The Stag Hunt of the Elector Frederic the Wise (1463-1525) of Saxony

About this work

The hunting scene is one of the paintings Cranach executed to document the important "sports" events of the aristocracy, for instance tournaments or, as here, hunting. The idea was to document the occasion as a memorable historical event. There are several similar pictures of the hunt by Cranach in which the most important participants can be identified and where a castle in the background typically indicates where the hunt took place. However, that is not the case here. Neither the participants nor the venue can be determined with certainty. It might be possible to see the Copenhagen picture as a provisional schemata for these hunting scenes, all of which are made to the same pattern. So in subsequent variants the workshop could add the relevant figures’ "masks" as needed. In the case of all the variants, however, an obvious question has to be asked, for the pictures are surprisingly unrealistic in tone, seeming almost naïve in their schematic treatment of landscape and figures. In this, they certainly represent a striking contrast especially to Cranach’s famed skill as an animal painter and his supremely convincing landscape paintings from the time of the Danube School. Why did…