The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments (1516) at the Lutherhaus Wittenberg is among Cranach's most significant surviving works from the transition period just before the Reformation's formal beginning. Combining the text of the Commandments with illustrative imagery — each commandment illustrated by a scene showing its transgression or observance — this type of didactic visual aid was precisely what Luther would theorize about in his writings on images: the legitimate use of pictures for instruction and learning rather than for superstitious veneration. That Cranach produced this in 1516, a year before Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, and that it survives in the Lutherhaus — the building where Luther lived and worked in Wittenberg, now a museum dedicated to the Reformation's history — gives it exceptional historical significance. It demonstrates that the Reformation's visual pedagogy was already developing before the theological controversy began in earnest, the instructional use of images that would characterize Lutheran visual culture already present in Cranach's pre-Reformation work.

The panel demonstrates Cranach's narrative clarity in organizing multiple commandment scenes, with the concise, readable imagery that would serve the educational goals of Lutheran reform.