SOME EARLY PICTURES OF LUTHER

H

AD Martin Luther lived nowadays his likeness would have adorned the front page of every newspaper, would have been displayed in many a shop window, and would have been flaunted on flags and borne on buttons by his followers. He himself might not have been averse to such publicity; indeed, the success of the popular, progressive movement known as the Reformation was largely due to the fact that its leader was the first man in history to exploit that mighty engine for moulding public opinion, the recently invented printing-press. Curiosity as to the appearance of a prominent man was no less keen then than it is now, and to gratify it, lacking the photograph and the half-tone, the arts of the wood-cutter and engraver were called

tist replied to the elector's chaplain, George Spalatin: "I beg your Reverence to express my warmest thanks to his Grace, and please commend to him the excellent Dr. Martin Luther, for the sake of the Christian truth which concerns us more than worldly riches

into service. Particularly at the time of the Diet of Worms, when the eyes of all Europe were fixed on the friar of Wittenberg trumpeting his message to the emperor and estates of Germany, portraits of the protagonist in the great drama were produced in profusion and rapidly bought up by an applauding people.

It is a pity that Albrecht Dürer never saw Luther, for had he done so we should now possess a portrait of the latter worthy of its subject. From the first Dürer was enthusiastic for the Reformation. But a few months after the revolt from Rome was started with the posting of the "Ninety-five Theses," the painter sent the Wittenberg professor some of his own etchings as a token of esteem. Early in 1520 their common patron, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, sent Dürer some of the reformer's pamphlets. The ar

and power, for temporal things pass away, but the truth lives forever. If God help me I will go to Dr. Luther and make his likeness in copper [i.e., engrave it] for a lasting memorial to the Christian man who has helped me out of great anguish. I beg your Reverence if Dr. Luther writes anything more in German please to send it to me at my expense."

But, as the desired opportunity never came, we are obliged to rely for our knowledge of Luther's appearance on the efforts of a lesser artist, Lucas Cranach. Of his early life nothing is known. In 1504, at the age of thirty-two, he burst into fame with his "Flight into Egypt," the first and also the greatest masterpiece from his brush. This achievement secured him an appointment as court painter to the Elector Frederick in the same year, when he at once settled at Wittenberg. Here, besides his profession, he drove the trades of printer, apothecary, goldsmith, and banker, gradually accumulating a large fortune and taking a leading place in the town, of which he was frequently burgomaster. How soon his friendship with Luther began after the latter's call to teach there in 1511 cannot be told. By 1520 they were so intimate that the professor stood godfather to the painter's daughter Anna. From the same year dates the first portrait, an etching, followed by two others in 1521. Thrice also did Cranach paint his famous fellow

ding, June 13, 1525, and the next year acted as sponsor for his first-born son, Hans. About the same time he lent Luther a sum of money, which was soon repaid. In later life their relations cooled. In 1539 the price of grain rose very high and Luther suspected

they are all, in fact, done by inferior artists working under his direction. At that time in Germany art was not so much the product of the individual as of the guild. Every town had its company of painters just as it had a craft of cloth-weavers. The little flying serpent which distinguishes the Cranach pictures was not so much the sign manual of the master as the trade-mark of his firm.

For many years the two distinguished Wittenbergers remained fast friends. Cranach was an honored guest at the reformer's wed

the painter of being one of a company of capitalists who had cornered the market. Against this monopoly he appealed with much feeling to the elector. Another cause estranged them still further in 1545. Cranach often illustrated the books of the reformers, and at this time was applied to by them for some caricatures of the pope. In one of these that dignitary was represented with an ass's head and a woman's body indecently exposed. Luther was not noted for the delicacy of his polemic against the Catholics, but this was too much even for him. "Master Lucas is a coarse painter," he commented; "he might have spared the female sex because God created woman and for the sake of our mothers. He could have depicted the pope in other forms worthy of him, even more diabolical."

Of all Cranach's portraits of the reformer the most interesting is the etching made by him early in 1521. The projecting brows, the prominent nose and chin, the powerful jaw and thick neck give a correct impression of the tremendous will of the man who successfully challenged the world. A number of copies from this plate were struck off, some of which were signed by Luther and forwarded on March 7 to Spalatin at Worms for distribution among his supporters at the Diet, before which he himself had just been summoned. This hitherto unnoticed fact proves that one of the arts by which public men to-day court popularity was not unknown four centuries ago.

