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Reviewed by:
  • The Reformation of the Image
  • John Dillenberger
The Reformation of the Image. By Joseph Leo Koerner. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. 493; 216 illustrations.)

Koerner was born in the United States, and his early education was in both the English and German languages. He did his advanced work in art history at Yale and Berkeley and is now professor in art history at the Courtauld Institute in London. Preceding this volume are two masterful works, the first on Caspar David Friedrich and the second on self-portraits in German Renaissance art. Those who have read these volumes will not be surprised by the scholarship and sweeping scope of the current volume, a work that marks him as second to none in Reformation history.

The time scope of the volume covers the period from the first decade of the sixteenth century into the sixth decade. The two central figures are Martin Luther and Cranach the Elder, meaning that theology and art are the ambiance of these two friends during their time in Wittenberg. Many readers may already know that Cranach was one of the few persons whom Luther contacted while he was in hiding at the Wartburg and that they were godparents of some of their respective children. What they may not know is the extent of the working partnership on the place of art in the Reformation and the form this took. [End Page 522]

While iconoclasm defined the approach of most Reformation figures, Luther rejected the subjects of Catholic art rather than art outright. Koerner gives us a full picture of the forms this approach took, and of the developing altarpieces that were done by Cranach the Elder and his workshop, including Cranach the Younger. Some of these are to be found intact at Wittenberg, Desau, Schneeberg, and Weimar, as well as the first new Protestant church building at Torgau.

Koerner makes the case that Luther stands between the Protestant iconoclasts and the Catholic groups, thus creating a new climate for the visual arts. While the dominant vehicle for faith stems from preaching and hearing, rather than from seeing, seeing is a subsidiary vehicle for knowing the hidden, invisible God.

Both the concrete biblical text and the work of art require imaginative interpretation, rather than a literal understanding. Here the evidence, it seems to me, is that Luther was freer in his interpretation of the role of seeing than was the case with Dürer and Melanchthon during the early period and in Lutheran art as it developed after Luther's death. While Koerner provides us with information on these phases, he has chosen his material in a different form.

This is not an easy book to read, but it rewards one both in information and in interpretation.

John Dillenberger
Graduate Theological Union (Emeritus)
Berkeley, California
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