The Penitence of St. John Chrysostom

In this extremely textured engraving, Lucas Cranach the Elder illustrates an episode from the life of Saint John Chrysostom (344-407). According to legend, while Saint John was living as a hermit in the desert, he shared the shelter of his cave with a young woman, whom he impregnated. As penance for his sin, the saint vowed to crawl on all fours from that point forward. The intricately rendered foliage demonstrates the artist's commitment to landscape and nature scenes, which he shared with other artists of the sixteenth-century Danube School.