Lucas Cranach's "Saint Maurice"

With his regal bearing, luxurious silver armor, and large plumed had, the black soldier in "Saint Maurice" is a commanding presence among the Metropolitan Museum's significant collection of works by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) and his workshop. The whereabouts of the painting had been unknown since it was offered for sale in 1946 at the Parke-Bernet auction, and its reappearance in 2005 caught the museum by surprise. It had been in various private collections, the last of which was within walking distance of the Metropolitan in an apartment on Fifth Avenue. This fact remained hidden, however, until its most recent owner, Mrs. Eva F. Kollsman, declared that she wished to bequeath the painting to the Met upon her death. Since 2005, when the painting arrived at the museum, scholarly research and technical examination have provided new insights into the work itself and its historical context. As a result, "Saint Maurice has now been revealed as an important and complex work of German Renaissance art, produced in the tumultuous years of the Reformation and charged with religious and political meaning. [Publication Abstract]