- The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Explaining Evil and Grace
- The Nature of Spiritual Experience
- Reforming Time
- Political Obedience
- Geographies of the Protestant Reformation
- The Bohemian Reformations
- Luther and Lutheranism
- The Swiss Reformations: Movements, Settlements, and Reimagination, 1520–1720
- The Radicals
- Calvin and Reformed Protestantism
- The English, Scottish, and Irish Reformations
- Protestantism in the Age of Catholic Renewal
- Protestantism and Non-Christian Religions
- Outsiders, Dissenters, and Competing Visions of Reform
- Pietism
- Protestantism Outside Europe
- Print Workshops and Markets
- The Word
- The Reformation of Liturgy
- An “Epistolary Reformation”: The Role and Significance of Letters in the First Century of the Protestant Reformation
- University Scholars of the Reformation
- Education in the Reformation
- Legal Courts
- Rural Society
- Civic Religions
- European Nobilities and the Reformation
- Explaining Change
- Visual and Material Culture
- Music
- The Body in the Reformations
- Sexual Difference
- The Natural and Supernatural
- Commerce and Consumption
- Natural Philosophy
- Comparisons and Consequences in Global Perspective, 1500–1750
- History and Memory
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter considers the Protestant Reformation’s impact on visual and material culture. The evangelical reform movements that transformed European religious life during the sixteenth century have generally been associated with iconoclasm. Yet the Reformation is no longer seen as a disaster for art. In Lutheran Germany, where iconoclasm was limited in scope, a rich visual culture emerged that incorporated not only printed propaganda and the well-known paintings of Lucas Cranach and his workshop, but also preserved medieval paintings and sculptures and produced images and artifacts for domestic display and devotion. In other parts of northern Europe iconoclasm provided a stimulus to artistic creation, for both churches and homes. The chapter argues that despite its fetishization of the Word, Protestant life was shaped by images and by the visual. Europe’s Protestant visual cultures were rich and varied, and constituted important elements of confessional consciousness.
Keywords: iconoclasm, images, art, Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach, Germany, Dutch Republic, England
University of St Andrews
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- The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Explaining Evil and Grace
- The Nature of Spiritual Experience
- Reforming Time
- Political Obedience
- Geographies of the Protestant Reformation
- The Bohemian Reformations
- Luther and Lutheranism
- The Swiss Reformations: Movements, Settlements, and Reimagination, 1520–1720
- The Radicals
- Calvin and Reformed Protestantism
- The English, Scottish, and Irish Reformations
- Protestantism in the Age of Catholic Renewal
- Protestantism and Non-Christian Religions
- Outsiders, Dissenters, and Competing Visions of Reform
- Pietism
- Protestantism Outside Europe
- Print Workshops and Markets
- The Word
- The Reformation of Liturgy
- An “Epistolary Reformation”: The Role and Significance of Letters in the First Century of the Protestant Reformation
- University Scholars of the Reformation
- Education in the Reformation
- Legal Courts
- Rural Society
- Civic Religions
- European Nobilities and the Reformation
- Explaining Change
- Visual and Material Culture
- Music
- The Body in the Reformations
- Sexual Difference
- The Natural and Supernatural
- Commerce and Consumption
- Natural Philosophy
- Comparisons and Consequences in Global Perspective, 1500–1750
- History and Memory
- Index