Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg

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Three-quarter portrait of the young Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg
Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg
Lucas Cranach the Elder Ä. , around 1520
61.5 x 43.2 cm
Grunewald Hunting Lodge , Berlin

The painting Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg is a work by Lucas Cranach the Elder , which shows Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg as a boy . It is a panel painting on beech wood from around 1520 that is in the painting collection of the Grunewald hunting lodge in Berlin.

description

On the 61.5 cm × 43.2 cm painting, Prince Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg is shown in a three-quarter view from the right. He wears a cuirass in the manner of a costume harness . The driven out transverse bulges on the arms imitate the costumes of mercenaries . In his hand he holds a battle ax , which makes him appear well-equipped for a foot tournament. The Latin caption in the upper part of the picture reads in translation "Joachim by God's grace Margrave of Brandenburg at the age of 16 in the year of salvation 1520". There are doubts about the correctness of the inscription, as it is put into the picture without a sense of composition. It is therefore assumed that it is more likely not from Cranach. Research revealed that the inscription was added shortly after the painting was completed.

The portrait of a boy shows the electoral prince, who was combative and self-confident, at a time when his father Joachim I of Brandenburg wanted to marry him off into higher circles, which had failed. The sister of the future emperor Charles V or the sister of the French king were planned.

History of origin

The other picture of the double portrait: Prince Johann von Anhalt

There is a counterpart portrait to the painting of Prince Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, which also depicts Prince Johann IV of Anhalt at the age of 16 and in full armor. The period in which the double portraits were created can be narrowed down to the period from autumn 1520 to spring 1521. The pictures could have been created in Wittenberg in Lucas Cranach's workshop, as no visit to the royal court in Cölln is known to have occurred during the period in which they were made. In contrast, two stays by the young nobles in Wittenberg are documented. They stayed there on January 16, 1520 on their outward journey to the Reichstag in Worms and on their return journey on March 28, 1520.

Comparable images of princes in armor did not appear in the Holy Roman Empire until the second half of the 16th century. With Lucas Cranach the Elder they are singular, with Lucas Cranach the Younger two similar paintings are known. It can therefore be assumed that the double portraits are commissioned work, but the client is not known.

Ownership

The picture was in the possession of the Dukes of Anhalt from the beginning of the 19th century until after the First World War and was in the Gothic House in Wörlitz . Around 1930 it was acquired from the possession of the Duke of Anhalt for exhibition purposes in Berlin. From 1936 it was on loan to the Göring Collection . After a restitution from 1945, it was returned to the Grunewald hunting lodge in 1948. Today the picture is owned by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg .

See also

literature

  • Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg : The paintings of Lucas Cranach , Berlin 1932, No. 121.
  • Helmut Börsch-Supan : The paintings in the Grunewald hunting lodge , Berlin 1964, p. 43 No. 44.
  • Werner Schade : The Cranach family of painters , Dresden 1974, p. 55 Fig. 113.
  • Dieter Koepplin and Tilman Falk : Lukas Cranach. Paintings, drawings, prints . Stuttgart / Basel 1974/76, Vol. 2, No. 606.
  • Harald Marx and Ingrid Mössinger (eds.): Cranach , catalog for the exhibition in Chemnitz. With an inventory catalog of the paintings in the Dresden State Art Collections. by Karin Kolb . Cologne 2005, p. 56.
  • Gerd Bartoschek, Ruben Rebmann, Elke Anna Werner: Cranach and the art of the Renaissance under the Hohenzollern: Church, courtyard and urban culture - An exhibition by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg in cooperation with the Evangelical Church Congregation St. Petri - St. Marien . Ed .: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg, State Museums in Berlin. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-422-06910-7 , pp. 165-166 .
  • Mathis Leibetseder: Elector in armor in: Martin Wrede : The staging of the heroic monarchy: Early modern kingship between chivalric inheritance and military challenge. 2014 ( online )
  • Reinhard Melzer : The Cranach inventory of the Gotisches Haus , in: Kulturstiftung Dessau-Wörlitz (Ed.): Cranach in the Gotisches Haus in Wörlitz , cat. Wörlitz, Munich 2015, pp. 149–162, here p. 152.

Web links

Commons : Prince Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg by Lucas Cranach (I)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files