Cranach Digital Archive
A working platform for researchers and an information portal for the public.
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553) ranks among the most important painters and engravers of the German Renaissance. Even his contemporaries were impressed by Cranach’s rate of production: today, the success of his workshop can be measured by more than 2,000 surviving paintings and these represent only a small fraction of its original output. Furthermore 270 drawings and 600 prints can also be attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, his sons and the workshop.
Since October 2009 the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf and Cologne University of Applied Sciences have been systematically cataloguing and digitalizing art works and archival documents associated with Lucas Cranach the Elder in cooperation with more than 350 partners in 35 countries.
The interdisciplinary team has already processed the documentation of c. 2,500 paintings and more than 24,500 images (overall high-resolution images, details, infrared reflectograms and x-radiographs), as well as over 1,200 digitalized and transcribed archival documents. In a new project phase, lasting three years, the team will expand the content to include Cranach’s prints and drawings.
For further information please visit lucascranach.org
Moreover, since March 2022 the Cranach Digital Archive has provided free access to a new resource, ‘The Critical Catalogue of Luther Portraits (1519 – 1530)’. This is the first comprehensive catalogue of all surviving printed and painted portraits of Luther from the first decade of the reformation and was compiled as part of a research project funded by the Leibniz Gemeinschaft in cooperation with Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
Access the Cranach Digital Archive
lucascranach.org
