That Luther was in some ways the first celebrity of modern culture had everything to do with the extraordinary reach of his publications, as well as with the Cranach portraits. A month earlier in a letter to Spalatin, Luther had enclosed a handful of copies, which Cranach had suggested he autograph.1 The technology to print a near infinity of his many writings and to add to them the fanciful woodcut illustrations by Cranach made something possible that had never been possible before, to blast a persona—an image and a lively voice that knew how to communicate to the common man—into the wide
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