Artdaily: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Madonna with Child, ca. 1518
October 14th, 2007 by Menachem Wecker
In the interests of reviving the painting of the week, here’s Lucas Cranach the Elder’s “Madonna with Child” (ca. 1518), from Artdaily.org, opening in an exhibit at the Städel Museum in Germany on November 23, 2007.
According to Artdaily:
More popular and economically more successful than his contemporary Albrecht Dürer, it was Lucas Cranach who presumably exerted the longest-lasting influence on the world of German imagery. His early landscape depictions were trailblazing, he inspired old religious themes with completely new life, as well as inventing entirely new pictorial types for the reformed faith. His portraits of Martin Luther, Frederick the Wise, Philipp Melanchthon and others have shaped our conception of these personages to this very day.
I will add just one more point. The city in top left corner of the painting is likely Jerusalem from the West. The church with the two towers is likely the Holy Sepulcher and the dome is probably Templum Salomonis/ the Dome of the Rock.