The Third Tournament

This print is from a series of three woodcuts depicting festive jousts held in Wittenberg in 1508. The Duke Frederick of Saxony, for whom Cranach served as court painter, revived the medieval tournament as a form of athletic amusement. The dynamic, crowded encounter of the knights is unified here by the pattern of crossing lances. A mounted band plays at top left, where two spectators watch from a window. Other observers are gathered on a grandstand and its approaching steps at the upper right. Some of the horses wear monogrammed or pictorial trappings and the delicacy of line in the plumed helmets adds further to the complexity of detail in this image.