Lucas Cranach (the Elder) was born at Kronach in upper Franconia, probably in 1472; his exact date of birth is unknown.

His mother, with surname Hübner, died in 1491.

Lucas had learned the art of drawing from his father Hans Maler (his surname meaning "painter" and denoting his profession, not his ancestry, after the manner of the time and class).

The name of his birthplace was later used for his surname, another custom of the times.

How Cranach was trained is not known, but it was probably with local south German masters, as with his contemporary Matthias Grünewald, who works at Bamberg and Aschaffenburg (Bamberg is the capital of the diocese in which Kronach lies).

Apparently painting portraits for academic patrons in Vienna in 1503, Cranach completes the diptych of Dr. Johannes Cuspinian and Anna Cuspinian, the first German portraits containing a landscape background common to both and contributing to the mood of each subject.

Another early masterpiece completed in that year, the Crucifixion (which scholars will, until 1895, mistakenly attribute to Matthias Grünewald) portrays an intensely expressive landscape background and human emotions in compositions more unified than those of the Flemish realists of the previous century.

Cranach’s distinctive style may have initiated the Danube school of romantic landscapes.