Our Partners

The Cranach Digital Archive was initiated by the Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf and Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences at Cologne University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the Digital Archive for Art and Culture, Düsseldorf (d:kult), nine founding partners and numerous associate partners and project contributors. The project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation in 2020 and 2021. Since 2023 the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung have been supporting the project: The Prints and Drawings of Lucas Cranach the Elder, his sons and workshop - Digitisation, systematic study, interdisciplinary research and the establishment of a data resource network.

Founding Partners

Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich and Doerner Institut, Munich

The Bavarian State Painting Collections, based in Munich, oversee the art collections owned by the Bavarian state. Several thousand art works are on display in various galleries and museums throughout Bavaria, including the Alte Pinakothek. This important museum houses one of the most famous and largest collections of Old Master paintings, comprising of Early Italian, Old German, Old Dutch and Flemish paintings. The collections of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen contain 103 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop.
The core activities of the Doerner Institut entail looking after the extensive collections of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, conducting art technological research as well as developing scientific methods for the analysis of art objects.
Website Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Website Doerner Institut

Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Bavarian State Painting Collections, based in Munich, oversee the art collections owned by the Bavarian state. Several thousand art works are on display in various galleries and museums throughout Bavaria, including the Alte Pinakothek. This important museum houses one of the most famous and largest collections of Old Master paintings, comprising of Early Italian, Old German, Old Dutch and Flemish paintings. The collections of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen contain 103 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop.
The core activities of the Doerner Institut entail looking after the extensive collections of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, conducting art technological research as well as developing scientific methods for the analysis of art objects.
Website

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

The worldwide renown of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) in Dresden is based on its outstanding collection of high-ranking masterpieces. Italian Renaissance paintings form its nucleus - as exemplified by major works of Raphael, Giorgione and Titian - as well as Mannerist and Baroque works. Of equal significance is the inventory of seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish paintings. Not only are Rembrandt and his followers represented with a large number of works of superb quality, but the collection also includes paintings by Vermeer and Ruysdael and the great Flemish artists Rubens, Jordaens and Van Dyck.
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister possesses a collection of 58 works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop, thus housing one of the world's largest collections of Cranach paintings. In addition there are seven Cranach paintings in the Rüstkammer (Armoury) in Dresden.
Website

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of the major museums of fine and decorative arts. Its Picture Gallery evolved out of the art collections belonging to the Habsburgs. Today it is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world. In the 17th century the foundations of the collection were laid and its main focus established: 16th-century Venetian painting (Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto), 17th-century Flemish painting (Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck), Early Netherlandish painting (Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden) and German Renaissance painting (Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach).
The collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum contains 44 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop. 48 miniatures by Cranach the Younger in the Portrait Collection of Archduke Ferdinand further enrich these holdings.
Website

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses an important collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs.
The Getty Center possesses one painting and three studies on paper by Lucas Cranach the Elder as well as several rich resources on Cranach.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, founded in 1870, houses a permanent collection containing more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The museum's collection of Old Masters numbers approximately 1,700 paintings.
The Metropolitan museum of Art has a collection of 17 Cranach paintings.
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The National Gallery, London

The National Gallery in London, founded in 1824, houses a rich collection of over 2,500 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square. The Renaissance collection contains many famous works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Holbein, Brueghel, Titian and Veronese.
There are 7 Cranach paintings in the collection of the National Gallery.
Website

Kunstmuseum Basel

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the Galerie (Gallery) and the Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings). The main focus is on paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600 and 19th and 21st century art. The Kunstmuseum Basel possesses the world`s largest collection of works by the Holbein family.
The Kunstmuseum Basel houses a collection of 11 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop.
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Organisers

Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

The Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf houses a collection of more than 100,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, arts and crafts exhibits and glass objects. The roots of the gallery can be traced back to the early 18th century and the collection founded by Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Pfalz and his wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. Particular emphasis is given to Italian, Dutch and Flemish Baroque painting, the Düsseldorf School of Painting and classic modernism.
The Kunstpalast presents two paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop.
Website

Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences / Technische Hochschule Köln

The Technische Hochschule Cologne is the largest University of Applied Sciences in Germany. 24,000 students are taught by about 420 professors. The 11 faculties and the Institute of Technology in the Tropics offer a choice of c. 90 study programmes, half of which are in engineering science or humanities and social science.

The Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS) offers 5 courses in which art technology, conservation and restoration of art and cultural artifacts from the Middle Ages to Contemporary Art are taught and researched.
Website

Associate Partners and Project Contributors

Anhaltische Gemälde-Galerie, Dessau

The collection of the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie in Schloss Georgium is comprised of c. 2000 paintings and as such represents the largest collection of Old Master Paintings in Saxony-Anhalt. The permanent collection currently displays German paintings from the 15th to the 19th century, including major works by Lucas Cranach, as well as important holdings of Dutch 16th-17th century painting.
The collection of the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie contains 17 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop.
Website

Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum is the largest cultural history museum within the German-speaking world. The collection of c. 2,500 paintings conveys a representative overview of the art of painting in German speaking countries from the 13th up to the 20th century. Within this collection 15th and 16th century painting as well as stained glass are particularly prominent, with numerous outstanding works by Lochner, Witz, Wolgemut, Dürer, Baldung, Cranach and Altdorfer.
The Germanisches Nationalmuseum houses a collection of 33 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop.
Website

Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig

Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel established his collections at the end of the 17th century. Today they are housed in the museum in Braunschweig build in 1887. Apart from a collection of about 1400 paintings the museums holds wide collections of sculpture, applied art and ethnographic objects. In the prints and drawings room there are more than 155,000 graphic works .. The paintings gallery contains works from the 15th century to about 1800, focusing on renaissance and baroque art from Italy, the Netherlands and German speaking countries. Paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Veronese, Holbein and Elsheimer are some of the masterpieces of the collection.
The Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum owns 13 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and 1 by Lucas Cranach the younger, as well as 6 old copies.
Website

Klassik Stiftung, Weimar

The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is a unique ensemble of cultural memorial sites. With more than 20 museums, palaces, historic houses and parks as well as literary and art collections, it is one of the largest and most significant cultural institutions in Germany. Acquisitions by the Dukedom form the core of the paintings collection, which is on display in the historical rooms of the castle museum. Early German painting is represented with major works by Dürer, Cranach and Barbari.
There are 31 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop in the Gemäldegalerie.
Website

Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Coburg

The castles complex of the Veste Coburg is one of the largest and best preserved in Germany. It houses the art treasures of the Dukes of Coburg, which rank amongst the major art and historic collections in Germany. The paintings collection has been considerably enriched by a collection of Old Master paintings from the Schäfer family (Schweinfurt), purchased in 2003.
The Veste Coburg houses a collection of 35 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop.
Website

Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

Founded two centuries ago, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium hold some 20,000 paintings, sculptures and drawings. Located in Brussels, they consist of the Ancient Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum, the Wiertz Museum, the Meunier Museum and the Musée Magritte. The Museum of Ancient Art houses a vast collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the 15th to the 18th century, among them masterpieces by Brueghel, Van der Weyden, Campin, Van Dyck and Rubens.
The collection contains 7 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop.
Website

Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

The Museum der bildenden Künste (Museum of Fine Arts) in Leipzig, which opened in 1848, houses an extensive collection of c. 3,500 paintings, 1,000 sculptures and 60,000 prints and drawings from the late middle ages to the present. The core of the collection consists of 15th and 16th century Early Netherlandish painting, Italian painting from the 15th to the 18th century and 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting.
The Museum der bildenden Künste has a collection of 21 Cranach paintings.
Website

The National Gallery in Prague

With over 350,000 objects of domestic and international art, the National Gallery in Prague is the largest and most important art institution in the Czech Republic. The collections of the gallery are not housed in a single building; they are presented in a number of historic edifices within the city of Prague, as well as other places. The paintings of Lucas Cranach are on display in Šternberk Palace (Hradčany), where the collection of European Art from Antiquity to the End of the Baroque Period is housed, and in the Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia (Old Town), where the Art of the Middle Ages in Bohemia and Central Europe is presented.
There are some 20 paintings connected to the name of Lucas Cranach (including works by Cranach the Elder, workshop pieces, old copies after Cranach the Elder and 2 portraits by Lucas Cranach the Younger).
Website

Statens Museum for Kunst, Kopenhagen

The collections at the National Gallery of Denmark consist of 3 main collections: The Royal Collection of Painting and Sculpture, The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, and The Royal Collection of Plaster Casts. The collections are believed to date back to King Christian II and the mid-16th century. Today, the Collection of Sculpture and Painting comprises approximately 10,500 paintings and sculptures.
There are 17 Cranach paintings in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.
Website

Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten, Berlin-Brandenburg

The Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg is one of the largest foundations of its kind worldwide. It is comprised of 33 former royal palaces, residences and historic houses that are open to the public, as well as numerous gardens and about 250,000 works of art. It oversees some of the most beautiful examples of art-, cultural- and architectural history in Brandenburg-Prussia. The collections include more than 4,000 paintings, which are distributed amongst the various properties, most significantly the Bildergalerie of Sanssouci, which was founded by Friedrich II.
The Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten possesses a collection of about 35 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop, most of which are on display in Jagdschloss Grunewald.
Website

