Around 1505 -1550 · Shutters, saints and reform

Stephen, Ursula, Maurice and Mary Magdalene from the Pfirtscher altarpiece show how Cranach organizes a community of saints through movable panels, attributes and liturgy.

Cranach's altarpieces cover his Catholic career and then the confessional transformation of Saxony. Pfirtscher's altarpiece aligns Stephen, Ursula, Maurice, Mary Magdalene, Martin and Erasmus around a Christ of sorrow. Each saint recognizes himself by his attribute and by a costume which brings together sacred antiquity and contemporary courtship. The altarpieces of Prague, Naumburg, Zwickau, Feilitzsch and Torgau combine interior shutters, lapels, donors and central scenes. After the Reformation, Cranach also contributed to new programs where preaching, sacraments and local community replaced certain old structures. After the Reformation, Cranach also contributed to new programs where preaching, sacraments and local community replaced certain old structures. Reading an isolated panel therefore requires rediscovering one's position and sound open or closed state. The selection "Retables of Lucas Cranach the Elder" notably compares Altarpiece of Pfirtscher: Saint Stephen and Altarpiece of Pfirtscher: Saint Ursula. Its reading favors space.

The Cranach altarpiece is an architecture of images: each saint changes meaning depending on the neighborhood, the hinge and the liturgical moment when the whole opens.