The Mocking of Christ

This composition by Lucas Cranach I is now only known through three versions, all of similar dimensions, of which this is one. The first is in the Schlossmuseum, Weimar (M.J. Friedländer and J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, p. 143, no. 371A), the second is in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. no. 1139). Ludwig Meyer (private correspondence) dates the present lot to the middle of the 16th Century, and gives it to an artist working in Saxony, but outside Cranach's workshop. The artist who signed himself 'HE WE..' has not yet been identified.