Art and Religious Reform in Early Modern Europe
Art History Special Issues
1. Edition November 2017
232 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Short Description
This volume brings together historians and art historians to explore the ways in which religious art was transformed by the splintering of Western Christendom that began 500 years ago with Martin Luther's Reformation. The religious turmoil of the sixteenth century has long been seen as a turning point in the history of Christian art. The essays presented here focus not on destruction - on iconoclasm - but on the myriad ways in which both Protestant and Catholic reform stimulated the production of sacred art. The volume examines the nature of images created in Germany during the early years of the evangelical movement, asking how both theologians and artists responded to a new understating of Christian history and salvation. It then traces the rich and diverse Protestant visual cultures that developed during the confessional age, and explores the variety of Catholic responses to pressure for reform.
The religious turmoil of the sixteenth century constituted a turning point in the history of Western Christian art. The essays presented in this volume investigate the ways in which both Protestant and Catholic reform stimulated the production of religious images, drawing on examples from across Europe and beyond.
* Eight essays by leading scholars in the field
* Brings art historians and historians into productive dialogue
* Broad chronology, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century
* Broad geographical coverage
* Richly illustrated
Introduction: Art and Religious Reform in Early Modern Europe (Bridget Heal)
1. Karlstadt's Wagen: The First Visual Propaganda for the Reformation (Lyndal Roper and Jennifer Spinks)
2. 'Between these Two Kingdoms': Exile, Election, and Godly Law in Sebald Beham's Moses and Aaron (Mitchell B. Merback)
3. The Unassembled Grammar of the Drawing in the Era of Reform (Shira Brisman)
4. The Family at Table: Protestant Identity, Self-Representation and the Limits of the Visual in Seventeenth-Century Zurich (Andrew Morrall)
5. Lutheran Baroque: The Afterlife of a Reformation Altarpiece (Bridget Heal)
6. Images (Not) Made By Chance (Amy Knight Powell)
7. The Art of Solitude: Environments of Prayer at the Bavarian Court of Wilhelm V (Christine Göttler)
8. The Reliquary Reformed (Mia M. Mochizuki)
Afterword (Joseph Leo Koerner)
Index
Joseph Leo Koerner is the Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture and a Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He was co-curator of the 2002 exhibition Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars (ZKM, Karlsruhe). His books include The Reformation of the Image (University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Bosch and Bruegel: From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life (Princeton University Press, 2016).