Lucas Cranach the Elder: 500 Years of the Power of Temptation

Unlike many of his fellow Renaissance artists, sixteenth-century German painter and printmaker Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) was hugely successful during his lifetime: by his mid-fifties (in 1528) Cranach was the richest citizen in Wittenburg where he was court painter. Specialising in portraits of both his contemporaries (Martin Luther, Austrian scholar Johannes Cuspinianus) and classical, mythical subjects (Venus, Cupid, Justice), Cranach pioneered a new way of depicting nudes: not realistically, but by employing idealised body parts to fill a space in the most beautiful way possible. This extensive retrospective, the first of its kind in Japan, looks back at the entirety of Cranach's career while also tracing his influence all the way up to the modern era.