Christ Blessing the Children

The epitaph from the old Johanniskirche is dedicated to the memory of Hans Nopel and his family, as is proved without doubt by the inscriptions. It depicts the biblical scene of the blessing the children by Christ, who lets the children come to him after his disciples wanted to send them away for being disturbing and unintelligible: ‘Let the children come to me, and do not stop them’ (Mark 10.14).

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The depicted family consists of two women with black bands, three older girls, three small children dressed in white and the father of the family wearing a coat with a fur collar. The inscription on a gold ground at the bottom is dedicated to him. It refers to Hans Nopel, who together with his brother Barthel was involved in the silk trade, and was in addition from 1548 a council member and owner of property in Kathatinenstraße. Nopel died in 1551. He was the descendant of an immigrant grocer who came from Halle in the 15th century, the family repeatedly allocated council members and judges.

In addition the three children are also denoted with their names and age of death in inscriptions, a forth deceased infant is mentioned, the inscriptions for the older girls and the women are missing. Stepner records another inscription for the wife, Margarethe, who died in 1560, and for an 11 year old son, Hans. These inscriptions may have been placed outside the picture. According to written sources Hans Nopel was only married once, his wife’s maiden name was Brandmüller. There were a lot of children from this marriage, some who died very young, and others who greatly outlived their parents. The second woman with a black band is probably one of the older daughters who was already married when the epitaph was created. The inclusion of the children who died only a few days after their birth is exceptional. The context of the painting’s subject ‘Christ blessing the Children’ is obvious. Such an obvious connection between the subject and the life experience of the sitters is rare in epitaph art. It reflects the increased appreciation within Lutheranism of the family, which had been revalued as the refuge for correct instruction in the faith. The children, despite their untimely death, belonged to the family and are included in the commemoration of the dead.

After all it was through Lucas Cranach that the subject of ‘Christ Blessing the Children’ became an important motif in ecclesiastical art. It corroborates the importance of the baptism of children for the Lutheran faith as a confession of faith by the parents to and within the parish, but also as resistance against the movement making a case for adult baptism (Anabaptists). While Cranach the Elder developed a composition of half-length figures, the scene with full-length figures set against a landscape like the Nopel-Epitaph can be attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger.

Like with the painting ‚The Sacrifice of Elijah‘ (Inv. No. Kirchliche Kunst No. 14) this is an example of how Cranach transposed what was felt to be a ‚typical‘ Lutheran pictorial invention to the medium of the epitaph. The confessional character of the subject choice is increased by the relatedness of the subject with the personal fate of the family to whose memory it was dedicated.

The date of its creation shortly after 1551 makes it unlikely that it was originally intended for the Johanniskirche. This was heavily damaged in 1547 during the siege of Leipzig and only rebuilt in 1582-84. When the painting was created in the 1550s the church was unusable. In 1870 the Leipzig Historical Society (Geschichtsverein) rescued the painting from the church, cut into pieces it had been used as curbing for the steps to the church organ loft.

[Ulrike Dura, Cat. Leipzig 2006, 125-126]