Lot Essay
We are grateful to Ludwig Meyer, Archiv fr Kunstgeschicte, Munich, for confirming the attribution to Lucas Cranach II. He compares the present painting to the following works by the artist: The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, dated 1543, in the Gemldegalerie, Dresden; The Altar of the Reformation in the town church of Wittenberg, dated on the altar frame 1547; an Allegory of the Virtues, dated 1548, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; and two versions of A reclining Water Nymph, in the Hessisches Landesmueum, Kassel, and in the Lehman Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (M.J. Friedlnder and J. Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, 1978, nos.403A and 403B).