Virgin and Child (Called the Madonna under the Firs)

Virgin and Child (Called the Madonna under the Firs)

Titles

Virgin and Child (Called the Madonna under the Firs)

[Friedländer, Rosenberg 1978, No. 29]

Virgin and Child under the Trees

[Heydenreich 2007 A, 67]

Painting on limewood

Medium

Painting on limewood

[Exhib. Cat. Wrocław 2017, no. 1]

The panel depicts the Virgin and Child in front of an expansive landscape. The Virgin stands behind a stone ledge holding the child in both hands over an elaborately decorated cushion and looks lovingly at her son. The infant Christ returns her gaze and holds a bunch of grapes as

The panel depicts the Virgin and Child in front of an expansive landscape. The Virgin stands behind a stone ledge holding the child in both hands over an elaborately decorated cushion and looks lovingly at her son. The infant Christ returns her gaze and holds a bunch of grapes as a symbol of the eucharist in his hands. He rests on the almost transparent veil of the Virgin, which also covers her centrally parted brown hair. She wears a wide blue coat over her red robe. A signet ring lies to the left of the cushion and is decorated with the inverted initials 'L.C' and Cranach's serpent insignia. In the background there are three tree, erroneously described as firs, which rise above some bushes. On the left there is a castle on a rocky outcrop.

[Görres, cda 2012]

Attribution
Lucas Cranach the Elder

Attribution

Lucas Cranach the Elder

[Friedländer, Rosenberg 1979, no. 29] [Wittmann 1998, 169]
[Exhib. Cat. Düsseldorf 2017, 164, no. 72] [Exhib. Cat. Wrocław 2017, no. 1]

Production date
about 1510

Production date

about 1510

[Exhib. Cat, Düsseldorf 2017, 164, No. 72][Wittmann 1998, 169][Friedländer, Rosenberg 1979, No. 29][

Dimensions
Dimensions of support: 70.3 x 56.5 cm

Dimensions

  • Dimensions of support: 70.3 x 56.5 cm

  • [Exhib. Cat, Düsseldorf 2017, 164, no. 72]

Signature / Dating

Artist's insignia bottom edge, left, on a signet ring: 'L.C.' (inverted) and a serpent with elevated wings (in black with a red crown and ruby ring)

Signature / Dating

  • Artist's insignia bottom edge, left, on a signet ring: 'L.C.' (inverted) and a serpent with elevated wings (in black with a red crown and ruby ring)

  • [Heydenreich, cda 2012]

Owner
Archdiocese of Wroclaw
Repository
Muzeum Archidiecezjalne Wroclaw
Location
Wroclaw
CDA ID
PL_DMW
FR (1978) Nr.
FR029
Persistent Link
https://lucascranach.org/en/PL_DMW/

Provenance

  • since the 16th century in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Wroclaw (Breslau), in the St John's chapel and later in the treasury
  • 1943 evacuation during the war and after 1945 returned to the Diocesan museum, Wroclaw (Breslau)
  • from 1946/47 until 2012 the work changed hands frequently (and was among others in Bernau, Munich, London, St. Gallen)
  • on the 27.07.2012 it was returned to the Archdiocese of Wroclaw
    [http://www.msz.gov.pl/%E2%80%9CMadonna,under,the,Fir,Tree,
    ,another,precious,painting,lost,after,World,War,II,
    ,returned,to,Poland,55863.html; 12.09.2012](no longer available online)

