After Cranach @museum.de

Mexico, Madrid, London, Tokyo ... no matter where your travels take you, you’ll find works by the Cranachs in all the world’s museums. Take a look at the board to see where the works of art created in Wittenberg are today.

With Cupid and the life-size Venus, Lucas Cranach the Elder is thought to have invented nude painting in Germany. A variant of the painting "Venus and Cupid" from 1509 is on display at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, to name just one example.

Works by the Cranachs have inspired artists throughout the ages, regardless of the genre they happened to work in. In a 2007 crime series featuring Inspector Klara Blum by German broadcaster Südwestfunk, the restorer of a Cranach painting is murdered. In the crime thriller "Die Cranach-Verschwörung" (The Cranach Conspiracy) by the writer Friederike Schmöe, one of Cranach's paintings is due to be unveiled in his birthplace – but then there’s a murder. And the images of Adam and Eve in the opening credits of the US series "Desperate Housewives" are from "The Fall of Man". The original from 1528 now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

One world-famous artist who was inspired by Cranach's work was Pablo Picasso. In the photograph of Picasso with his children, the gouache entitled "Venus with Cupid as Honey Thief" is on an easel in the background. It’s based on the Cranach original “Cupid Complaining to Venus” from 1525, which hangs in the collection of the National Gallery in London. Cranach the Younger also inspired Picasso. In 1958, the modern master created the colour linocut "Portrait of a Young Woman after Cranach the Younger".

And that brings us to the end of our tour of the museum. It’s time for us to say goodbye. However, we’ve prepared more audio stops in the courtyards of the Cranach houses.