tures. With his Frankfurt Venus (1532) he perfected a par-
ticular type of slender, palid female nude which he and his
workshop repeated in numerous variants until the mid-
century, usually in pictures with titles such as Venus and
Cupid, Lucretia, The Nymph of the Fountain, Adam and Eve,
and The Judgment of Paris. Iconographically, an interesting
departure in his later career is a series of religious pictures
on novel themes acceptable to Protestant theology, such
as Christ and the Children and Allegory of the Old and
New Testaments. He also painted a small number of large,
multifigure compositions set against landscape back-
grounds, such as the Madrid Stag Hunt (1545) and the
Berlin Fountain of Youth (1546). In 1550 Cranach followed
his master, Elector John Frederick, to Augsburg and in
1552 to Weimar. He died there the following year while
engaged upon a large triptych, the Allegory of Redemption,
subsequently completed by his son, Lucas Cranach the
Younger (1515–86). By then Cranach was the most influ-
ential and sought-after painter in northern Germany. The
author of an unique and particularly successful form of
German MANNERISM, he was also the principal visual apol-
ogist of the Reformation.
Further reading: Alexander Stepanov, Lucas Cranach
the Elder, 1472–1553 (Bournemouth, U.K.: Parkstone,
1997).
Cranmer, Thomas (1489–1556) Archbishop of
Canterbury (1533–56)
A learned theologian and an early admirer of LUTHER, in
1532 he visited leading Lutherans in Germany, where he
married the niece of Andreas OSIANDER. He already en-
joyed royal favor for supporting HENRY VIII’s first divorce,
and despite his marriage, which was in contravention of
his clerical vows, he became the first Protestant arch-
bishop of Canterbury in 1533; subsequently he aided the
king in his three later divorces. During EDWARD VI’s reign
(1547–53) Cranmer worked to make the Church of Eng-
land a truly Protestant Church. He encouraged publica-
tion of a new Bible in English and wrote much of the 1549
and 1552 BOOKS OF COMMON PRAYER. On her accession the
Catholic MARY Istripped him of his office. Condemned as
a heretic, Cranmer died bravely at the stake.
Further reading: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas
Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1998).
Credi, Lorenzo di (Lorenzo d’Andrea d’Oerigo)
(1459–1537) Italian painter, sculptor, and goldsmith
Credi was born in Florence and became a pupil with Pe-
rugino and Leonardo da Vinci in the workshop of Andrea
del VERROCCHIO. He exhibited considerable skill as a
draftsman and after Verrocchio’s death he became the head
of the most flourishing artistic workshop in Florence. He
himself produced numerous pictures of seated Madonnas,
including the Madonna and Saints altarpiece in Pistoia
(1510). Other works were highly imitative of Leonardo’s
early paintings. Among his best drawings is his Self-
Portrait (c. 1490; National Gallery, Washington).Crete See CANDIAcriticism, literary Theoretical discussion of the nature,
kinds, and purpose of literature (as opposed to “practical”
or applied criticism or guides to technique) originated and
attained most sophistication in Italy. The common as-
sumption in Renaissance criticism, as in the neoclassicism
which succeeded it, was that literature imparted knowl-
edge or truths. This view was usually stated in the Hora-
tian formulation, that poetry combined delight and
instruction, dulce et utile, these functions being taken
rather simply and distinctly, with scant attention to their
possible interactions.
In the first part of the 15th century in Italy, the recov-
ery of classical authors, the cultivation of Latin style, and
the role of classical rhetoric in the humanist conception of
the active, public life produced the ideal of a poet-orator,
emulating the ancients and bringing honor to his city and
himself. By the end of the century, vernacular literature
was thriving and soon reached full maturity. Systematic
criticism developed in the course of the 16th century,
stimulated by the publication of ARISTOTLE’s Poetics (the
Aldine press edition of the Greek text appeared in 1508).
The commentaries and poetic treatises that followed were
mainly concerned with the theory of imitation, with the
genres, and with related matters arising from the interpre-
tation of Aristotelian ideas. The Poetics, transmitted in the
Middle Ages through Averroes’ commentary, was freshly
translated into Latin (by Giorgio Valla, 1498, and Alessan-
dro Pazzi, 1536) and Italian (Bernardo Segni, 1549). Com-
mentaries on it were written by Francesco Robortello
(1548), Vincenzo Maggi (1550), and Lodovico CASTEL-
VETRO(1570). While admitting imitation (of anything,
not merely human actions and emotions) as an object of
the literary work, Robortello is concerned with rhetorical
persuasion rather than Aristotelian description and main-
tains the emphasis on the Horatian goals of moral instruc-
tion and aesthetic pleasure (one source of which is the
marvelous). Castelvetro strays further from Aristotle’s de-
scriptive intention by reducing formal analysis, stressing
rhetorical effect, and admitting only pleasure as the pur-
pose of the literary work.
The imitation of models—specifically of Virgil and
Cicero for Latin verse and prose, with Petrarch and Boc-
caccio as the vernacular equivalents—was central in
Pietro BEMBO’s arguments (De imitatione, 1512; Prose della
volgar lingua, 1525) and decisive in resolving the QUES-
TIONE DELLA LINGUA. Marco Giralomo VIDA’s De arte poet-
ica (1527), a verse treatise in the Horatian style which
continued to influence 18th-century neoclassicism, ac-
cepted imitation as the goal of poetry, Virgil as the ideal11226 6 CCrraannmmeerr,, TThhoommaass