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Your galleryPortrait of Magdalena of Saxony, Wife of Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg
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Look from the wide red hat and its white plumes down to the heavy gold chains, the fur-lined gown and the rings on her folded hands.
As court painter to the Electors of Saxony, Cranach developed a portrait style that showed off his sitters’ princely rank through rich clothes and jewelry. Such detail later made it possible to identify the sitter: a signet ring in the matching portrait of her husband, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, shows that she is the Saxon princess Magdalena. A watercolor of her in the same patterned dress suggests that Cranach painted her on a visit to Berlin around 1529.
Oil on panel · 59.8 × 41.6 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Northern Renaissance
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Portrait of Magdalena of Saxony, Wife of Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg
- Artist
- Lucas Cranach the Elder (German, 1472–1553)
- Date
- c. 1529
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 59.8 × 41.6 cm (23 9/16 × 16 3/8 in.); Framed: 69.3 × 50.8 × 5.8 cm (27 1/4 × 20 × 2 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Kate S. Buckingham
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1472–1553
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.