Venus standing in a landscape 1529

Lucas Cranach the Elder painted this small panel of Venus in a landscape around the year 1530, using oil paint on wood. He was working in Wittenberg, Germany, at the heart of the Protestant Reformation, and his paintings were intended for an educated, courtly audience. Cranach was very interested in surface quality; notice the pale flesh tones of Venus herself, set against the dark, almost impenetrable forest behind her, and the watery landscape to the right. The work has an extraordinary graphic quality, partly due to Cranach's expertise as a printmaker, but the application of paint is also distinctive. The thinness of the paint layers makes the figure seem almost translucent. Look closely, and you’ll also notice the way that Cranach has carefully described Venus’s jewelry, and the strange, transparent veil that she uses to cover herself. This emphasis on surface, as well as the unusual composition, makes Cranach’s painting especially memorable. He reminds us that art can be an exquisite, expertly crafted commodity, as well as a vehicle for the imagination.