St. Christopher

Lucas Cranach the Elder, a member of a prominent German family of Renaissance artists, spent much of his career as court artist to the Electors of Saxony. A gifted painter, Cranach was also an innovative printmaker who helped to pioneer the chiaroscuro woodcut technique shown here. This image of Saint Christopher carrying the infant Christ across the river is one of the first woodcuts to be printed in color. The creation of the work involved two printing blocks, one that carried the black lines of the design and a second that bore the ocher pigment. This novel method aimed to reproduce the look of pen-and-ink drawings with washes that were popular in the early 16th century.