La Crucifixion

Lucas Cranach ran the busiest workshop in Wittenberg, the Saxon town where Martin Luther had posted his complaints against the Church 15 years before this panel was painted. Cranach was Luther's friend and portraitist, working at the very centre of the Reformation, and this small Crucifixion presses one Lutheran point: that faith in Christ's sacrifice alone reconciles people to God. The usual mourners grieve on one side while soldiers gamble for his clothes on the other. The pointed touch is the little group behind the cross, a monk, a cardinal, and a turbaned Turk stood together as the unenlightened, a dig at the old Church from a man in Luther's camp.