Presumed Portrait of Magdalena Luther

When the Louvre bought this small beech panel in 1910 from the Paris dealers Léonce and Paul Rosenberg, it came simply as a portrait of a little girl by Cranach. The name she carries now, Magdalena Luther, rests on tradition, and the museum's English title calls the portrait presumed.

If it is her, the dates weigh on the picture. The Louvre places it between 1539 and 1542. Magdalena, the daughter of the reformer Martin Luther, was born in 1529 and died of a fever in Wittenberg on 20 September 1542, aged 13, in her father's arms. Luther's Table Talk, the notes his students kept of his conversation, records him praying at her bedside. He loved her very much, he said, but if it was God's will to take her, he would be glad to know she was with Him.