The Reformation of the Image

Examines the images used in Protestant church services during the period of their definition by Martin Luther. This title locates the conflict between verbal and visual communication in the emergence of a state-supported, state-supporting faith.

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In "The Reformation of the Image", Joseph Leo Koerner examines the images used in Protestant church services during the period of their definition by Martin Luther. Focusing on Lucas Cranach the Elder's famous altarpiece for the City Church in Wittenberg, and drawing on a mass of other Lutheran images some of which have never been published before he elucidates a founding moment in European history when words were made the model for all communication. In determining why images persisted despite their repudiation as empty idols, Koerner locates the conflict between verbal and visual communication in the emergence of a state-supported, state-supporting faith. Examining the images made for Luther's new religion of inward belief, he shows the process by which, through an interplay between pictures and words, subjects were trained to believe what someone else believed. This ground-breaking study of a decisive but little-known episode in the history of art explores how, by re-describing arguments made against them, visual images persis.