Cleveland Museum of Art
The Baptism of Christ
Lucas CranachLinkedCulture matchlcp-bd6bd70e25f3
- Date
- 1530s
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Culture
- Germany
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 130377
What the image shows
A religious scene depicting a figure being baptized in a river, with a divine figure above and a cityscape in the background.
Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
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.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Charles E. Roseman in memory of Charles E. Roseman Jr.
- Provenance
- Charles E. Roseman, Jr., Cleveland, by gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1953.
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