Zoom in to the level of pigments: Digital Cranach archive is online
Photo: Heydenreich/CDA/Kunstmuseum Basel Close-up: Detail from the portrait of a praying young woman, Lucas Cranach the Elder (around 1508).A new online archive for the works of the artist Lucas Cranach enables to take totally new looks at the works of the "painter of the Reformation". The first stage of the Digital Cranach Archive ("Digitales Cranach-Archiv", CDA) is now online under www.lucascranach.org. It contains the data of ca. 400 paintings, as well as those of 5000 images and 2000 pages of text.The digital archive has been designed to be a working platform for scholars as well as an information portal for the general public. Users can zoom into paintings almost down to the pigment level and see details that can not be perceived with the bare eye in the museum. The project was started in 2009 and is an initiative of the Foundation Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf and the Institute of Restoration and Conservation Science of the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, in co-operation with numerous other partners.
Photo: Heydenreich/cdaLucas Cranach the Elder and Workshop, "The unlikely couple" (ca. 1530).The works in the archive are complemented with information about the commissioners, places and dates of origin, draft versions and different technical results of the current state of research. According to the initiators, the site offers a wealth of information, which has been hitherto unavailable, or hardly accessible, even to Cranach scholars.Complete German Bible illustrated with woodcuts by Cranach
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) belongs – together with Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger – to the most eminent painters and illustrators of the German Renaissance. In spite of a large number of secular painting, Lucas Cranach is today primarily known as painter of the Reformation. He portrait many of the Wittenberg Reformers, illustrated their treatises and had the so-called September Testament printed in 1522 in his print shop. The Complete German Bible, printed in 1534, was also adorned with woodcuts from the Cranach workshop. Thus, the painter made a vital contribution to the success of the Reformation.
At the same time he was one of the most productive and innovative artists of his time. His contemporaries were impressed by the speed of his productions. Worldwide, more than 1500 paintings from the Cranach workshop have been preserved, and they represent only a fraction of the original output. A large number of the artworks have not yet been scientifically examined. According to the organisers of the Digital Cranach Archive, the Cranach portfolio still poses a lot of questions and tasks to art history research – in spite of the large efforts of many generations of Cranach scholars to develop a deeper understanding of Cranach's art and to comprehend his widely varied oevre of paintings, drawings and prints.
The painting process made visible
According to its operators, the Digital Cranach Archive contains a lot of additional and new information, for example about the origin of the pictures. For example, drafts that were painted over, and have now been made visible, show the first composition of the painter and the development of the painting process.
Photo: Heydenreich/cdaLucas Cranach the Elder "Eva", detail of an infrared reflectography. It is known that Cranach established a very well-organised workshop in Wittenberg, where successful designs were kept and re-used for later commissions. Cranach's students and assistants were subject to a strict discipline and worked according to a standardised style. This practise makes it necessary for contemporary research to exactly examine how the work was shared between the master and his assistants. Infrared photographs sometimes show very different handwritings in the signatures. This is how a portrait of Melanchthon could now be definitely allocated to Cranach the Younger.
During the next three years, the project team of the Digital Cranach Archive plans to further develop the research instruments, to expand the database, and to significantly expand the content of the platform. Amongst other material, Cranach's account books have been preserved, which helps to bring the information together on a timeline. "In three year's time, there will definitely be much more than 1000 paintings in the Digital Archive", predicts the project manager, Gunnar Heydenreich. "On the long term run, we want to work together in order to create a new digital catalogue of works, which is not exclusively based on assessments of stylistic criticism, but takes new research results from art technology and natural science into account as well", explained the Professor for the restoration of modern and contemporary art at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne.
The archive shall attract visitors to the museum
To the 20 partners of the project belong museums in Europe and the U.S.A., for example the State Museums of Berlin, the Bavarian State Painting Collections, the Museum of Art History in Vienna, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum New York and the National Gallery in London. The Andrew Mellon Foundation, which already supported the two-year development of the web-based Digital Cranach Archive with 270,000 Dollar, will provide 740,000 Dollar for the further expansion during the next three years.
None of the partners is afraid that somebody might be held back from visiting a museum by the use of the Digital Cranach Archive. Quite the opposite: they are sure that the online access to the paintings will attract visitors, because they will want to know more about the works.
The Digital Cranach Archive can be used for free and without registration at www.lucascranach.org in German and in English.
