Round Portrait of Katharina von Bora, Wife of Martin Luther

The woman on this small roundel had, two years before it was painted, slipped out of a convent hidden in a merchant's wagon among the herring barrels. Katharina von Bora was one of a group of nuns who left the cloister at Nimbschen in 1523 after reading Luther's writings, and by 1525 she had married Luther himself. Cranach shows her at about 26, in the plain white cap and dark dress of a respectable Saxon wife rather than a saint or a noblewoman. The panel is a pendant to the one of her husband, the two discs made together as a wedding keepsake. Cranach's workshop repeated the pair many times over the following years, which is why versions of Katharina's likeness survive in collections across Europe today.