The Stag-Hunt

Lucas Cranach the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As court artist, Cranach often accompanied his patron, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, on hunting excursions to his numerous hunting lodges, drawing book in hand. Cranach produced a number of paintings and murals of hunts and animals, for which he received great renown in his time. This woodcut, dating from 1506, is his earliest and largest hunting print. Composed of two separate blocks, it vividly depicts the outing in narrative form. Moving clockwise from the upper left, one can follow the elector’s dogs as they give chase, culminating in a stag’s demise at the lower left, possibly by the hand of the elector himself. The lodge, probably the castle at Lochau, is seen in the distance.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art