From Vision to Testimony: Cranach's Weimar Altarpiece

Abstract

This article analyzes how the Weimar Altarpiece by Cranach the Elder and Cranach the Younger interprets evangelical (Lutheran) belief and practice. The Weimar Altarpiece redefines the relationships between human and holy, or, more specifically, the pictorial channels through which people approached God. By employing new, evangelical iconography in the format of the traditional retable, the Weimar Altarpiece transformed the function of a familiar pictorial type, adapting it to an evangelical context. The proximity of human and holy figures in the central panel, familiar from earlier religious painting, indicates a freshly defined relationship between viewer and image. The retable demonstrates evangelical salvation as the experience of the donor, viewer, and the artist himself. The Weimar Altarpiece connects the two-dimensional image and the experience of the viewer in radically new ways, marking the convergence of testimony and didacticism which are the defining features of evangelical art.