‘Racy’ Venus wins reprieve

A 16TH CENTURY painting deemed too racy by London Underground to advertise a groundbreaking exhibition by German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder has made it back in time for the show’s opening on Saturday.

Venus, wearing a foxy smile and virtually nothing else, was banned on the grounds of taste. But the ban has now been lifted and a mistake admitted.

The decision was a relief for the Royal Academy of Arts which had chosen the deliberately seductive painting dating from 1532 to advertise the first major exhibition in Britain devoted exclusively to the works of the elder Cranach.

At a preview of the exhibition yesterday co-curator Bodo Brinkmann described Cranach as a phenomenon who came to epitomise the German Renaissance, and who captured the spirit of the Reformation in the process.

“He was the archetypal artist of the German Reformation,” he told reporters.

The compact exhibition that runs to June 8 starts with a selection of his earliest known works, heavily influenced by Albrecht Durer, but already bearing his own distinctive style.

One theme, epitomised by Venus and its twin Lucretia, is the duplicity Cranach sees in women.

In a 1526 painting of Adam and Eve next to the apple tree in the Garden of Eden, from the rather bemused expression on Adam’s face it is very clear who is doing the tempting.

The Golden Age in 1530 abounds in strategically placed leaves covering the entwined and cavorting couples.

The exhibition ends with a portrait of Cranach three years before his death by his son Lucas Cranach the Younger.