Schloss Friedenstein Gotha

Schloss Friedenstein is one of the largest early Baroque castle complexes in Germany. Together with the castle museum it houses a unique collection of art, which essentially originates from the art cabinet established in 1653 by Ernst I, the Devout, Elector of Saxony-Gotha (Altenburg) (1601 - 1675). The collection contains among other things Old German and Early Netherlandish painting, Medieval and Classicist sculpture, an important Numismatic Collection as well as a prints and drawings cabinet.
There are 24 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop in the Schlossmuseum.
Website

Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest

The Szépművészeti Múzeum Budapest was founded in 1896 as a state museum for fine arts, incorporating the former Hungarian state collections. It houses an Old Masters' Gallery, a Department of Prints and Drawings, further collections of sculptures, 19th century and modern art, classical and Egyptian antiquities. The Old Masters' Gallery is a comprehensive collection of the European art from the 13th to 18th centuries. The main focuses are on the Italian renaissance and on Spanish art, but the northern schools are equally well represented in the collection.
The Szépművészeti Múzeum has in its possession 19 paintings, 1 drawing and many prints by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop.
Website

Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe

The Kunsthalle, which opened in 1846, is one of the few early German museums that has retained its original appearance and content. In the main building and the Orangery 800 works from the Middle Ages to the present day are on permanent display. Among the major works in the department of Early German paintings are the panels by the Master of the Karlsruhe Passion as well as excellent paintings by Matthias Grünewald, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, Bernhard Strigel and Hans Burgkmair.
The collection of the Staatlichen Kunsthalle contains 22 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop as well as further works by followers.
Website

Städel Museum, Frankfurt/Main

Since its founding by the Frankfurt businessman Johann Friedrich Städel in 1811 the Städelsche Kunstinstitute has continued to expand its holdings. The collection is comprised of about 2,900 paintings, 600 sculptures, 500 photographs and more than 100,000 prints and drawings. The rich content of the Städel Museum presents an overview of 700 years of European Art History - from the early 14th century through the Renaissance, the Baroque and Classic Modernism to Contemporary Art. Highlights of the collection include masterpieces by Holbein the Younger, Cranach the Elder, Dürer, Botticelli, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
The Städel Museum houses a collection of 9 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and workshop.
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Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF), Paris

The Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, abbreviated as 'C2RMF' (Centre of Research and Conservation of Museums in France), is located in Paris and was created in 1998 through the fusion of the Laboratoire de recherche des musées de France (Laboratory of Research of Museums in France), founded in 1931, and the Service de restauration des musées de France (Service of Conservation of Museums in France). It applies the policy concerning research, preventive conservation and restoration determined by the Governing Board of the Museums of France. Today the Centre's archives contain 40,000 laboratory reports and 34,000 restoration dossiers, concerning more than 60,000 works of art in museums in France.
The C2RMF houses a rich collection of documentary material (art historical documentation, examination and conservation reports) on 33 of the Cranach paintings in French museums.
Website

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Located since 1992 in the Villahermosa Palace in Madrid the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum offers visitors an overview of art from the 13th century to the late 20th century. In the nearly one thousand works on display, visitors can contemplate the major periods and pictorial schools of western art such as the Renaissance, Mannerism, the Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism and the art of the 19th and 20th centuries up to Pop Art.
There are 11 paintings by or attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Cranach, Lucas Cranach the Younger, and workshop in the collection of the Museo Thyssen Bornemisza.
Website

Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten in Sachsen-Anhalt / LutherMuseen

The Luther Memorials Foundation in Saxony-Anhalt was established in 1997. It is the custodian of five museums: Luther’s Birth Place and Luther’s Death House in Eisleben, Luther’s Parents' Home in Mansfeld, and the Luther House and Melanchthon House in Wittenberg. The houses in Wittenberg and Eisleben have been UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1996.
The Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten possesses 21 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger and the workshop.
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Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv - Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv, Weimar

The archive was founded in 1547 along with the establishment of the residence of the Ernestine line (Haus Wettin) in Weimar. The archive consists of two sections: one containing archival records from the Ernestine government and its predecessor, which were united in the joint main archive of the Saxon-Ernstine House (Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv); and the other containing the central archive of the Ernestine Dukedom Saxony-Weimar, which was the Secret State archive of the Grand-Duchy (Geheimes Haupt- und Staatsarchiv des Großherzogtums) and after the abolition of the Monarchy (1918) that of the Free State of Saxony-Weimar-Eisennach (Freistaates Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach).
The Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv possesses the account books from the Wittenberg Court, which include numerous written documents (letters, payment orders etc.) by or concerning Lucas Cranach.
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Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague

The RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) is one of the most important art-historical information centres in the world, administering a unique collection of documentary, library and archive material on Western art from the late Middle Ages to the present. Documentation about Dutch art forms the nucleus of the collections. The RKD has an active collecting policy covering painting, drawing and sculpture as well as monumental art, media art, and design.
The RKD contains a collection of b/w photographs of Cranach paintings from the Friedländer archive.
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