Such special favors were necessarily limited in number, but the cheap wood-cuts of the people's hero were countless. The extent to which they were idolized was bitterly noticed by the nuncio to Germany, Jerome

said the poet, was threatening with his sword. A nobleman showed me one of these pictures, but I have not been able to get another." I have not come across the picture here described, but one very like it, taken from a contemporary work, may serve to illustrate his words.

If Aleander was unable to get a likeness of Luther at Worms, one of his Italian compatriots was not so unfortunate. Jerome de' Medici, ambassador of the Marquis of Mantua to the emperor, wrote from Worms, on April 16 and 19, full accounts of the heretic's appearance before the Diet. At the same time he purchased for the marchioness Isabella d'Este, the celebrated patroness of art, paintings of Luther and Erasmus. Cardinal Bembo saw them in Isabella's gallery in 1537, but it is practically certain that she acquired them sixteen years earlier. One reason for assuming this is that after 1525 the portrait of the reformer was almost always painted as a pendant either to his wife or to Melanchthon, whereas in earlier years he was paired with Erasmus or Hutten. Isabella's pictures cannot, unfortunately, be identified with the portraits of the reformer now to be seen at Florence and Milan, for these are of a later date, and depict not Luther and Erasmus but Luther and Catharine von Bora.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the likenesses of the reformer at Worms is a penand-ink sketch made on the spot by George Cuspinian, a canon of Würzburg, who had accompanied his bishop to the Diet. He was a great admirer of the Wittenberg professor, with whom he had a personal interview on the very day (April 18) of the great oration closing with the words traditionally reported: "Here I stand. I can no other. So help me God." Either at the interview, or more probably at the Diet itself, the canon made the sketch here reproduced, and forwarded it, with a personal letter from Luther, to his cousin John Cuspinian, the imperial councillor at Vienna. Both letter and portrait are preserved in the Viennese archives. The latter evinces little artistic ability, but has the deepest historic interest as having caught the greatest man of the age at the very crisis of his career. It is, as it were, a sort of snapshot of him taken at the moment he was uttering the words that thrilled the world.

Luther's portraits were exported not only to Italy and Austria but also to England.

The reformer's relations with Henry VIII were particularly close. A violent controversy in 1521 was followed by long negotiations in mutual efforts at reconciliation. Though these were but partially successful, each followed the career of the other with tense interest. When Luther died, February 18, 1546, Henry's agents at Bremen, Messrs. Brende and Brigantyn, promptly informed him of it. "Though it is no great matter," they deprecate, "yet because of the great fame of it in this country, we thought it but right to advertize your Majesty thereof.' This news, in a despatch of March 4, was confirmed by one of March 10 from the English agent at Antwerp to the secretary of state, Lord Paget, who had himself in former years visited Wittenberg and made the acquaintance of its celebrated professor. In June Dymmock was transferred to Bremen, where he came into contact with Protestants and heard much of the impending war between the emperor and his heretical subjects. In order to unite all members of the new church, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, its chiefs, sent forth a stirring appeal (July 4-6) to their comrades to stand fast by the faith. One of these exhortations, together with other tracts, came into the hands of Dymmock, who forwarded all of them on July 23 to Paget, and with them a colored wood-cut of the deceased leader. All of these are now preserved in the London Record Office; the wood-cut having been identified by me as the one sent by Dymmock. This gentleman wrote Paget that he was also forwarding "a provysye made by Martin Luther in his latter dayes." This prophecy is probably the Latin verse at the top of the wood-cut, with the German paraphrase below. The Latin-also to be read in hieroglyphics at the bottom of Cuspinian's sketch-is indeed by Luther and means: "Living I was thy plague, dying I will be thy death, O pope." Though the artist, "A. S.," cannot be identified, it is probable that the wood-cut came from Wittenberg with the tracts. Bearing the date 1546 it shows the prophet in his old age, the dove fluttering above him, to the right his sealthe heart, cross, and rose; on the desk in front of him some books, an hour-glass, death's head, inkstand, and quill. Though no artistic masterpiece, this picture is a historic document of uncommon interest.

PRESERVED SMITH.