CRANEACH, LUCAS the Elder. – German painter, woodcut artist, and draftsman, born in Kronach (Franconia) in 1472, died in Weimar on 16 Oct. 1553, son of a painter named Hans C. His artistic training remains unclear: only after he was summoned to the court of Frederick of Saxony (1504) can the development of his activity be traced. Nevertheless, his work from 1500 to 1504 is the most interesting; his works from that period demonstrate his great temperament, making him a precursor of Altdorfer (q.v.), comparable as a passionate colorist to Grünewald himself (q.v.), founder of the so-called “Danube style” (see ALTDORFER), not without influences from Dürer (q.v.), but less classical than the latter.
Perhaps in 1498 he undertook a journey to Austria, which was truly important for him and for the development of Danube painting; in 1503 he is recorded in Vienna. Works from this period include: the *Crucifixion* at the Schottenstift in Vienna (c. 1500); *St. Jerome* in the Vienna Museum (1502); the *Crucifixion* at the Munich Pinakothek (1503); and *Rest on the Flight into Egypt* in Berlin (1504). From 1505 until his death he served as court painter to the Elector of Saxony, and in that capacity he remained almost always in Wittenberg. He ran a large workshop, from which hundreds of works emerged, sometimes altarpieces of Renaissance form but increasingly academic and cold. Though a friend of Luther (of whom he painted several portraits) and almost the official painter of the German Reformation, whose tenets he followed even in the choice of religious subjects, he simultaneously worked for opponents of the Reformation, such as Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg. From 1520 onward it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between his own production and that of his workshop. His activity in Wittenberg was interrupted by the following journeys: in 1508 to the Netherlands; in 1550–52 (with the imprisoned elector) to Augsburg and Innsbruck; and in 1552 he returned to Weimar. Mature and late works include: 1505 *Torgau Altarpiece*, Frankfurt; 1506 *Altarpiece of St. Catherine*, Dresden (his most famous work); c. 1520–25 *Crucifix with Cardinal of Brandenburg*, Munich; 1534, altarpiece in Meissen; 1550, *Self-Portrait* in the Uffizi, Florence, and an ever-increasing number of portraits and mythological scenes. He was renowned as an engraver and woodcut artist (including colored woodcuts with gold and silver); together with Dürer, he was among the collaborators for the *Prayer Book* of Emperor Maximilian.
His sons were also painters: Hans C., who died young in Italy in 1537; and LUCAS C. the Younger, born in Wittenberg on 4 Oct. 1515, died in Weimar on 21 Jan.