Martin Luther

Martin Luther sits half-length against a plain ground in a black scholar’s gown and cap, his face set in an expression of concentrated gravity — the image of the reformer that his own century fixed for posterity. The portrait was made by Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose long friendship with Luther and whose busy workshop made him the principal painter of the Protestant cause, and the panel carries the artist’s winged-serpent signature. It is dated 1526, the year Luther married Katharina von Bora. The museum notes how decisively these widely copied portraits shaped the later impression of Luther as harsh and aloof, and how far that impression stood from the warm, humorous and profoundly learned man his contemporaries described. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.