
Book-Plate of Scheurl and Tucher
<p>Christoph Scheurl, a University of Wittenberg professor, owned two bookplates with his parents’ arms and the same motto, including this one on which Lucas Cranach’s shield-bearer is fashionably clothed and colored. The earliest book to contain this ex libris is a classical text printed by Wolfgang Stöckel in 1511, suggesting the woodcut dates to around 1510, before Scheurl moved back to Nuremberg. The Chicago impression is tattered around the edges, has sustained fading and loss of printed pigment throughout, and exhibits several areas of worm activity. These early wear patterns suggest it was on an interior book board, confirming its likely use as a bookplate.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1492
- Dimensions
- Image: 16.5 × 12.7 cm (6 1/2 × 5 in.); Sheet: 18.8 × 13.9 cm (7 7/16 × 5 1/2 in.); Mounting sheet: 19.4 × 14.6 cm (7 11/16 × 5 3/4 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Lucas Cranach the Elder
Artist

Painting
Lucas Cranach the Elder 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 known for his portraits, both of German princes and leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm. He was a close friend of Martin Luther, and eleven portraits of that reformer by him survive. Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued to paint nude subjects from mythology and religion throughout his career.
Full artist profile →More
More by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Venus with Cupid the Honey Thief
1575 · Oil on oak panel
The Apostles' Creed (Das Symbolum der Heiligen Aposteln)
1548 · Book with fifteen woodcuts with letterpress in black on cream laid paper, in eighteenth-century full brown sheepskin, sewn on raised bands, with gold tooled decoration on inner-edges of boards, blind lines and gold titling on the spine, hand-sewn silk headbands, marbled endsheets, and a purple silk page marker
The Crucifixion
1538 · Oil on panel
The Nymph of the Spring
1537 · oil on panel
The Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion
1536 · oil on panel
Madonna and Child
1535 · oil on panel
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Lucas Cranach the Elder
- Year
- 1492
- Dimensions
- Image: 16.5 × 12.7 cm (6 1/2 × 5 in.); Sheet: 18.8 × 13.9 cm (7 7/16 × 5 1/2 in.); Mounting sheet: 19.4 × 14.6 cm (7 11/16 × 5 3/4 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1492-076339
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





