Research Catalog

The reformation of the image

Title: The reformation of the image / Joseph Leo Koerner.
Author: Koerner, Joseph Leo.
Publication: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2004.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Use in library	N7950.A1 K64 2004	Off-site

Details

Description

494 pages : illustrations (some color); 25 cm

Summary

With his 95 Theses, Martin Luther advanced the radical notion that all Christians could enjoy a direct, personal relationship with God, shattering years of Catholic tradition. The text of the Bible, the Word of God itself, Luther argued, revealed the only true path to salvation. But if words, not iconic images, 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 work, 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 attendants, with nothing separating him from Luther (preaching the Word) and his parishioners. And while the Holy Spirit is nowhere to be seen, 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.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 445-482) and index.

Contents

Timeline -- Introduction. Ideas about the thing ; A tragedy for art? ; Territorial battles ; Appropriations ; A Reformation altarpiece -- pt. I. Cleansing. Actions ; Beliefs ; Fictions ; Communications ; The arrested gesture -- pt. II. The word. The cross ; The outstretched finger ; A hidden God? ; Crude painting ; Preaching ; Teaching ; Ubiquity -- pt. III. Sacrament. From custom to rule ; Behind the mass ; The tables turned ; Ministry ; Church building -- Epilogue.

ISBN

0226450066
9780226450063
0226448371
9780226448374

LCCN

2004300168

OCLC

ocm54986557
54986557
SCSB-1329068

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library