Portrait of John the Steadfast, Elector of Saxony

In 1526 the man in this portrait had just become the most powerful Protestant prince in the Empire. John of Saxony had inherited the electorate the year before, when his brother Frederick the Wise died, and unlike his cautious brother he made no secret of where he stood. That same year he joined Philip of Hesse to form the first defensive league of princes who had broken with Rome. Cranach was the court painter in Wittenberg, the town where Luther taught, and bust-length likenesses like this one served almost as official images of the ruling house. Later ages called this elector 'the Steadfast' for holding that line to the very end. He lived to see the Augsburg Confession, the founding statement of the Lutheran faith, read out before the emperor in 1530, and died two years after that.