Cranach, Lucas the Elder (1472-1553)
Crucifixion of Christ
c.1500–1501
Oil on lime, 58.5 × 45 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The small-format panel, which was probably used for private devotion, dates from Cranach‘s first known creative period, which the artist spent in Vienna before moving to the Wittenberg court of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony in 1504/5. There, as some of the clients who can be identified by name, he moved in the circle of the humanists around Konrad Celtis, and the painting was also in the Schottenstift there when it could be attributed to him at the beginning of the 20th century. What is new about the Crucifixion of the Scots is not so much the compositional layout as a “populous” Calvary with Christ in the centre and slanted thief crosses, although the painter chooses iconographically unusual solutions both with the nailed (and unbound) criminals and the recourse to an archaic type of Christ, perhaps going back to the unknown client. Rather, what is new is the expressive, pathos-laden language of the picture, which is strikingly expressed in the boldly shortened, sack-like bodies of the thieves – for which Cranach found even more eccentric solutions in two large, almost contemporaneous crucifixion woodcuts. But the same excited mood also determines the crowd at the foot of the crosses and nature itself, as the prancing branches and the gathering clouds show. In this emotionally charged pictorial language, which merges man and nature, there are the closest connections to Altdorfer’s panel paintings and drawings, which began only a few years later; on a formal level, for example, similarities are noticeable in the use of white highlights as a graphic element. As strikingly as Cranach‘s uncouth figures differ from the extra-long art figurines of his later period, the lack of interest in anatomical correctness and the two-dimensional structure despite all the space-creating elements already reveal principles that were to determine his further work. Of the few surviving works from Cranach‘s years in Vienna, the Crucifixion of Scots even seems to be the oldest of all. This is suggested by a comparison with St. Jerome from 1502 (GG 6739), which is also kept in Vienna, and the signed Holy Family from 1504 (Berlin), which already show a calmer formal language and a greater painterly finesse. For this reason, too, the painting always played a special role in the much-discussed question of where the beginnings of Cranach‘s career were to be found. Despite all the original and seemingly unprepared elements, references can be made, for example, to Dürer‘s epochal woodcuts created around 1500 and to motifs of older Franconian panel painting, as in the case of the crosses towering high above the people and the sniffing dog (admittedly not only found there). They make it likely that Cranach, who was born in Franconia anyway, had previously worked for a while in Nuremberg, the most important art center in his home region. The costumes of the henchmen, some of whom were identified as Slavic, could also indicate a stay in Krakow, the residence of the Polish kings, which attracted numerous other artists. [Guido Messling, after: exhib.-cat. Fantastic Worlds, Frankfurt/Vienna 2014/2015, Munich 2014, cat. no. 33] (KHM)