Cranach d. J., Lukas - Schule Lot n° 6003

School. The old man in love. Oil on wood. 21,3 x 16,7 cm. Based on an apparently great commercial success, the pictorial theme of the unequal couple became one of the most repeated themes of the Cranach workshop. The digital Corpus Cranach currently lists 129 works under this group of works alone. Sixteen versions are known of the present variant, in which the wealthy old man puts a golden ring on the young woman's little finger while she clasps his shoulder with her right arm. They all probably go back to a prototype by the hand of Cranach the Elder, which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Inv. No. GG 895). This is dated around 1530/40 and is also quite similar in dimensions (19.5 x 14.5 cm). The subject of the painting can be traced back to antiquity; north of the Alps, Jacopo de Barbari, Cranach's predecessor in the office of court painter in Wittenberg, was probably the first to depict it. The eminent scholar and humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam anticipates the pictorial theme in his famous satire "In Praise of Folly" (1509), poking fun at those older, toothless, white-haired men who propose marriage to young women. The young woman in Cranach the Elder's version is dressed in the latest fashion, her carefully coiffed hair is encircled by a hairnet, and she wears valuable neck jewelry. Their gazes, however, do not meet. While he may be thinking in anticipation of one of the nights to come, in her imagination she already seems to be in a promising future after his passing.