Portrait d'une aristocrate saxonne

Cranach ran the busiest workshop in Saxony as court painter at Wittenberg, the same town where his friend Martin Luther had set the Reformation going. This is one of the countless well-dressed court women his shop turned out, painted in 1534. We no longer know her name, but she left two clues. A jewelled pendant on her chest carries a tiny portrait of John Frederick, the Elector of Saxony and Luther's protector, worn the way you might wear a badge of allegiance. And a single letter W is tucked into her elaborate hairnet, its meaning now lost. Cranach loads her with rings and heavy gold chains, the stacked jewellery that signalled a married woman near the top of Saxon society.