Martin Luther as ‘Junker Jörg’

Portrait Group II represents the smallest group of works dealt with within the context of the KKL with only two surviving paintings^[1] and three woodcuts. The depiction of Luther with a full beard and hair and a simple doublet only varies in the portrait length that ranges from a bust portrait (II.D1, II.D2) to one including the right hand with the hilt of the sword and finally to a half-length figure with both hands and a section of the sheath and blade of the sword (II.M2, II.D3).

Historical Context and Dating of the Paintings

Neither of the paintings (fig. 1 and 2) is dated, but scholars generally place them between 1521 and 1522, inspired by a report made by Matthias Ratzeberger after 1559 and not published until 1850. According to this Cranach painted a portrait of Luther as ‘Junker Jorg’[1] during Luther’s brief return to Wittenberg from the Wartburg between the 3/4 and 12 December 1521. Recently Thomas Kaufmann rejected this traditional interpretation arguing instead for a later date around 1537 for their completion.[2]

The traditional dating in the early 1520s can now be affirmed by means of recent technical examinations and critical evaluation of primary sources. [3] The youngest dateable growth ring on the Leipzig beech panel is from the year 1519.[4] Provided that the entire cross-section of the trunk was used and only the bark was removed, the painting could have been created in 1521, after the wood had been seasoned for two years.[5]  

Vogt Sebastian Langhans of Magdeburg also writes to his employer Albrecht of Brandenburg about a painted portrait of ‘Junker Jörg’ in a letter from 26 April 1523. Shortly before the 16 February 1523[6] Langhans confiscated ‘a panel with a picture of Lucretia painted on the outside and on the inside a bust of Martin Luther of Wittenberg. Portrait with the sword and beard in a black jacket’.[7] from the Magdeburg bookseller Nickel Apfelstadt[8]. The words ‘außerhalben’ (outer) and ‘inwendig’ (inner) do not describe the recto and verso of a single work[9], but rather the outer and inner sides of a self-contained unit.[10] This might have been a case, as they were widely used at the time to protect portraits, and if so the exterior was possibly a painted sliding lid.[11] However, it could also have been a portrait in a frame that was covered with a sliding panel.[12] Both variants would offer a convincing explanation why Langhans explicitly referred to a ‘panel with a picture of Lucretia’. Accordingly, the ‘Lucretia’ would have been depicted on the exterior, on the moveable cover of a Luther portrait so that it could be kept safe in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Magdeburg without it being visible to everyone. Only a painted depiction of Luther as ‘Junker Jorg’ would seem likely for the particular constellation of these two subjects. The description, mentioning the sword, beard and black doublet corresponds with both portraits by Cranach in Leipzig and Weimar, however the painting may not necessarily be either of these.[13]

A largely overlooked note from 1522 proves that even at this early stage portraits of Luther were commissioned and painted. On the 15 October 1522 Philipp Glüenspiess[14], who was resident in Wittenberg, wrote to his cousin Georg Römer, a lawyer from Nuremberg, that Lucas Cranach the Elder sends his best regards and will paint a portrait of Luther with great care and much diligence.[15] However, as the completion was delayed, Glüenspiess reported with annoyance on the 2 November that he would ensure a quick delivery.[16] With that a client for a Luther portrait is named for the first time.[17] Considering that there is no information to suggest the existence of another type of painted Luther portrait in the early 1520s and that at least one painting from 1523 of ‘Junker Jörg’ is documented, it would seem likely that Römer’s commission also referred to a depiction of Luther as ‘Junker Jörg’.[18] The delay in the delivery also confirms what up until now has only been suggested by the few surviving portraits on panel of Luther as ‘Junker Jörg’: that in the early 1520s portraits of Luther on panel were painted in the Cranach workshop as they were commissioned and not mass produced in advance as was the case from 1525 with the paintings from Portrait Group III.

Historical Context and Dating of the Woodcuts

A similar early dating is implied by Cranach’s corresponding woodcuts examined within the context of the KKL. At least six editions of the woodcuts are recorded. These differ in the accompanying super- and subscriptiones as well as in the breaks in the lines, allowing them to be arranged in a relative order (fig. 3a-f). They could be compared for the first time thanks to technical examinations carried out on the originals for the KKL (Editions A-F).[1]

The date of these editions spans a period from before the 1 April 1522 (Edition A) to after 1579 (Edition F). Only editions A and B (in four examples known today) were published during Luther’s lifetime, whereas the majority of the surviving sheets were probably published after Luther’s death in 1546.[1]

