The younger brother of his predecessor, Frederick the Wise (1463-1525), John received a scholarly education, was trained in the arts of knighthood, and is said to have distinguished himself in the struggle against the Turks. With his interest in scholastics, John was quickly won over by the writings of the young Martin Luther, and he followed the development of the reformatory movement with ever increasing interest. It was he who, in the absence of the Elector, omitted to publish the bull directed against Luther, and in his letters to his brother he warmly recommended Luther and admonished the cautious Elector to adopt more decidedly the reformer's cause and to influence other princes in the same direction; crucially, his influence decided Frederick to protect Luther in the Wartburg.
On his accession to the Electorate in 1525, John adopted a strongly Lutheran religious policy, resolutely refusing a compromise with his cousin, George of Saxony; with Philip, landgrave of Hesse, he openly confessed the Evangelical doctrine and, with the latter's support became the leader of the Evangelical party in the German states, appearing as such at the Diet of Speyer in 1526. In 1527 the Lutheran Church was established as the state church in Ernestine Saxony, with the Elector as Chief Bishop. The next year, the rumour spread of the formation of a league of Roman Catholic princes at Breslau for the annihilation of the Evangelical estates and the extirpation of the new heresy. Convinced of the genuineness of the report, John and Philip prepared for defense by trying to gain new allies in the north and south although, at the advice of Luther and contrary to the wish of Philip, John desisted from assuming the offensive. In full confidence of the justice of his cause, however, he went again to the Diet of Speyer in 1529, and, by openly avowing his Evangelical convictions, incurred the enmity of the majority.
Although he had sustained many an insult from the emperor, John continued to acknowledge obedience to him in temporal matters. At the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, his conduct was heroic: he firmly maintained his Evangelical position, and refused to forbid Evangelical preaching at the demand of the Emperor, whilst the great services he rendered to the final success of the Augsburg Confession are well known. On his homeward journey he learned of the warlike preparations of his enemies, but his principles withheld him from opposing an attack of his Emperor. After some weeks, however, he was convinced by jurists that a defense of the Evangelical states was justified, and in 1531 the Protestants formed a defensive league under John's leadership. Political conditions, however forced the Emperor to negotiate with the Evangelical estates, and on 23 July 1532, less than a month before John's death, the religious peace of Nuremberg was ratified. John had not the gifts of statesmanship that his brother Frederick possessed, but as his sobriquet testifies, he was a man of fearless courage and deep conviction.
From the beginning of his appointment to the court at Wittenberg, Cranach and his studio produced numerous portraits of his three electoral patrons in Wittenberg: Frederick the Wise, John the Steadfast and John's son and successor, John Frederick the Magnanimous (1503-1554). On his succession to the electoral office, John Frederick ordered 60 portrait pairs of his deceased uncle and father from Cranach and his studio, which were delivered and paid for the following year, the figure types being based on the triptych of the Electors in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, although that of John - as here - was reversed to work as a pair. Given that compositional change, it is likely that the present picture is one of those commissions, being also typical in the use of the pasted-on printed text seen in other examples such as that in the Uffizi, Florence.
We are grateful to Dr. Dieter Koepplin for confirming the attribution to Lucas Cranach I and Studio.