Portrait of Johann Friedrich I, the Magnanimous, Elector of Saxony

The young man in the fur-trimmed coat had just become one of the most powerful princes in the Holy Roman Empire. Johann Friedrich became Elector of Saxony in 1532, when his father died, and Cranach painted this likeness the year after, in 1533. He was Luther's protector, the ruler who shielded the reformer and paid for the new church in his lands, and Cranach served as his court painter. In 1533 his position looked secure. It did not last. In 1547 the emperor Charles V beat his army at Mühlberg, took the electoral title from him and held him prisoner for five years. This portrait catches him well before any of that, in the first year of a rule he expected to keep.