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With that convocation and the presentation there of the Confessio Augustana (Augsburg Confession), he noted, Lutheran Protestantism came to be seen as an "independent confession and church" separate from Roman Catholicism. Löcher ("Humanistenbildnisse, Refomatorenbildnisse: Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten," Literatur, Musik und Kunst im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzit: Bericht über Kolloquien der Kommission zur Erforschung der Kultur des Spätmittelalters 19, Göttingen, 1995) suggested that this portrait type of Luther emerged in 1532 because of the new Protestant Bewusstseinsstand (state of awareness) that resulted from the 1530 Imperial Diet at Augsburg. An extant pair in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, is very similar in dimensions. The Museum's Luther is a subtype of this group, showing a close-up view and a more tightly cropped image that was probably joined with a portrait of Melanchthon. Melanchthon was Luther's main collaborator, a theologian and intellectual leader of the Reformation. In 1532 Cranach paired a half-length view of Luther facing right with one of Philipp Melanchthon facing left of the several versions of this painting, the pendants in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, are considered the primary examples. He also painted a number of pictures and altarpieces supporting Protestant viewpoints, among them portraits of Luther that varied according to the purposes they were meant to serve. Deeply involved with the production of images for the Protestant Reformation, Cranach made illustrations for the Bible, including for Das Neue Testament deutsch (Wittenberg, 1522) and for Luther's sermons, lectures, polemical tracts, and broadsheets. Luther also served as the godfather of Cranach's first daughter, born in 1520. The reformer and the artist were well acquainted, for Cranach served as Luther's Brautwerber (matchmaker) when he was courting Katharina von Bora, who lived in Cranach's house in Wittenberg from 1523 until her marriage to Luther in 1525. This is one of the many printed and painted portraits of Martin Luther that were produced by Cranach and his workshop beginning about 1520.
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