Exhibitions

Berlin 1937
Düsseldorf 2017, no. 72
Wrocław 2017, no. 1

Literature

Reference on page Catalogue Number Figure / Plate
Sandner 2021 75
AuthorIngo Sandner
TitleDie Werkstattpraxis Lucas Cranach des Älteren
Publicationin Dagmar Täube, ed., Lucas Cranach der Ältere und Hans Kemmer. Meistermaler zwischen Renaissance und Reformation [Lübeck, St. Annen-Museum]
Place of PublicationMunich
Year of Publication2021
Pages71-81
Exhib. Cat. Düsseldorf 2017 164 No. 72
EditorGunnar Heydenreich, Daniel Görres, Beat Wismer
TitleLucas Cranach der Ältere. Meister - Marke - Moderne. [anlässlich der Ausstellung "Cranach. Meister - Marke - Moderne", Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 08. April 2017 - 30. Juli 2017]
Place of PublicationMunich
Year of Publication2017
Exhib. Cat. Florence 2017 92 under no. 15
EditorFrancesca de Luca, Giovanni Maria Fara
Title I volti della Riforma. Lutero e Cranach nelle collezioni medicee [Uffizi, Florence]
Place of PublicationFlorence, Milan
Year of Publication2017
Exhib. Cat. Wroclaw 2017 86-88 001 Fig. p. 87
EditorEwa Houszka, Marek Pierzchala
TitleModa na Cranacha, Muzeum Narodowe we Wroclawiu, 31.10.2017-30.12.2017
Place of PublicationWroclaw
Year of Publication2017
Kuhnke 2015 54-57 p. 55
AuthorMonika Kuhnke
TitleKunstgegenstände, Archivalien, Wiegendrucke und Handschriften - Restitutionen des Ministeriums für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der Republik Polen (1999-2015)
Publicationin Wojciech Kowalski, Monika Kuhnke, Looted and restituted. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs' efforts to restitute Poland's cultural property lost during World War II
Place of PublicationKrakow
Issue2nd edition
Year of Publication2015
Pages38-94
Aikema 2010 26
AuthorBernard Aikema
TitleCranach. A different Renaissance
Publicationin Anna Coliva, Bernhard Aikema, eds., Cranach l'altro rinascimento, a different Renaissance, Exhib.Cat. Rome
Place of PublicationRome
Year of Publication2010
Pages13-33
Heydenreich 2007 A 67, 68, 201, 204 167
AuthorGunnar Heydenreich
TitleLucas Cranach the Elder
Place of PublicationAmsterdam
Year of Publication2007
Link https://lucascranach.org/application/files/6116/2097/3099/Heydenreich_2007_Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder.pdf
Heydenreich 2007 B 42, 43 33
AuthorGunnar Heydenreich
Title"... dass Du mit wunderbarer Schnelligkeit malest". Virtuosität und Effizienz in der künstlerischen Praxis Lucas Cranachs d. Ä.
Publicationin Bodo Brinkmann, ed., Cranach der Ältere, Exhib. Cat. FrankfurtA
Place of PublicationOstfildern
Year of Publication2007
Pages29-47
Kretschmann 2001 39-56
AuthorGeorg Kretschmann
TitleFaszination Fälschung. Kunst-, Geld- und andere Fälscher und ihre Schicksale
Place of PublicationBerlin
Year of Publication2001
Grimm 1998 80
AuthorClaus Grimm
TitleDie Anteile von Meister und Werkstatt. Zum Fall Lucas Cranach d.Ä.
Publicationin Ingo Sandner, Wartburg-Stiftung Eisenach and Fachhochschule Köln, eds., Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund. Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen, Exhib. Cat. Eisenach
Place of PublicationRegensburg
Year of Publication1998
Pages67-82
Heydenreich 1998 A 190, 191,
AuthorGunnar Heydenreich
TitleHerstellung, Grundierung und Rahmung der Holzbildträger in den Werkstätten Lucas Cranachs d.Ä.
Publicationin Ingo Sandner, Wartburg-Stiftung Eisenach and Fachhochschule Köln, eds., Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund. Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen, Exhib. Cat. Eisenach
Place of PublicationRegensburg
Year of Publication1998
Pages181-200
Wittmann 1998 169, 172 Fig. 20.1
AuthorJan Wittmann
TitleDie Bedeutung des Marienbildes im Schaffen Cranachs
Publicationin Ingo Sandner, Wartburg-Stiftung Eisenach and Fachhochschule Köln, eds., Unsichtbare Meisterzeichnungen auf dem Malgrund. Cranach und seine Zeitgenossen, Exhib. Cat. Eisenach
Place of PublicationRegensburg
Year of Publication1998
Link http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte/2012/2050
Pages169-180
Friedländer, Rosenberg 1979 29
AuthorMax J. Friedländer, Jakob Rosenberg
EditorG. Schwartz
TitleDie Gemälde von Lucas Cranach
Place of PublicationBasel, Boston, Stuttgart
Year of Publication1979
Friedländer, Rosenberg 1978 29
AuthorMax J. Friedländer, Jakob Rosenberg
TitleThe Paintings of Lucas Cranach
Place of PublicationNew York
Year of Publication1978
Exhib. Cat. Basel 1974/1976 523, 526, 531 under No. 372
AuthorDieter Koepplin, Tilman Falk
TitleLukas Cranach. Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik
Volume1, 2
Place of PublicationBasel, Stuttgart
Year of Publication1974
Link http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-diglit-104522
Schade 1974 41, 66 pl. 55
AuthorWerner Schade
TitleDie Malerfamilie Cranach
Place of PublicationDresden
Year of Publication1974
Link http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/schade1974
Stankiewicz 1965 348-356
AuthorDaniela Stankiewicz
TitleWroclawski obraz Lukasza Cranacha starszego "Madonna pod jodlami"
JournalBiuletyn Historii Sztuki
Issue27
Year of Publication1965
Pages348-357
Müller-Hofstede 1958 2-3
AuthorCornelius Müller-Hofstede
TitleZwei schlesische Madonnen von Lucas Cranach - eine Erinnerung
JournalSchlesien. Kunst, Wissenschaft, Volkskunde
Issue3 (1958)
Year of Publication1958
Posse 1943 50 Fig. V
AuthorHans Posse
TitleLucas Cranach d. Ä.
Place of PublicationVienna
IssueSecond edition
Year of Publication1943
Exhib. Cat. Berlin 1937 16 013 Pl. 23
EditorStaatliche Museen, Berlin
TitleLucas Cranach d. Ä. und Lucas Cranach d. J. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Graphik
Place of PublicationBerlin
Year of Publication1937
Burgemeister, Grundmann 1933
AuthorL. Burgemeister, Günther Grundmann
TitleKunstdenkmäler der Stadt Breslau
Volume2
Place of PublicationBreslau
Year of Publication1933
Friedländer, Rosenberg 1932 28
AuthorMax J. Friedländer, Jakob Rosenberg
TitleDie Gemälde von Lucas Cranach
Place of PublicationBerlin
Year of Publication1932
Link http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/friedlaender1932
Glaser 1923 108
AuthorCurt Glaser
TitleLukas Cranach
Place of PublicationLeipzig
Year of Publication1923
Link http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/glaser1923
Flechsig 1900 A 12
AuthorEduard Flechsig
TitleCranachstudien
Volume1
Place of PublicationLeipzig
Year of Publication1900
Link page/n5/mode/2up
Exhib. Cat. Dresden 1899
EditorKarl Woermann
TitleDeutsche Kunstausstellung Dresden 1899. Abteilung Cranach-Ausstellung. Wissenschaftliches Verzeichnis der ausgestellten Werke
Place of PublicationDresden
Year of Publication1899
Link http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB00002A2400000000
Förster 1898 265-269
AuthorRichard Förster
TitleNeue Cranachs in Schlesien
JournalSchlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift. Zeitschrift des Vereins für das Museum Schlesischer Altertümer
Issue7 (1898)
Year of Publication1898
Pages265-269
Knötel 1893/1894 215-219 pls. XXVI, XXVII
AuthorPaul Knötel
TitleÜber einige Bilder Cranachs und seiner Schule in schlesischen Kirchen und Museen. Schlesiens Vorzeit
JournalZeitschrift des Vereins für das Museum Schlesischer Altertümer
Issue5
Year of Publication1893
Pages215-218

