Portrait of a Prince

Given the flat appearance of the wrinkles in the face, the lack of masterly quality and vitality (the weak drawing of the ostrich’s feather is particularly apparent, but corresponds with the general execution of the portrait), as well as the unquestionable diligence and the authentic signature it may be mooted whether it was not the c. 16 year old Hans Cranach charged with a task geared to his age, who painted the Prince. This pretty piece cannot possibly have been executed by the father Cranach. The character of the painting, particularly the tonal representation of the hair (not created out of the body, but rather delineated and modulated with shading) matches the signed and dated ‚1534‘ portrait No. 625 by Hans Cranach. Knowing that Lucas van Leyden at the age of 12 and in 1508 at 14 created perfect works as a child prodigy, that Hans Holbein the Younger’s earliest preserved mature works are by an eighteen year old, that Mantegna received his first commission for a fresco at the age of 16 and that Raphael signed his name on the delivery contract of an altarpiece at the age of 17 (L. Grote, Vom Handwerker zum Künstler, Das gesellschaftliche Ansehen Dürers, in: Fs. Hans Liermann zum 70. Geb., Erlangen 1964, p. 29), it is feasible, that the sons Hans and Lucas Cranach the Younger, trained by their father, began to produce at the age of 14-15, that is to say commencing about 1528 and 1530 (see comment under No. 574, Fig. 322, p. 278 and under No. 194 – corresponding with the statement by Johann Stigel 1537/38, that Hans Cranach painted a portrait of Luther «per mille exempla». Flechsig (Cranachstudien, p. 241) alluding to Cranach’s other son, L. Cranach the Younger, writes: «At the age of approximately 15, about 1530, he would have already been so far advanced and versed in particular techniques that he could complete commissions received by his father independently.»

[Exhib. Cat. Basel 1976, 698]