Art: New Acquisitions

Six years ago a staff member of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts saw a striking pair of portraits in the shop of a Chicago art dealer. They were rare works from the middle period of Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of the great German painters of the early 16th century. The 10¾-by-16⅛-in. wood panels, described by experts as among Cranach's finest portraits, show Moritz Buchner, mayor of Leipzig, and his wife Anna, elaborately dressed and richly bejeweled, the man gazing at the world with shrewd but not unkind eyes, the woman modest, grave, rather sad. The portraits roused considerable excitement in...