CRANACH, Lucas the Younger
(b. 1515, Wittenberg, d. 1586, Weimar)

Nymph of the Spring (detail)

1545-50
Oil on beech panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The meticulously detailed landscape background is populated by tiny humans and animals. To the right of the mill, one person walks along the riverbank while another kneels by the water. A driver drives three donkeys, loaded with sacks of grain, toward the mill. Further back, beyond the walled city, two deer graze in a grassy clearing, and persons on foot and on horseback follow trails into the forest. A castle set high upon a bluff presides over the landscape.