The Baptism of Christ (1530s): Art, History and Details

The Baptism of Christ (1530s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lucas Cranach (German, 1472–1553).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Painted in minute detail, Cranach’s majestic scene includes elements characteristic of landscapes in 16th-century German art: verdant forest, hilltop city, and distant mountains. A close associate of Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Cranach adapted Christian imagery to reflect Luther’s belief that religious art must narrate scripture. The Gospels describe Christ’s baptism with the heavens opening, a dove descending, and a voice saying, “Here is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased,” which Cranach painted in Latin directly onto the clouds.

Object facts

• Title: The Baptism of Christ
• Date: 1530s
• Creator attribution: Lucas Cranach (German, 1472–1553)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 24.4 x 29.2 x 5.1 cm (9 5/8 x 11 1/2 x 2 in.); Unframed: 15 x 20.5 cm (5 7/8 x 8 1/16 in.)
• Collection: P - German before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1953.143

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Charles E. Roseman in memory of Charles E. Roseman Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.
• Cranach, Lucas, Lucas Cranach, and Michael Hofbauer. Corpus Cranach: Lucas Cranach I und Lucas Cranach II : Verzeichnis der Gemälde unter Berücksichtigung von Werkstattumfeld und Epigonen. Heidelberg, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.