# Contrasting Protestant and Catholic Christianity [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CRANACH, Lucas the Elder]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Coloured woodcut ## Commentary Contrasting Protestant and Catholic Christianity c. 1545 Coloured woodcut Staatliche Museen, Berlin Reformation was a war waged by pamphlets, some of which have survived as classics of religious polemic. But it was also a war of pictures, and here the Protestant side must be judged the more effective. In the most elaborate of them, Lucas Cranach the Elder showed, as the caption tells us, 'the difference between the true religion of Christ and the false idolatrous teaching of Antichrist'. On the left Luther, inspired by God, preaches true Christianity, with baptism and communion conducted in the foreground; on the right a friar sells indulgences, while the pope counts his money and God and St Francis look down in horror. ## Related artworks - [A Faun and his Family with a Slain Lion \(detail\)]() - [A Faun and his Family with a Slain Lion]() - [A Prince of Saxony]() - [A Princess of Saxony]() - [Adam and Eve \(detail\)]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()