Family Networks @museum.de

Lucas Cranach the Elder started his own family at the properties "Markt 4 and 5". He married Barbara Brengebier, daughter of the mayor of Gotha, Jobst Brengebier, and his wife Ursula. The Cranachs had five children: Ursula, Barbara and Anna, plus Johannes and Lucas. Johannes – known as "Hans" – and Lucas followed in their father's footsteps. From the late 1520s, they trained at his workshop. Hans died in 1537, aged about 25. The other son, Lucas – later known as Lucas the Younger – took over the workshop after his father left Wittenberg in 1550. He ran it until his own death in 1586.

And the daughters?

They married into influential families. Ursula married the lawyer Georg Dasch, who later became mayor of Gotha. Cranach's youngest daughter Anna was involved in a relationship with the Wittenberg apothecary Caspar Pfreundt, who ran the pharmacy Cranach owned. Barbara in turn married Christian Brück in 1543 – he was the son of Gregor Brück, the Chancellor of Saxony. Twelve years later, in 1555, Christian Brück himself became Chancellor of Saxony.

The Brücks had several children. Their daughter Barbara married Jacob Schröter, the mayor of Weimar. The mother of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe descended from that line. So Lucas Cranach was Goethe's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Writing about Cranach, Goethe apparently too the view that: ... "in respect of truth and vigour" he could "even hold his own next to Titian".