Research History / Discussion

English summary of the article by Hanna Benesz, in „Art&Business”, no. 12/2012 (263), pp. 120-123.

Miraculously recovered: Kidnapped just after the war, wrapped in oilcloth disappeared for 65 years. Today she returns triumphantly, almost like a movie star. This is a story about the Virgin and Child under Fir Trees, one of the most beautiful Lucas Cranach’s paintings.

A story, first published in the daily newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza” on July 28th 2012 by Wlodzimierz Kalicki of the painting’s disappearing is summed up here:

The chapter 400 years of peace reminds the history of the commission of the painting by one of the Wroclaw cathedral’s canons around 1510 directly at Cranach’s Wittenberg workshop. The painting stayed in the cathedral for 400 years until it was evacuated for safety in 1943. It did return already in 1945, but damaged (split into two parts). The new Church authorities engaged the pre-war employee of the Archbishopric Museum, reverend Siegfried Zimmer to manage the restoration works. Instead, father Zimmer with his young friend, a future painter Georg Kupke, made a copy of the painting, and - when forced by communist authorities to leave Silesia, smuggled the original wrapped in oilcloth with a coffee mug placed on top of it as if on a tray. Kupke, who leaved Wroclaw half a year earlier, reported later that he had visited his friend Zimmer twice in his flat at Bernau by Berlin in 1947 and in 1952, each time seeing the Madonna in his bedroom. Zimmer explained he was intending to pass the painting to the Catholic Church if he succeeded to get to the West, because in the Soviet occupation zone it might not be safe. However, when Zimmer found himself in Munich in 1954 where he had been delegated for theological studies, this did not happen. In the 1960s he sold the painting half legally to an antique dealer who was providing the cleric with Egyptian antiquities – his great hobby and passion. The fact that what had been left in Wroc?aw was a mere copy was only discovered in 1961 when the painting had to undergo conservation treatment before executing the color photograph, commissioned by a French publishing company. A shocking analysis was published in the professional monthly by the conservator Daniela Stankiewicz in 1965 (“Biuletyn Historii Sztuki”).

