Synopses & Reviews
With his 95 Theses, Martin Luther advanced the radical notion that all Christians could enjoy a direct, personal relationship with Godand#8212;shattering years of Catholic tradition and obviating the need for intermediaries like priests and saints between the individual believer and God. The text of the Bible, the Word of God itself, Luther argued, revealed the only true path to salvationand#8212;not priestly ritual and saintly iconography.
But if wordsand#8212;not iconic imagesand#8212;showed the way to salvation, why didn't religious imagery during the Reformation disappear along with indulgences? The answer, according to Joseph Leo Koerner, lies in the paradoxical nature of Protestant religious imagery itself, which is at once both iconic and iconoclastic. Koerner masterfully demonstrates this point not only with a multitude of Lutheran images, many never before published, but also with a close reading of a single pivotal workand#8212;Lucas Cranach the Elder's altarpiece for the City Church in Wittenberg (Luther's parish). As Koerner shows, Cranach, breaking all the conventions of traditional Catholic iconography, created an entirely new aesthetic for the new Protestant ethos.
In the Crucifixion scene of the altarpiece, for instance, Christ is alone and stripped of all his usual attendantsand#8212;no Virgin Mary, no John the Baptist, no Mary Magdaleneand#8212;with nothing separating him from Luther (preaching the Word) and his parishioners. And while the Holy Spirit is nowhere to be seenand#8212;representation of the divine being impossibleand#8212;it is nonetheless dramatically present as the force animating Christ's drapery. According to Koerner, it is this "iconoclash" that animates the best Reformation art.
Insightful and breathtakingly original, The Reformation of the Image compellingly shows how visual art became indispensable to a religious movement built on words.
Synopsis
Martin Luther preached the radical notion that we are saved through faith alone. With one stroke, he overturned a thousand years of practice and teaching. Gone was the need for saintly intercessors and a special priesthood or the richly decorated and image-filled churches in which such mediation could take place. What counted now was faith arriving inwardly, in each individual, through the text of the Bibleand#8212;the naked Word of God itself.
But if wordsand#8212;not iconic imagesand#8212;led the believer to salvation, why didnand#8217;t religious imagery disappear during the Reformation?and#160; The answer, according to Joseph Leo Koernerand#8217;s masterful The Reformation of the Image, lies in the paradoxical nature of Protestant religious imagery itself, which is at once both iconic and iconoclastic. According to Koerner, it is this and#8220;iconoclashand#8221; that characterizes Reformation art. The Reformation of the Image compellingly shows how visual art became indispensable to a religious movement built on words.and#160; It also reveals in Protestant images a powerful instance of modern disenchantment:and#160; the disappearance of magic both from images and from the world.
and#8220;Unfailingly arresting and inventive . . . it is a long time since a work of art history has kept me so consistently reaching for a pencil to register ardent appreciation or violent dissent.and#8221;and#8212;Eamon Duffy, London Review of Books
About the Author
Joseph Leo Koerneris the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.and#160;He is the author of Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape and The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art, the latter copublished by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Timeline
Preface
Introduction
1. Ideas About the Thing
2. A Tragedy for Art?
3. Territorial Battles
4. Appropriations
5. A Reformation Altarpiece
Part I - Cleansing
6. Actions
7. Beliefs
8. Fictions
9. Communications
10. The Arrested Gesture
Part II - The Word
11. The Cross
12. The Outstretched Finger
13. A Hidden God?
14. Crude Painting
15. Preaching
16. Teaching
17. Ubiquity
Part III - Sacrament
18. From Custom to Rule
19. Behind the Mass
20. The Tables Turned
21. Ministry
22. Church Building
Epilogue
References
Photo Acknowledgements
Index