From the Files

+ The artist's auction record stands at £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 1509 portrait diptych depicting Johann the Steadfast and his six-year-old son, Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous.

+ The prosperous painter-printer ran an apothecary shop that had a monopoly on the sale of medicines, dabbled in real estate and maintained exclusive rights to Bible production in Wittenberg.

+ In 1509, Friedrich the Wise conferred on Cranach a coat of arms featuring a snake with bat wings and a jeweled ring in its jaw; from then on the artist used the snake as a signature in all his works.

+ After the Getty purchased the oil-on-paper study Man in a Red Cap at Sotheby's London in 1991 for £187,000 ($267,000), the museum restored the work and removed 17th-century additions of a hat and shirt.