65 years of the odyssey tells about the paintings whereabouts on the “gray” art market, with various offers to public and private collections, about Georg Kupke’s private attempts to investigate and to spot the painting (described in the “Stern” magazine in 1985), about the joined proceeding of the German Episcopate Conference and the Wroclaw archbishop Henryk Gulbinowicz in 1981, aiming to prove that the ownership certificate presented with the bid was faked, about the official police investigation in Munich, which finally remained unsolved because of lack of proofs, and finally about a sensational letter from the Church at St. Gallen to the Wroclaw archbishop in February 2012, reporting on a donation of the Wroc?aw Madonna to them from an anonymous person and the decision of St. Gallen Catholic authorities to return the painting to its historical residence.

New Eve gives the description and the analysis of the painting, first commenting on a striking notice of the newspapers in July 2012, which sensationally remarked the dirt under Mary’s and Child’s nails as the result of the mother’s and child’s playing in the sand (!). This unusual detail, noticed by everybody who is privileged to see the painting in reality, instead of being a characteristics of unrefined realism, is rather a symbol emphasizing the incarnated God’s humility. The painting’s ideological message points to the redeeming mission of the Son of God and to the sacrament of the Eucharist, here suggested by the grapes which the Jesus Child is holding on his laps (symbolizing the Holy Blood) and Mary’s masterfully rendered, transparent veil, through which she is holding her baby, reminiscent of the ritual of the blessing with the Holy Sacrament by a clergyman who holds the monstrance not with his bare hands, but through a veil. The viewer has thus in front of his eyes the image of the adoration of the Redeemer’s body and blood. The image - because the parapet which is here an element of the composition, signalizes that the admired vision is but a picture and not an evocation of the real Holy Persons. It is aimed to help in contemplation not being a subject of the cult itself (which was to become a big problem of the Protestants).

The ideological message of the Virgin under the Fir Trees is a continuation and completion of Cranach’s painting Adam and Eve from the same period, i.e. from around 1510 (which was published in the previous, November issue of “Art&Business”). The young humanity, who lost Paradise through their disobedience, now finds the hope. The ancient tradition of biblical typology connects the figure of Eve with the figure of Mary. The liturgical text of the fourth preface about the Virgin Mary includes following words: “What Eve lost through her unfaithfulness, Mary recovered through her faith and has become a sign of consolation and strong hope for pilgrims on this Earth”. Cranach was conscious of this parallel: one of his later Virgins (in the collections of the Hermitage, ca. 1530) features a type of face similar to Eve from the Courtauld Institute in London (1526) and is placed under analogical apple tree, abundant in fruit, which is traditionally associated with a forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Wroclaw Madonna reflects artistic mastery of the early Wittenberg period of the Master in its full swing, shown in the chapter The new landscape. Voluminous figures, so unlike from Cranach’s later linear manner, betray Italian influence, with which the artist may had got acquainted in humanist circles in Vienna where he had sojourned in the first years of the 16th century. Similar images of the Virgin, both in their plasticity and the atmosphere of tenderness, represented against a background of a landscape and behind the parapet, were created by the famous Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini in the second half of the 15th century.

Also Netherlandish artists from the circle of Rogier van der Weyden painted the Virgin and Child in a landscape, but the Wroclaw Madonna differs essentially both from the Italian and Netherlandish realizations, although in turn Cranach’s precise detail and its realistic rendering originate from the latter tradition. The artist’s imitating skills are to be admired in the elements of vegetation, especially those in the foreground, in gray and white moss on the fir tree and in reproducing various materials: jewel-like decorations of the pillow, fringes, brocade and above all the transparency of Mary’s veil.

