Cranach at the Musée du Luxembourg

Now out of private hands and managed by the French institution the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the charming Musée du Luxembourg reopened last month with this exhibition Cranach in his Time, dedicated to one of the major artists of the German Renaissance. Lucas Cranach (c. 1472-1553) was a prolific, versatile painter whose career spanned the first half of the 16th century. The exhibition, a first for Paris, emphasises the European dimension of Cranach’s art, which was not only influenced by the works of Dürer, whose engravings were widely disseminated, but also by Flemish and Italian artists. A further section of the exhibition is devoted to his representation of the nude. With his highly sensual, female figures, he developed a canon of beauty at odds with the classical ideal of the Renaissance. But above all, the exhibition emphasises the richness and originality of Cranach’s artistic career – a career punctuated by significant encounters with leading political and religious figures of the time – a period shaken by the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation.
Until 23 May.
Musée du Luxembourg, 19 rue de Vaugirard, 6th. www.museeduluxembourg.fr/

The nymph of the spring