Primary sources document the first appearance of edition A in Spring,1522. In a letter dated between the 16 and 19 April 1522 the altarist Lucas Lederer from Oschatz asks Johann VII of Schleinitz, Bishop of Meissen, for protection against slander of his person and vandalism to his home.[2] Lederer describes the persecution by an individual on the 1 April 1522, who broke the windows of his house. The suspect was carrying ‘a letter’ with an anticlerical satirical verse, that Lederer quotes verbatim.[3] According to Vogt Bartholomäus Gortler who was entrusted with the investigation the accused, a scribe called Erhard of Hertzerkg[4], claimed that he had found the confiscated ‘letter with a printed picture around which there were many rhymes written in red chalk’[5]. The ‘scribe had picked this up and wanted to read it and stood still, but in the darkness of the night he could not decipher the handwriting and put the letter under his gown’[6] It remains unclear whether the accused and the author of the verse are one and the same person.[7]

This episode can be associated with an impression of the woodcut in the Prints and Drawings Cabinet in Dresden (fig. 4), which shows Luther’s portrait with an inscription in red chalk running around it that on the whole appears to correspond with the text cited by Lederer.[8] Moreover, on the reverse the sheet exhibits one vertical and three horizontal folds with dirty edges, indicating that the sheet was cross-folded to an eighth of its actual size and therefore would have fitted into a coat pocket.[9] Accordingly it is conceivable that the sheet in Dresden, which also exhibits a watermark[10] that was in circulation by 1522, is the very one referred to by Gortler as the ‘letter with a printed picture […], around which there were many rhymes written in red chalk’ and as such can be dated to just before the 1. April 1522.[11]

A date of 1522 for the ‘Junker-Jörg’ woodcut is also suggested by an external reference to the subscriptio on edition A. The quatrain ‘Quęsitus toties, toties tibi Rhoma petitus || En ego per Christum viuo Lutherus adhuc || Vna mihi spes est, quo non fraudabor, Iesus || Hunc mihi dum teneam, perfida Rhoma vale’ is worded in exactly the same way in Wolfgang Reichart‘s (1486-1546/7) handwritten Epistolarium.[12] The municipal doctor from Ulm is one of the earliest[13] supporters of the reformation movement and was in regular correspondence with Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon through his friend Johannes Magenbuch (1500–1555)[14], who began his studies in Wittenberg in April 1518. The context within the epistolarium indicates that the poem entitled ‘Lutherus de se ipso’ is from 1521-1523[15], because it appears between two poems on the death of Pope Leo X (1 Dec. 1521)[16] and two other poems about portraits of Luther (De imagine Lutheri and Aliud) from 1523. Even Luther himself felt that his survival stood in stark contrast to the sudden death of Pope Leo X.[17]

Since for stylistic reasons Reichart cannot be the author [18] and moreover it is hard to explain why a poem by him would be printed in Wittenberg in the form of a personal statement by Luther, it can be assumed that he took the text from pamphlets.[19] Such an impression could have been available to Reichart[20] at the earliest after September 1522[21], probably before May 1523 and definitely before 1535.[22]

In addition, Cranach’s woodcut was taken up by Hans Sebald Beham (fig. 5) and in its first state (II.D3.1) has a xylographic inscription with the date 1522, which corresponds with the suggested first appearance of Cranach’s woodcut. Beham’s design is a mirror image of the prototype, and Beham has increased it to a half-length figure that corresponds with the composition in the Weimar painting. However, he did choose a different position for the hands and the sword. The woodcut picks up the main compositional lines in the face such as the cheeks, the forehead the contours of the nose as well as the distance between the eyes, however it does not take over the exact form of the other elements. The second state of Beham’s printing block, that has been considerable cropped on three sides, possibly due to damage, was deployed in at least two further printing campaigns (II.D3.2), which on the basis of the watermarks found on the impressions can be dated to the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17thcentury.[23]

It follows that depictions of Luther as ‘Junker Jörg’ were already in circulation in printed form before 1 April 1522 and in painted form possibly as early as November 1522 and definitely by February 1523.

Observation on the creative process

Although the layer structure and execution of the paintings in Leipzig (II.M1) and Weimar (II.M2) differ,[24] their underdrawings are very similar: both are executed with a brush in a blackish, fluid medium using very few lines and they correspond in shape as well as absolute size (fig. 6). The underdrawings of both paintings exhibit two different types of line. In addition to the quite rapidly applied freehand brushstrokes found particularly in the hair and fingers there are thinner, somewhat shaky lines employed for the facial features. These may have been produced by going over an initial design that is not visible in the infrared reflectogram.[25] The underdrawing also corresponds almost exactly with the shape and size of Lucas Cranach’s woodcut (fig. 7 and 8). A fine, light line can be detected at the centre of the printed line on all of the impressions from the woodcut that were examined. It can be interpreted as a mark from a scribe that was used to transfer the design to the block. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the two paintings and the woodcut relied on the same prototype to render Luther’s most characteristic features as recognizable as possible both in printed and painted media. The woodcut was not required to produce the painting nor was the painting necessary to produce the woodcut.

