Cranach. The Other Renaissance

The exhibition aims to explore an issue that is still contested today, namely the relationship between Cranach's work and Renaissance art. On the one hand, it is clear that Cranach’s art develops in a way that is fundamentally different from the "Italian" classical norm; on the other hand, there is an undeniable iconographic and semantic convergence between the how Cranach chose to portray some of his subjects and the styles of Italian painters such as Bartolomeo Veneto, Francesco Francia, Bacchiacca, Perugino, Vincenzo Catena, Palma il Vecchio, Andrea Solario, Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo de 'Barbari (his predecessor as a painter at the court of Frederick the Wise). The historic meeting that took place in Augsburg, in 1550, between Tiziano, the greatest portraitist of the Habsburgs, and Cranach, court painter at three successive courts of Saxony, emphasized their differences rather than their similarities. The exhibition is curated by Bernard Aikema.