Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/579

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trates occasionally the old gospel themes, but he also gives expression to some of the thoughts of the Reformers. In a picture of 1518 at Leipsic, where a dying man offers "his soul to God, his body to earth, and his worldly goods to his relations," the soul rises to meet the Trinity in heaven, and salvation is clearly shown to depend on faith and not on good works. Again sin and grace become a familiar subject of pictorial delineation. Adam is observed sitting between John the Baptist and a prophet at the foot of a tree. To the left God produces the tables of the law, Adxm and Eve partake of the forbidden fruit, the brazen serpent is reared aloft, and puuishineat supervenes in the shape of death and the realm of Satan. To the right, the Conception, Crucifixion, and Resurrection symbolize redemp tion, and this is duly impressed on Adam by John the Baptist, who points to the sacrifice of the crucified Saviour. There are two examples of this composition in the Galleries of Gotha and Prague, both of them dated 1529. One of the latest pieces with which the name of Cranach is connected is that which Cranach s son completed in 1555, and which is now in the cathedral of Weimar. It represents Christ in tvo faring to the left trampling on Death and Satan, to the right crucified, with blood flowing from the lance wound. John the Baptist points to the suffering Christ, whilst the blood stream falls on the head of Cranach, and Luther reads from his book the words, " The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin." Cranach sometimes composed gospel subjects with feeling and dignity. The Woman taken in Adultery at Munich is a favourable specimen of his skill, and various repetitions of Christ receiving little children show the kindliness of his disposition. But he was not exclusively a religious painter. He was equally successful, and often comically naive, in mythological scenes, as where Cupid, who has stolen a honeycomb, complains to Venus that he has been stung by a bee (Weimar, 1530, Berlin, 1534), or where Hercules sits at the spinning-wheel mocked by Omphale and her maids. Humour and pathos are combined at times with strong effect in pictures such as the Jealousy (Augsburg, 1527, Vienna, 1530), where women and children are huddled into tolling groups as they watch the strife of men wildly fighting around them. Very realistic must have been a lost canvas of 1545, in which hares were catching and roasting sportsmen. In 1546, possibly under Italian influence, Cranach composed the Tons Juventutis of the Berlin Gallery, executed by his son, a picture in which hags are seen entering a Renaissance fountain, and are received as they issue from it with all the charms of youth

by knights and pages.

Cranach s chief occupation was that of portrait-painting, and we are indebted to him chiefly for the preservation of the features of all the German Reformers and their princely adherents. But he sometimes condescended to depict such noted followers of the Papacy as Albert (Kur-Maiuz) of Brandenburg, Anthony Granvelle, and the duke of Alva. A dozen of likenesses of Frederick III. and his brother John are found to bear the date of 1532. It is character istic of Cranach s readiness, and a proof that he possessed ample material for mechanical reproduction, that he received payment at Wittenberg in 1533 for "sixty pairs of portraits of the elector and his brother" in one day. Amongst existing likenesses we should notice as the best that of Albert, elector of Mainz, in the Berlin museum, and that of John, elector of Saxony, in the museum of Weimar.

Cranach had three sons, all artists:—John Lucas, who died at Bologna in 1536; Hans Cranach, whose life is obscure; and Lucas, born in 1515, who died in 1586. General von Cranach, now commanding the fortress of Cologne, i.s one of the last descendants of the painter of Wittenberg.


See Heller, Lcben utid WerTce Lukas Cranachs (1821), and Schuchard, Lukas Cranachs des ^Eltcrn Lcben und Vcrkc (3 void. 1851-71).

(j. a. c.)

CRANBERRY, the fruit of plants of the genus Oxy- coccus, natural order Vacciniacece. 0. palustris, the com mon cranberry plant, is found in marshy land in northern and central Europe and North America. Its stems are wiry, creeping, and of varying length ; the leaves are ever green, dark and shining above, glaucous below, revolute at the margin, ovate, lanceolate, or elliptical in shape, and not more than half an inch long ; the flowers, which appear in May or June, are small and pedunculate, and have a four- lobed, rose-tinted corolla, purplish filaments, and anther-cells forming two long tubes ; the berries ripen in August and September ; they are pear-shaped and about the size of cur rants, are crimson in colour, and often spotted," and have an acid and astringent taste. The American species, O. inacrocarpus, is found wild from Maine to the Carolinas. It attains a greater size than 0. palustris, and bears bigger ancl finer berries, which are of three principal sorts, the cherry or round, the liuyle or oblong, and the pear or bell-shaped, and vary in hue from light pink to dark purple, or may be mottled red and white. It was first cul tivated in England for the sake of its fruit by Sir Joseph Banks. 0. erectits is a species indigenous to Virginia and California, and i.s remarkable for the excellent flavour of its berry.

Air and moisture are the chief requisites for the thriving

of the cranberry plant. It is cultivated in America on a soil of peat or vegetable mould, free from loam and clay, and cleared of turf, and having a surface layer of cleau sand. The sand, which needs renewal every two or three years, is necessary for the vigorous existence of the plants, and serves both to keep the underlying soil cool and damp, and to check the growth of grass and weeds. The ground must be thoroughly drained, and should be provided with a supply of water and a dam for flooding the plants during winter to protect them from frost, and occasionally at other seasons to destroy insect pests; but the use of spring- water should be avoided. The flavour of the fruit is found to be improved by growing the plants in a soil enriched with well-rotted dung, and by supplying them with less moisture than they obtain in their natural habitats. Pro pagation is effected by means of cuttings, of which the wood should be wiry in texture, and the leaves of a greenish - brown colour. In America, where, in the. vicinity of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the cultivation of the cranberry commenced early in the- present century, wide tracts of waste land have been utilized for that pur pose, low, easily flooded, marshy ground, worth originally not more than from $10 to $20 an acre, having been made to yield annually 8200 or $300 worth of the fruit per acre. The yield varies between 50 and 400 bushels an acre, but 100 bushels, or about 35 barrels, is estimated to be the average production when the plants have begun to bear well. In -1871 there were in New J ersey about 2000 acres in fruiting, which in the previous year had produced 150,000 bushels of cranberries, ancl 4000 acres more had been prepared and planted. A total of 75,000 barrels was obtained in 1869 in the States and Territories of America. Cranberries should be gathered when ripe and dry, otherwise they do not keep well. The darkest-coloured berries are those which are most esteemed. The picking of the fruit begins in New Jersey in October, at the close of the blackberry and whortleberry season, and often lasts until the coming in of cold weather. From 3 to 4 bushels a day may be collected by good workers. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore are tho leading American markets for cranberries, whence they are

exported to the West Indies, England, and Franco in great