Stag Hunt

Part of Cranach's job as court painter was to record how the Saxon princes amused themselves, and few amusements mattered more than the hunt. This panel, painted around 1529, looks down on a stretch of wooded riverbank from above, almost like a map. Beaters and dogs have driven a herd of red deer down to a bend in the water, where the animals have nowhere to go but in, and the noble hunters wait on the near bank with crossbows as the deer swim across. It was a real method, a court spectacle staged for the ruler and his guests rather than a chase for food. Cranach worked the individual hunters in with care, so the picture doubles as a record of who was on the water that day.