Around 1500, Lucas Cranach the Elder steps onto the world stage in Vienna. The publication explores this, the artists earliest period of work and presents all the paintings he produced during this time, their expressiveness radically different from the courtly-elegant compositions he subsequently produced as court painter in Wittenberg.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (14721553) produced his earliest works around 1500 in Vienna, shortly before moving to Wittenberg to become court painter to the Elector of Saxony. These brilliant paintings, drawings, and woodcuts document both the thirty-year-olds close contacts with the humanist circles of Konrad Celtis and Johannes Cuspinian, and identify him as a precursor of the so-called Danube School.