• Cranach Digital Archive

About us

In October 2009, nine major museums in Europe and the United States began working together on a pilot project to establish methodologies for interdisciplinary collaborative research, sharing knowledge and providing access to art historical, technical and conservation information on paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the electronic environment. The project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of a larger initiative to develop new kinds of research tools to facilitate transmission of art historical and conservation information across institutions and international boarders in order to advance scholarship and learning. The Cranach Digital Archive serves to safeguard and provide access to documentary material in archives, it actively promotes collaborative research and it generates new high quality documentary material and tools to explore new research possibilities in the electronic environment.

The Case for the Cranach Digital Archive (cda)

One of the greatest and most versatile artists of sixteenth-century Europe, Lucas Cranach the Elder served as court painter to three successive Saxon electors for almost five decades, demonstrating extraordinary artistic creativity. He invented numerous pictorial narratives and iconographies to reflect the new age of Humanism and Protestant theology, and established one of the most efficient and productive workshops of his time. Today, more than 1,500 paintings by Cranach and his workshop are known, and they represent only a small fraction of the works originally produced.

Despite the best efforts of several generations of scholars to gain a deeper understanding of his art and to catalogue his widely dispersed oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and prints, Cranach still poses a considerable number of questions and challenges for future art historical research:

  • The only comprehensive research resource - the catalogue raisonné by Friedländer, Rosenberg - was last revised in 1979 and is now out of date. It lists approximately 1,000 paintings, but only 452 of them are illustrated. Reliable information about the oeuvre, let alone good photographic records of the works, many of which are housed in churches or private collections, is extremely difficult to assemble, and many works remain undocumented.
  • Although the systematic study of Cranach's materials and techniques in recent decades has generated new insights with regards to attribution, authenticity, dating, display and function, as well as changes in the appearance of his works only a fraction of this research has actually been published. In addition a considerable amount of new material continues to be generated much of it in digital form. However as yet there are no established mechanisms or collaborative research alternatives employing analogue technology through which it can be easily and reliably shared.
  • Cranach paintings are well represented in almost all major museums. This situation provides an ideal background for networked research. There is a highly motivated community of contributors and users in numerous museums who are interested in sharing large quantities of documentary material and in investing in the success of the cda.
  • The recent major Cranach exhibitions in Chemnitz (2006), Frankfurt/M. (2007), London (2008), Berlin (2009), Brussels (2010), Rome (2010), Paris (2011), and Munich (2011) were highly successful and attracted millions of visitors. They also raised many questions, and indicated the need for further research.
  • Recent improvements in both visible and infrared imaging technology now make it possible to capture and share high resolution images at an unprecedented level of clarity in the electronic environment: a particularly important consideration for Cranach scholarship, where comparison of micro details and close analysis of underdrawings are essential.

Given these considerations, it has become clear that an ever-growing digital repository of art historical and technological, conservation, and scientific information would be an especially appropriate resource for the study, understanding, and appreciation of this important artist.

The Cranach Digital Archive serves three main purposes:

  • Preservation
    The Cranach Digital Archive will provide an opportunity for long-term storage of documentary material from museum and private archives such as reports, X-radiographs, colour slides and digital born images. Such material, particularly in smaller museums and private archives, is in danger of being lost within a relatively short period of time.
  • Access
    The documentary material will be recorded, catalogued and commented to provide most efficient access in the electronic environment. The cda serves as a platform from which all information currently housed in different institutions can be made accessible to the scholarly public.
  • Research and Dissemination
    The cda not only provides access to historical documentary material and completed research but also encourages new forms of interdisciplinary scholarly research and teaching. The project staff is actively involved in generating new documentary material, such as dendrochronological analysis and digital IR-reflectograms. In the future, the cda could be linked with relevant projects (Wege zu Cranach, exhibitions projects etc.) that draw on the content in innovative and exploratory ways.

The Pilot Project Phase (2009 - 2011)

From October 2009 until September 2011 the Cranach Digital Archive aimed to establish methodologies for sharing documentation between institutions and across international borders, and to create new research tools to facilitate online study. The Cranach pilot project has built on lessons learnt from other Mellon pilot projects and tested and expanded the methodologies of these models in significant ways.

