Lucas Cranach (Kronach, Germany, 10/04/1472 - Weimar, Germany, 03/15/1553), Lucretia, 1534. Oil on beech panel, 50.4 x 36.4 x 1.3 cm. Monogram (lower left half, under the date). Acquired in 2012. © Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts.

The iconography of Lucretia enjoyed special esteem in Renaissance painting. Titian Vecellio sent an impressive composition on the subject of Tarquin and Lucretia to the King of Spain, Philip II, in 1571 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), and Lorenzo Lotto produced another original version around 1530-1532 (National Gallery, London). In the Germanic context, Albrecht Dürer produced another (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), stylized but not very beautiful, in 1518. However, it was the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder who specialized in the subject, producing more than fifty versions, to which we must add the replicas, variations, and versions produced by his family workshop, which indicates the success of the iconography in Reformation Germany.

Despite the Protestant world's initially critical stance towards the image, the truth is that the reformed religion developed an abundant and highly varied iconography of its own, very different from that fostered by Roman Catholicism. The subject of the nude, both male and female, was abundant, with countless versions of themes such as Adam and Eve, Hercules, Venus, and the sleeping nymph, in which artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien, and Lucas Cranach the Elder were widely prominent. On the other hand, 16th-century German painting was also interested in the iconography of the strong woman, one of the favorite themes of Cranach the Elder and his workshop, with special reference to the biblical heroine Judith and the classical Lucretia.

It is in this context of taste for the female nude, and of the moral reasons that allowed it to be accepted in the cabinets and collections of 16th-century Europe, that this magnificent Lucretia by Lucas Cranach should be inserted.

The story of Lucretia is known to us through the Roman historian Titus Livy. She was the daughter of the consul Spurius Lucretius and wife of Collatinus. She was considered one of the most beautiful and respected women in the Roman Empire. While her husband was away from Rome, her cousin Sextus Tarquinius took advantage of the night to rape her, threatening, if she betrayed him, that she would be accused of having spent the night with a servant. Lucretia consented to the rape. Although Collatinus accepted the woman's explanations, she could not bear the shame and committed suicide by stabbing herself in front of her father and husband. From then on, she became one of the favorite examples of feminine virtue and strength.

This version, dated 1537, was known and published by Christian Zervos in the 1930s, but achieved international renown following the Lucas Cranach the Elder exhibition held in Basel in 1975 (catalogue dated 1976). At that time, it belonged, at least since the 18th century, to a private Spanish collection, that of the Marquis of Rafal, who kept it in his palace in Orihuela (Alicante) until it was moved to Madrid in the 19th century. The Marquis of Rafal possibly acquired the work in Vienna, where he was exiled for having supported Archduke Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession. Granted amnesty following the Peace of Utrecht (1715), he settled in Orihuela, where he died in 1727. The work was successively inherited by the family until its purchase in 2012 by the museum.

The painting constitutes one of the most refined versions of the subject ever produced by the German master. Although retouching of the paint layer resulting from successive restorations can be detected, it is possible to determine that this is entirely a work by Lucas Cranach the Elder, who presents us with a version of the subject whose only concurrentities, rather than repetitions, can be identified in other images of the same work.

It depicts the moment of Lucretia's suicide. The subject appears frontally, three-quarters, her breasts bare, covered only by a soft, transparent gauze that in no way conceals her nudity. Cranach was a master of this type of sensual transparency, which here reaches its most striking moment in the woman's face. Lucretia's body leans to the left, suggesting a slight diagonal, which is offset by the counterpoint of the face and the dagger. The movement, which causes the transparent veil to fall, also affects Lucretia's necklace, lending the composition a subtle dynamism that provides the painting with the drama inherent in the story it tells. The beauty of the body, the delicacy of the face and gaze, the subtlety of the veil, and the sensuality of the jewelry that stands out directly from the nude make this version one of the most attractive of all those produced by the artist's studio in Kronach. [Fernando Checa Cremades]