After Luther's objections to large public religious images had started to fade,

Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is kno ...

, along with his son and workshop began to work on a number of altarpieces of the

Last Supper Image:The Last Supper - Leonardo Da Vinci - High Resolution 32x16.jpg, 400px, alt=''The Last Supper'' by Leonardo da Vinci - Clickable Image, Depictions of the Last Supper in Christian art have been undertaken by artistic masters for centuries, ...

, among other subjects. In some such depictions Christ is shown with the traditional halo, but the apostles are represented as leading reformers, without halos. The altarpiece of the main church in

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutherani ...

's home of

Wittenberg Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north o ...

has a traditional representation of the ''Last Supper'' in the main panel, except that the apostle having a drink poured is a portrait of Luther, and the server may be one of Cranach. By the time the painting was installed in 1547, Luther was dead. Other panels show the Protestant theologians Philipp Melanchthon and

Johannes Bugenhagen Johannes Bugenhagen (24 June 1485 – 20 April 1558), also called ''Doctor Pomeranus'' by Martin Luther, was a German theologian and Lutheran priest who introduced the Protestant Reformation in the Duchy of Pomerania and Denmark in the 16th ce ...

, pastor of the church, though not in biblical scenes. Other figures in the panels are probably portraits of figures from the town, now unidentifiable.Noble, Bonny, ''Lucas Cranach the Elder: art and devotion of the German Reformation'', University Press of America, 2009, , pages 97-104 Schiller, Gertrud, ''Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. II'', 1972 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, , 41 Another work, the ''Altarpiece of the Reformers'' in Dessau, by

Lucas Cranach the Younger Lucas Cranach the Younger (german: Lucas Cranach der Jüngere ; October 4, 1515 – January 25, 1586) was a German Renaissance painter and portraitist, the son of Lucas Cranach the Elder and brother of Hans Cranach. Life and career Lucas Cranach ...

(1565) shows all the apostles except Judas as Protestant churchmen or nobility, and it is now the younger Cranach shown as the cupbearer. However such works are rare, and Protestant paintings soon reverted to more traditional depictions.

References

{{Last Supper in art Christian iconography 1565 paintings Altarpieces Reformation in Germany Cranach