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 know ...

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

altarpiece An altarpiece is an artwork such as a painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting o ...

s of the Last Supper, 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's home of Wittenberg 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 Philip Melanchthon. (born Philipp Schwartzerdt; 16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lu ...

and Johannes Bugenhagen, 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 Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...

, by Lucas Cranach the Younger (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