Portrait of Martin Luther

By 1529 Martin Luther was a married man, and this panel was painted partly to say so. Four years earlier the monk whose protest had split the Western church wed Katharina von Bora, a former nun, and Cranach's Wittenberg workshop turned the couple into a matched pair of portraits. This is Luther's half. He faces to his left, toward the companion panel of his wife, wearing the dark coat of a preacher, the monk's habit gone. In the upper corner sits the date, 1529, beside a small winged serpent, the mark the workshop used in place of a signature. Across the panel runs a line from the prophet Isaiah in Latin: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.