Cranach, Lucas, The Elder

Lucas Cranach, the Elder, original name Lucas Müller, (born 1472, Cranach, bishopric of Bamberg [now Kronach, Germany]—died October 16, 1553, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar), leading painter of Saxony, and one of the most important and influential artists in 16th-century German art. Among his vast output of paintings and woodcuts, the most important are altarpieces, court portraits and portraits of the Protestant Reformers, and innumerable pictures of women—elongated female nudes and fashionably dressed ladies with titles from the Bible or mythology.