The main element in Cranach’s composition which distinguishes it from both Italian and Netherlandish painting is the landscape, representing typical Middle European nature of mountainous wilderness and coniferous woods. The wood was always a very important subject for Cranach, even if his visions of nature became more conventionalized in the1520s. The landscape in Wroclaw Madonna still belongs to the earlier, extremely creative and picturesque images of forests and wild mountains. It was the master’s painting from the Vienna period The Rest on the Flight to Egypt (1504) which decided about the opinion of him as being the initiator of the so called “Danube School”, credited with the introduction of the independent landscape painting. German forest appeared in paintings as something more than a background for the represented history. In this pioneering work the nature harmonizes with the story, reflecting the subject of the contemplation and even “cooperates” with the Holy Family securing a shelter for them. Saint Joseph himself is embraced, as if by a friendly arm, by a branch of a spruce tree!

Lucas Cranach the Elder and later Albrecht Altdorfer expressed in their paintings the interest of German humanists such as Konrad Celtis, Johannes Aventius or Ulrich von Hutten in “German forest”. This fascination was enlivened after the discovery in the Hersfeld abbey of a copy of Tacitus’ Germania and after its analysis in Rome by the future pope Pius II. This work became a source of myths and prejudices about inhabitants of this “hyperborean” forest country. The humanists however raised the legendary Hercinian Forest (Silva Hercynia) to the rank of the national attribute. It was above all Celtis, the creative reader of Tacitus, who changed the dismal interpretation of the forest – a milieu of ambivalent nature, arousing both the fascination and fear – into the pride of German people, a place of heroic deeds of knights, a temple and a seat of muses. But the forest is not only to be regarded as the seat of pagan cults – in paintings showing repenting saints: John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Anthony Abbot, Jerome – the forest wilderness is a place of contemplation and meeting with God.

This digression brings us back to Wroclaw Madonna. The forest here is marked but by two fir trees and young spruce bush on the right. Opposite from them a slender birch is bending as if in a bow to Mary’s head. According to authors writing about the early German landscape, the tree is the most essential element there, a link between the image and a place, at the same time being a metonymy of the entire German forest. The signs of the civilization in these landscapes are dominated and as if enveloped by trees. It is just what we observe in Wroclaw landscape: a miniature town between the firs and the distant mountains; on the left at the foot of fantastic rock formation crowned with a castle – equally minute figures of travelers, pack animals, small shrine, a cross. The firs, or rather overgrowth of moss on them, define the place as the northern side – Transalpinum, thus Cranach’s hic et nunc (here and now). At the same time the landscape goes beyond the region of the German forest toward the universality of Christendom. The images of nature were understood and interpreted, in the light of Saint Augustinus’ writings, as a metaphor of human pilgrimage through life – peregrination vitae - towards God’s City (Civitas Dei). The small human figurines shown in their toil, the high rock with a fortress make a compelling association with the pilgrim’s cry from the Psalm 31: “Be thou a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!” On this hard and perilous road, for the “pilgrims on this Earth” it is the Madonna – the Mother of God who is the “sign of consolation and strong hope”.

[Hanna Benesz 2013]

  • Virgin and Child (Called the Madonna under the Firs), about 1510

Images

Compare images
  • overall
  • overall
  • overall
  • overall
  • overall
  • overall
  • reverse
  • irr
  • x_radiograph
  • detail
  • detail

Technical studies

2017Technical examination / Scientific analysis

  • Infrared reflectography
  • irr

Underdrawing

DESCRIPTION

Tools/Material:

- fluid, black medium, brush; possibly over an initial design

Type/Ductus:

- freehand underdrawing after a pre-existing

- thin, fine lines in the face to relatively broad lines in the mantle

Function:

- relatively binding for the final painted version; the lines delineate the main contours and describe essential details and facial features; no representation of volume with hatching strokes

Deviations:

- hardly any corrections were made to forms during the painting process; small changes (e. g. position of the hands or fingers).

INTERPRETATION

Attribution:

- Lucas Cranach the Elder

[Sandner, Smith-Contini, Heydenreich, cda 2018]

  • photographed by Gunnar Heydenreich
  • photographed by Ingo Sandner

2012Technical Examination

  • reverse

Support

- wood, probably lime wood

- four planks of varying widths aligned horizontally

- canvas has been attached to the upper half of the panel

[Heydenreich, cda 2012]

1972Technical examination / Scientific analysis

  • X-radiography
  • x_radiograph
  • created by London - Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery

Condition Reports

Date2012

  • the joins have been partially reglued and reinforced on the reverse with 9 dovetails

  • pine wood battens and blocks have been glue along the edges of the panel

  • uniform fluorescence of the varnish in UV light; a partial attempt to thin the varnish (cleaning test) can be observed in the top right corner

[Heydenreich, cda 2012]

Citing from the Cranach Digital Archive

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