Results (October 2011)

1. Collaboration between museums
Partnerships were established with nine founding partners and 10 new associate partners:

Project organisers
  • Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • Cologne University of Applied Sciences
Founding partners
  • Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek and Doerner Institut, Munich
  • J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
  • Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
  • Kunstmuseum Basel
  • Metropolitan Museum, New York
  • National Gallery, London
  • Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
  • Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
  • Prof. Dr. Dieter Koepplin, Basel
  • Dr. Werner Schade, Berlin
  • Prof. Dr. Ingo Sandner, Dresden
Associate Partners
  • Anhaltische Gemälde-Galerie, Dessau
  • Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
  • Klassik Stiftung, Weimar
  • Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Coburg
  • Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
  • Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig
  • Stiftung Preußischer Schlösser und Gärten, Berlin-Brandenburg
  • Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
  • Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha
  • Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
  • These partners host about 520 Cranach paintings in their collections.
  • In addition, collaboration has begun with 23 further project contributors.

2. Build Technology Infrastructure

  • A data model and standards for data registration and exchange have been developed.
  • The collection management system (TMS) has been customized for use as an interim data repository in collaboration with the Digital Art Archive Düsseldorf (d:kult).
  • A prototype application and a web interface based on open source SQL database and IIPimage client-server system have been developed.

3. Production

  • Art historical, technical and conservation documentation as well as high resolution photographs and technical images have been compiled on more than 500 Cranach paintings (in total more than 7,000 images).
  • Within the pilot project phase the project team examined more than 300 Cranach paintings in 16 collections (Berlin, Bremen, Brussels, Coburg, Dessau, Gotha, Halle, Weimar, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Naumburg, Nuremberg, Kronach, Regensburg, Karlsruhe, Basel) employing amongst other methods: digital photography, digital microscopy and digital Infrared-reflectography.
  • A Cranach literature database has been produced with more than 1,600 entries.
  • New OSIRIS IR-reflectograms of more than 350 paintings were generated.
  • In a special study on the Lucretia paintings more than 60 versions have been documented
  • By January 2012 the cda provided Internet access to data assets for 400 paintings (in German and English) and c.5,000 images (including more than 300 Infrared-reflectograms and 130 X-radiographs).

The Second Project Phase (2012 - 2014)

In its second phase, the Cranach Digital Archive project aims to expand the existing network, to develop the shared infrastructure and to increase its content in order to progress to a more mature phase and to become the comprehensive research resource on paintings by Cranach. Furthermore the project will stimulate collaborative research between museums and develop a unique international and sustainable research network.

The second phase will address two primary goals:

  • Further development of web-based collaborative research tools and workflow procedures that will encourage the sharing and dissemination of art historical, conservation and scientific information in order to advance scholarship and learning.
  • Compilation and generation of art historical, technical, and conservation documentation related to more than 1,000 paintings by Lucas Cranach and his workshop to expand the resource and increase understanding of his art. The project also aims to include written documents from the account books of the Saxonian Court by Lucas Cranach the Elder in order to develop a timeline based on a wider spectrum of primary sources.

The second project phase envisages the involvement of more than 30 museum partners, five archives and many more project contributors in Europe and the US. We look forward to the success of the project, which we believe is an important response to the opportunities afforded by digital technology and changing research methodologies.

By December 2014 the Cranach Digital Archive would be:

  • The primary and comprehensive resource on paintings by Cranach offering new possibilities and tools for scholarly research
  • A Cranach research resource that stimulates collaboration between art historians, conservators, historians, conservation scientists and the public
  • A sustainable and mature, but infinitely expandable resource
  • A resource that considers the expectations of different users and that generates a high level of identification among partners
  • A resource distinguished by a high standard of scholarly data curation
  • A resource that provides access to historical archival information as well as newly generated documentation
  • A repository of knowledge about Lucas Cranach and his workshop that will be significantly different from the traditional model of the single-author catalogue raisonné focused on attributions.
  • A model for other digital artists' archives and inter-institutional networks
  • A resource that will be considered a permanent activity