Megan

2. About Lucas Cranach
• Historical Time Frame: Lucas Cranach lived in the time frame of 4 October 1472 –
16 October 1553.
• Birthplace: Cranach was born at Kronach in upper Franconia.
• Influences/style: Cranach learned the art of drawing from his father Hans Maler,
sometimes a decorative painter, more frequently producing portraits and
altarpieces, woodcuts, engravings, and designing the coins for the electorate, he
had painted several altar-pieces for the Castle Church at Wittenberg in
competition with Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair and others, Cranach, like his
patron, was friendly with the Protestant Reformers at a very early stage; yet it is
difficult to fix the time of his first meeting with Martin Luther. Following the huge
international success of Dürer's prints, other German artists, much more than
Italian ones, devoted their talents to woodcuts and engravings. This accounts for
the comparative unproductiveness as painters of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein
the Younger, and also may explain why Cranach was not especially skilled at
handling colour, light, and shade. Constant attention to contour and to black and
white, as an engraver, seems to have affected his sight; and he often outlined
shapes in black rather than employing modelling and chiaroscuro.

3. What I Think
• What I like/don’t like: I really like his paintings; I find his women with the
decapitated heads really interesting, I think I could do something cool with that.
However I am not as big of a fan of his woodcuts because they are very hard to
make out and seem just less interesting to me. I think that maybe I could combine
the paintings and the wood cuts though to make something really cool.
• How can this be adapted to the umbrellas: I was thinking of doing something sort
of like the women but in a woodcut style, maybe a different person on each panel
and somehow connect each person.

4. Some Examples