Luther as an Augustinian Friar, with Cap

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Perhaps Lucas Cranach’s most famous and most copied print, this profile portrait of Martin Luther was an accurate likeness; the artist and the Reformer were friends. Luther appears in his doctoral cap, as he taught at the University of Wittenberg. Possibly made to commemorate the scholar’s radical performance at the Diet of Worms, the print circulated when Luther was presumed dead but was actually in hiding, translating the New Testament into German. The Latin inscription translates as, “Lucas’s work is this picture of Luther’s mortal form; but he himself expressed his spirit’s eternal form,” and closes with Cranach’s flying serpent insignia.

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