bavarikon4ULucas Cranach d. Ä., Katharina von Bora, 1528 (Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, M 418; Loan from the collection of Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt)
During the Easter vigil 1523, Katharina von Bora (1499–1552) escaped from the nunnery Nimbschen near Grimma to which she had been sent by her family as a child. The former nun found a safe haven in the house of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) in Wittenberg where she probably also met her future husband Martin Luther (1483–1546) who was a close friend of Cranach.
At the time of the painting, dated to the year 1528, Katharina had already given birth twice. In her black clothing, the white bib with embroidered border as well as in the bonnet with gold trim, she looks very solemn.
Katharina von Bora brought some order into Martin Luther’s life. She looked after the aspects of every-day life and after the numerous visitors to the former monastery in which the couple lived. She also reared the six children born to her and her husband as well as orphans welcomed into the family and she was responsible for the finances. Katharina kept her husband’s mind free of such things so that Luther was able to concentrate entirely on his work on behalf of the Reformation.
Marriage and family acquired a completely new importance because of the new organisation of ecclesiastical and communal matters during the Reformation. While in the old (Catholic) church being unmarried had been regarded as the ideal, Luther repudiated this state as part of his intellectual engagement with monasticism and celibacy. In their married life, Katharina von Bora and Martin Luther gave an example of this new idea of marital relationship and Katharina remained the model for generations of Lutheran pastors’ wives.