MASP

Lucas Cranach was an important representative of the German Renaissance. The name Cranach comes from the city where he was born, Kronach, currently in Germany. He studied in his father’s printmaking studio and on trips. In 1501 he set up residence in Vienna. In the court of Emperor Maximilian I, he became renowned by introducing to German art a new way of portraying couples using two panels united by a symbolic landscape in the background. In 1504, Cranach was invited in Wittenberg to be the official painter of the court of Duke Frederick III of Saxony, protector of the Protestant leader Martin Luther (1483-1546). Cranach became a close friend of the religious reformer and painted various portraits of him and his main coreligionists. Upon becoming the head of a large studio, he absorbed the compositional and intellectual model of Italian painting, renouncing the expressive intensity of his first phase. Portrait of a Young Aristocrat — A Young Fiancé of the Rava Family (1539) presents the figure with the family coat of arms on his ring and with a crown of red carnations, symbolizing that he was engaged to be married. It could, therefore, be a canvas executed on the occasion of a marriage, when families of high position exchanged portraits with one another. The short tuft of a beard demonstrates the youth of the handsome character; his left hand resting on a sword hilt might indicate a military vocation. The green background highlights the red tones in the heart- shaped jewel on his chest, on the feather in his crown, and on his buttoned and frilled collar.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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By Luciano Migliaccio
According to a statement by the former owners, the portrait is of a Duke of Saxony. Bardi (1963, p. 210) identifies the coat of arms on the ring as that of the Rava family from Meissen. The young man is probably engaged to be married, because of the crown of red carnations which he is wearing in his hair, according to 16th-century German custom. Engagement gave the chance to exchange portraits between well-born couples. The Portrait of a Young Aristocrat – A Young Fiancé of the Rava Family was accepted as being by Lucas Cranach following the cataloguing of Friedländer and Rosenberg in 1932 (1932, n. 339) an attribution that has never since been questioned. This is quite uncommon, since in the painter’s studio it was very usual to make copies of the more famous portraits that the master had painted, such as those of Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora. With Cranach’s work we have to differentiate between portraits intended for a wider public, showing important political and cultural figures such as Luther and another leader of the Reformation, Melanchthon, and portraits for private clients. Among these latter the likeness and individuality of the sitter are achieved by means of acute physical observation and psychological insight that are evidence of a moral conscience permeated with Erasmian humanism. This quality is evident in Masp’s Young Aristocrat, which can be considered one of the best examples of Cranach’s portraiture, influenced by Dürer’s early auto-portraits: the decorations on the clothing, the red crown and feather, the elegant, frivolous ruff, the large heart-shaped jewel, probably red enamel and gold, in the center of his chest, the pose with the hand placed ostentatiously on the hilt of his dagger, at the same level as his sexual organs, all emphasizing at the same time the young man’s desire to assert himself and his adolescent insecurity.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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