The Louvre’s appeal to purchase Cranach’s painting

The Louvre asks  donors to help buy a masterpiece of Lucas Cranach, The Three Graces.

Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre Museum, says that they have assembled three-quarters of the sum needed. The painting remained in private collections since its creation in the sixteenth century and has been kept since 1932 by the same owner in France. Director of Paintings at the Louvre Vincent Pomarède says: “It is a work at the same time fun, troubling, mysterious, and extremely sensual.”

The price of the small painting is four million euro, and the Louvre is short of  one million euro. Another Cranach’s painting The Three Graces is at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in Kansas City, USA.

Hans Baldung Grien (1484-85 – 1545)

German Renaissance painter and graphic artist Hans Baldung Grien dedicated several drawings and prints to the imaginary world of witchcraft.

Baldung moved to Nuremberg sometime in 1503 and  became a member of Albrecht Dürer’s workshop. There he acquired the nickname “Grien”, probably because in the reference of his use of the color green – many of his religious scenes are bathed in a weird, supernatural glow.

Hans Baldung Grien was Dürer’s most inventive and talented disciple, who nonetheless achieved a distinctive style.  Baldung’s work was expressionistic, imaginative and vividly colorful.  His output was varied and extensive, including religious works, allegories and mythologies, portraits, designs for stained glass and tapestries, and a large body of graphic work, particularly book illustrations.  Baldung’s oeuvre consists of approximately 90 paintings and altarpieces, about 350 drawings and 180 woodcuts and book illustrations.  (artknowledgenews.com)