DOI Heft:
No. 370 (January 1924)
DOI Artikel:Symons, Arthur: Speculations before pictures: Lucas Cranach
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21399#0041
SPECULATIONS BEFORE PIC-
TURES : LUCAS CRANACH. BY
ARTHUR SYMONS. 000
IN Budapest there is one of the finest
collections of the paintings of Lucas
Cranach (1472-1553). One is Salome with
the Head of John the Baptist. She is a little
German girl of fifteen, a blonde Gretchen
of his usual type, with little pointed chin
and chubby cheeks and blue eyes, and a
narrow long body; smiling with her red
lips with an almost infantile delight, yet
with indifference, as she comes forward
with the grey head bleeding on the platter,
with its sightless open eyes and open
mouth. Her hair is coiled into a heavily
embroidered coif, she wears a large red
hat, aside on her head, with eight white
ostrich feathers ; her bare neck is covered
with necklaces and coils of red-gold
chains ; her bodice and sleeves are richly
embroidered, tightened here and puffed
there, in the fashion of the period. And the
dear little person has just danced off the
head she carries, and it is not even a
memory to her, a child's play. 0 o
In Budapest there is a Cranach, the
St. Catherine, quite the loveliest of his
inventions ; as, for instance, the group in
the foreground, the Saint in her princess
attire receiving the ring of betrothal from
a child somewhat more anxious to con-
tinue eating the grapes he holds in his
left hand. It is full of quaint loveliness,
sweet faces and rich robes. The back-
ground is a new thing : a great bank of
blackness, over which a row of little angels
climb gaily out of the farther sky. On the
other side are rocks, hills and a castle.
There are three attendant figures of women,
one an old servant bringing a little basket
of roses, the others richly dressed. The
child is exquisitely childish. There is an
Italian sense of beauty.
In the Borghese there is a Venus and
Cupid, the daintiest of his slim naked
ladies. She wears a vast fashionable red
hat with vast ostrich feathers and a bead
necklace, otherwise nothing but a trans-
parent veil. Cupid holds a snake embraced,
and flies settle on the snake, on him, and
on the tree behind. There is exquisite
delicacy and queer feeling in this Venus ;
a shy, delicious person. 000
Cranach has the most delicate sense of
beauty of any German painter ; he is the
only one who does not mar his effects by
some gross or foolish extravagances of
taste. He does not go deep, but he has
his own subtle, slightly perverse sense of
things ; and he knows where to stop. He is
content with having made a picture, and
he can make a picture out of a single
woman's head, smiling, with sleepy re-
serve, and a doubtful innocence, from
among almost a weight of rich trappings,
which seem to imprison her delicately, as
clothes imprison a woman. She is smooth
and ruddy, with drooping narrow eyes, and
a mantle ; she is an idol, a vague heathen
deity, a bourgeoise Magdalen ; and she is
always and never the same ; and she is a
little weary, like Leonardo’s smiling wo-
men ; and a touch of painful and protesting
thought, which is the mere sense of her
sex and comes plaintively into her little
empty face. Note the voluptuous behead-
ing of a female saint among warriors in a
meadow. She kneels, a doll-like, pretty
creature, with plump white shoulders, off
which her dress is slipping, while the
headsman handles her masses of curled
hair, not ungently, drawing it out of the
way which the sword must go. There is
no consciousness in her face, and certainly
no saint-like exhalation ; there is horror in
the scene ; Cranach saw only a beautiful
woman, the plump shoulders, the dainty
armour of the knights, and the little curled
green plants in the field ; and, as always,
the sumptuous robes. 000
In the Munich Gallery, amongst the
Cranachs, there is a Lucretia, repro-
duced on the opposite page. Note its
astonishing contrast with the Differ, which
is so finished, so masterly, and so uninter-
esting, with its admirable flesh painting
and its foolish face. Cranach gives you the
usual young girl, with her smooth fresh
face, her orange gold hair, her necklace of
twisted gold links ; she has half stripped
off her red gown, with its delicately tinted
sleeves, yellow flushed with pink; she
draws aside her gown with an odd move-
ment, showing her vague legs queerly
crossed. Her face is gentle, suave, expres-