In contrast the woodcut itself was used as a template for the other two printed works in Group II (II.D2 as well as II.D3). When the first edition was published it was recut in the same format and faithfully replicated down to the last detail by an unknown artist (II.D2). [1] A unique impression of this version survives in the British Museum in London (fig. 9) and like Edition A (however with a different typeface) bears the typographic name ‚Lutherus‘ above the sitter. It would be almost impossible to produce this woodcut without transferring the prototype directly. Given the circumstances it is remarkable that Lucas Cranach’s original is not mirrored horizontally in the woodcut.[2] Evidently here additional care was taken to transfer the lines from the original to the new woodblock both in accurate detail and the right way round.

Reason for the creation of the image

After Luther left the Diet of Worms on the 26 April 1521 and was taken to safety in the Wartburg by supposed adversaries in a simulated abduction on the 4 May confusion about his fate continued to prevail in the Empire. News about the ambush on Luther spread within a very short time. As early as seven days later the news had reached Worms, 13 days later Dürer, who was in Antwerp at the time, had also been informed.[3] In his frequently cited diary entry he expressed doubts as to whether Luther had survived[4], and during the course of writing came to the obvious conclusion that Luther was dead.[5] This fear was also raised by the author of ‘Acta et res gestae’, a pro-lutheran description of events at the Diet of Worms, which may have been published immediately after, when in the last section after the description of Luther’s departure from Worms he asks God to bestow on him a long life.[6]

Of course it did not remain a secret that Luther had survived: by the 16 May the state council of Castile was informed about it,[7] and by June numerous letters and documents written by him left the Wartburg; although initially confidential, many of these had also been published no later than July.[8] Accordingly, a new portrait of the Reformer would serve not only to make clear to the general public within the empire that Luther had survived, but above all his continued readiness to oppose the Roman Catholic Church.

Exactly that is communicated by the printed Latin quatrain beneath the portrait of the first edition, which can be translated as: ‘Though so often sought and persecuted by Rome, I, Luther, still live thanks to Jesus Christ. I have only one hope, which will not disappoint me: Jesus. As long as I trust in Him, farewell perfidious Rome!’[9] In this spirit Luther wrote to Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg from the Wartburg on the 1 December 1521: ‘Your Electoral Grace just do not think that Luther is dead. He will freely and merrily insist on the God who humbled the Pope’.[10] The background of the woodcut is of significance in this context particularly as this is the only portrait by Cranach that shows the sitter in the open air.

The striking association of Luther with a knightly figure in a portrait is already documented at the beginning of 1521. As was explained in the text about Portrait Group I a large format pamphlet combining the portraits of Luther and Ulrich of Hutten is documented in Worms on the 8 February 1521.[11] Hutten[12], whose right hand rests on the hilt of a sword, appears here in armour together with Luther as a monk on a pamphlet that is dedicated to them as, ‘the champions of Christian freedom’.[13] Hutten’s ‘Gesprächbüchlein’, which was published after the 1 May 1521 by Schott in Strasbourg takes this up in an illustration by Hans Baldung Grien on the title page,[14] in which the monk and knight are also united as full-length figures. That this is intended to carry the message of Luther and Hutten as comrades in arms against Rome is shown by a symbolic satire from Sélestat in Alsace, published on 17 March 1521, in which Papists attached printed portraits of Luther and Hutten together to the posts of the municipal gallows.[15] Unlike Cranach’s woodcut the surviving paintings as well as the woodcut by Beham show Luther in his disguise complete with sword. The attributes in these depictions of Luther explicitly refer to the earlier idea of the champion of Christian Freedom[16] or rather focus it now solely on the figure of Luther. In addition a further idea is also embraced in the figure of ‘Junker Jörg’, one which Erasmus with his ‘Enchiridion militis christiani’ had already introduced into the canon of humanism in 1503, a text that was translated into German only a year before the first appearance of the ‘Junker Jörg’ representations.[17]    

The extent to which ‘Junker Jörg’ was accepted as a form of visual journalism can only be roughly reconstructed. Two book illustrations from anti-Lutheran texts[18] present Luther as a provocateur in armour with sword and tonsure, without it being possible to say with certainty whether this is a direct reference.