CRANACH'S HAT TRICKS

Young Lady with a Hat
Lucas Cranach, the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 - 1553) and his sons, Hans and Lucas the Younger, ran the most prolific and successful studio in sixteenth century Europe.
Cranach and Co. produced, on commission, hundreds of refined and detailed paintings of, well, of anybody and everybody. They created portraits of royalty (the Electors of Saxony and other assorted aristocracy) and Protestant reformers, especially the elder Cranach’s close friend Martin Luther, dozens of paintings with nude or seminude mythological figures, monumental paintings of Adam and Eve and other biblical figures, as well as other important religious installations.

One of the genres in which Lucas Cranach specialized was portraying women in hats, amazing hats, outsized hats, crazy, vertiginous hats, gravity-defying hats, hats that make you go "wow!"

Ingenues and dowagers, young and old, decked out and depicted in outrageous millinery. Cranach painted scores of these portraits, the most wondrous of which, in my view, is the one we see here. The pompoms alone are worth the view. This remarkable topper looks like a solar system precariously balanced on the woman's head. 

These remarkable women in these remarkable hats were portrayed within a concept called Weibermacht - literally, Women Power. Weibermacht was a Renaissance and medieval German literary and artistic Topos, inverting the male-dominated sexual hierarchy by describing and depicting women in positions of power. 

Remarkable women. Remarkable hats. Remarkable Lucas Cranach and Hat Tricks !