Some connoisseurs, on the other hand, have been put off by the relative blandness of the later works, whether by Cranach himself or by his assistants, preferring the artist’s Vienna period. In 1932, the art historian Max Friedlander disappointedly likened the mature paintings to a “smooth, shiny chestnut burst from a prickly, green shell,” stating that “had Cranach died in 1505, he would have lived in our memory as an artist charged with dynamite. But he did not die until 1553, and instead of watching his powers explode, we see them fizzle out.” In portraits of this period, the artist abandons his earlier backgrounds of verdant landscapes in favor of solid colors, and the modeled faces and costumes become flat and linear. His mythological pictures, meanwhile, follow a set formula: a figure adjacent to a hedge or tree with a mountaintop castle in the background and blue skies above. Yet it is exactly this stylization that makes his works so strikingly contemporary.

“I know of one collector who buys very cutting-edge contemporary art, and the only Old Master who appeals to him is Cranach,” says Christopher Apostle, of Sotheby’s New York. “He likes his bold simplicity.”  

The record for a painting by Cranach is £4.8 million ($8.6 million)—also the highest auction price for any German painting—set at Christie’s London in 1990 by a rare portrait diptych of 1509 in its original frame from Schloss Wildenstein, in Switzerland. Depicting Johann the Steadfast (brother of Friedrich the Wise) and his six-year-old son, Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, the picture has been known to scholars since the early 1970s and was last seen publicly in the great Cranach exhibition at the Basel Museum in 1972; the National Gallery in London purchased it privately in 1991. The equally beautiful and surprisingly sensual Head of Christ with Crown of Thorns, circa 1509, close in style and quality to the works of Cranach’s Vienna period, was consigned to Sotheby’s London in 2004 as an anonymous 16th-century Italian painting. Its true authorship was recognized before the sale, and despite its sober subject and intimate size (8 by 10 inches) it sold for £677,600 ($1.3 million)—a great bargain in retrospect.

Skilled in both portraiture and religious subjects, Cranach is nevertheless best known for his mythological paintings and his distinctive and slightly fetishistic renderings of female nudes. Blonde and lithe, with small, pert breasts and long legs, the Cranach nude—be she Venus, Diana or Athena—poses coyly, usually adorned with gold, jewels and a feather-trimmed velvet hat. These delicately decadent figures have inspired many modern and contemporary painters, from Otto Dix and Pablo Picasso to John Currin.

Although Cranach’s prices have escalated over the past 10 years, works by the master still remain a better buy than those of his “disciples.” Most collectors want Cranach the sensualist, and when these subjects do appear, they garner high prices. In July 2005, his Venus and Cupid, circa 1525, sold for a remarkable £2.4 million ($4.1 million), despite some damage and repainting. Even Venus and Cupid the Honey Thief, a large panel of obvious workshop origin (from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker) sold at Christie’s last April for $824,000 (est. $200–300,000).

His paintings of male subjects remain reasonable, their price depending on the attractiveness of the sitter and the decorative effect of the costume. An excellent studio portrait of the adult Johann Friedrich brought £344,000 ($637,037; est. £300–500,000) at Christie’s London in July 2006. A picture entirely by Cranach’s hand of Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, 1511–12, sold at Sotheby’s London in 2001, for just £278,500 ($400,719), due probably to the sitter’s unfortunately crossed eyes.

What’s next for the Cranach market? “There are quite a few important Cranachs still hidden away in German collections,” says George Gordon, of Sotheby’s London. Some of these may be coaxed out of hiding, thanks to a retrospective, including more than 100 of the artist’s works, on view through February 17, 2008, at the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, and from March 12 through June 8 at London’s Royal Academy. Cranach enthusiasts would particularly welcome the recovery of a 1512 Madonna and Child that was looted from the Warsaw Cathedral after World War ii and has been missing since. Should that work ever resurface and come on the market, according to one New York Old Masters dealer, “it could fetch between $10 million and $15 million—just for starters.” Prices for works by Lucas the Younger are not far behind. His Portrait of a Lady in a Green Velvet and Orange Dress and a Pearl-Embroidered Black Hat, circa 1541, stunned the audience at Christie’s London this past July by selling to dealer Konrad Bernheimer for a record £1.8 million ($3.6 million). Like father, like son.