is to sell Lucas Cranach the Youngers portraits of Prince Joachim Ernst von Anhalt and his first wife, Princess Agnes Gräfin von Barby at its Old Master Pictures sale in London on 3 December. The portraits are being sold as one lot, estimated at £80,000-120,000.
Joachim Ernst von Anhalt was born in 1536 in Dessau, in what is now the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. After an extensive education under the supervision of his father he was admitted to the University of Wittenberg at the age of just thirteen. The deaths successively of his father, uncle and brothers led to Joachims emergence in 1570 as the sole ruler of the Anhalt estates, the first time this had happened since their partition in 1252.
A keen and generous supporter of the arts, Joachim was a typical Renaissance ruler sponsoring the creation of a High School and the codification of the regional laws of Anhalt.
In 1560, he married Princess Agnes Gräfin von Barby who bore him six children before her death in 1569.
Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515-1586) was the youngest and most talented son of Cranach the Elder. He trained in his fathers workshop and took control of it on the latters death in 1553. Cranach the Younger had a successful career as a painter of allegorical scenes but more particularly as a portrait painter.