"A Work in Which the Angels Are Wont to Rejoice": Lucas Cranach's "Schneeberg Altarpiece"

This article demonstrates how Cranach the Elder's "Schneeberg Altarpiece" of 1539, the first evangelical retable, instructs viewers in Lutheran theology and actively perpetuates evangelical public devotional practice. The strategies of the retable's iconography, which derive from...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Sixteenth century journal 2003-12, Vol.34 (4), p.1011-1037
Main Author: Noble, Bonnie J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
16th century
Altars
Analysis
Art history
Art, archeology, music
Bible
Catholicism
Christianity
Cranach, Lucas
Crucifixion
Divine grace
Gospels
History and sciences of religions
Iconography
Modern period
Motifs
Reformation
Religious icons
Renaissance period
Theology
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Summary:This article demonstrates how Cranach the Elder's "Schneeberg Altarpiece" of 1539, the first evangelical retable, instructs viewers in Lutheran theology and actively perpetuates evangelical public devotional practice. The strategies of the retable's iconography, which derive from Luther's sermons and other writings, explicate Luther's notion of justification by grace through faith. This model of salvation creates a new foundation for the pictorial interpretation of traditional subjects. The "Schneeberg Altarpiece" establishes a discrete phase of evangelical painting, still bound by devotional forms of late medieval Northern art (the retable) yet departing from the insistent didacticism of the earliest evangelical images known as Law and Gospel. Earlier scholarship has tended to focus on iconography, rendering the "Schneeberg Altarpiece" secondary to the theology it embodies. This article contends that the "Schneeberg Altarpiece" actively changes the purpose of religious art.
ISSN:0361-0160
2326-0726
DOI:10.2307/20061643