduard. Cranachstudien, vol. I. Leipzig, 1900.

Friedlander, Max J. Der Holzschnitt, Handbicher der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Berlin and Leipzig, 1921.

"Lucas Cranach der altere." Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kiinstler, 1913, vol. VIII, pp. 55-58.

Glaser, Curt. Lukas Cranach. Leipzig, 1921. Lippmann, F. Lucas Cranach. Berlin, 1895. Michaelson, Hedwig. Lukas Cranach der iltere. Leip-

zig, 1902.

Nemes, Marczell de, Collection. Vente publique. Fred- erick Muller & Cie. Amsterdam, 1928.

Ovid. Epistles, translated by S. Barrett. London, I759. Schuchardt, Christian. Lucas Cranach des ldtern, Le-

ben und Werke, vols. I and II. Leipzig, i851. Voss, Hermann. Der Ursprung des Donaustiles. Leip-

zig, I907.

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