sionless almost: she drives in the dagger
gently. I know now what queer charm
draws you to this picture. 000
23
TURES : LUCAS CRANACH. BY
ARTHUR SYMONS. 000
IN Budapest there is one of the finest
collections of the paintings of Lucas
Cranach (1472-1553). One is Salome with
the Head of John the Baptist. She is a little
German girl of fifteen, a blonde Gretchen
of his usual type, with little pointed chin
and chubby cheeks and blue eyes, and a
narrow long body; smiling with her red
lips with an almost infantile delight, yet
with indifference, as she comes forward
with the grey head bleeding on the platter,
with its sightless open eyes and open
mouth. Her hair is coiled into a heavily
embroidered coif, she wears a large red
hat, aside on her head, with eight white
ostrich feathers ; her bare neck is covered
with necklaces and coils of red-gold
chains ; her bodice and sleeves are richly
embroidered, tightened here and puffed
there, in the fashion of the period. And the
dear little person has just danced off the
head she carries, and it is not even a
memory to her, a child's play. 0 o
In Budapest there is a Cranach, the
St. Catherine, quite the loveliest of his
inventions ; as, for instance, the group in
the foreground, the Saint in her princess
attire receiving the ring of betrothal from
a child somewhat more anxious to con-
tinue eating the grapes he holds in his
left hand. It is full of quaint loveliness,
sweet faces and rich robes. The back-
ground is a new thing : a great bank of
blackness, over which a row of little angels
climb gaily out of the farther sky. On the
other side are rocks, hills and a castle.
There are three attendant figures of women,
one an old servant bringing a little basket
of roses, the others richly dressed. The
child is exquisitely childish. There is an
Italian sense of beauty.
In the Borghese there is a Venus and
Cupid, the daintiest of his slim naked
ladies. She wears a vast fashionable red
hat with vast ostrich feathers and a bead
necklace, otherwise nothing but a trans-
parent veil. Cupid holds a snake embraced,
and flies settle on the snake, on him, and
on the tree behind. There is exquisite
delicacy and queer feeling in this Venus ;
a shy, delicious person. 000
Cranach has the most delicate sense of
beauty of any German painter ; he is the
only one who does not mar his effects by
some gross or foolish extravagances of
taste. He does not go deep, but he has
his own subtle, slightly perverse sense of
things ; and he knows where to stop. He is
content with having made a picture, and
he can make a picture out of a single
woman's head, smiling, with sleepy re-
serve, and a doubtful innocence, from
among almost a weight of rich trappings,
which seem to imprison her delicately, as
clothes imprison a woman. She is smooth
and ruddy, with drooping narrow eyes, and
a mantle ; she is an idol, a vague heathen
deity, a bourgeoise Magdalen ; and she is
always and never the same ; and she is a
little weary, like Leonardo’s smiling wo-
men ; and a touch of painful and protesting
thought, which is the mere sense of her
sex and comes plaintively into her little
empty face. Note the voluptuous behead-
ing of a female saint among warriors in a
meadow. She kneels, a doll-like, pretty
creature, with plump white shoulders, off
which her dress is slipping, while the
headsman handles her masses of curled
hair, not ungently, drawing it out of the
way which the sword must go. There is
no consciousness in her face, and certainly
no saint-like exhalation ; there is horror in
the scene ; Cranach saw only a beautiful
woman, the plump shoulders, the dainty
armour of the knights, and the little curled
green plants in the field ; and, as always,
the sumptuous robes. 000
In the Munich Gallery, amongst the
Cranachs, there is a Lucretia, repro-
duced on the opposite page. Note its
astonishing contrast with the Differ, which
is so finished, so masterly, and so uninter-
esting, with its admirable flesh painting
and its foolish face. Cranach gives you the
usual young girl, with her smooth fresh
face, her orange gold hair, her necklace of
twisted gold links ; she has half stripped
off her red gown, with its delicately tinted
sleeves, yellow flushed with pink; she
draws aside her gown with an odd move-
ment, showing her vague legs queerly
crossed. Her face is gentle, suave, expres-
sionless almost: she drives in the dagger
gently. I know now what queer charm
draws you to this picture. 000
23