Judith with the Head of Holofernes
Lucas Cranach the Elder
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The Story
As court painter to the electors of Saxony, Lucas Cranach the Elder developed a portrait style that catered to his patrons’ concern with dynastic continuity by emphasizing their princely status through careful depictions of their sumptuous garb and lavish jewelry. The artist’s attention to such details enabled the identification of this sitter: a signet ring in a companion portrait of her husband in the Philadelphia Museum of Art reveals her to be the Saxon princess Magdalena.
A watercolor showing Magdalena in the same richly patterned dress suggests that Cranach made this portrait during his visit to Berlin around 1529.
As Oil on panel (59.8 × 41.6 cm (23 9/16 × 16 3/8 in.); Framed: 69.3 × 50.8 × 5.8 cm (27 1/4 × 20 × 2 1/4 in.)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Lucas Cranach the Elder's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.
Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Every prop in a portrait like this is a decision — jewelry, fabric, and hand position were negotiated between painter and patron to shape how the sitter would be remembered.
Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Lucas Cranach the Elder's output from this period is understood.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
