Lukas Spielhausen

The man in the black and yellow stripes was a lawyer at the Saxon court, and we know his name from the ring on his finger. The letters LS point to Lukas Spielhausen, an official in the service of the Elector of Saxony, about 39 when Cranach painted him in 1532. Those were the years when Cranach's Wittenberg workshop was turning out portraits of the Reformation's leading men, Martin Luther and his allies, at a court that had thrown in its lot with the new religion. Spielhausen sits among that company, dressed in the striped livery of high court rank. Look at the collar and the cap, where Cranach dragged pale yellow in fine parallel strokes to fake the glint of gold embroidery.