The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation (review)

Steven Ozment has now been writing in defense of the Protestant Reformation longer than Martin Luther himself. In the 1970s, during the first phase of his astonishingly prolific career, the focus was theological. This involved the careful scrutinization of strands of Protestant continuity with late medieval mysticism; at the same time, Ozment accentuated the genuine innovativeness and broad appeal of Luther’s teachings. The second phase, beginning with When Fathers Ruled (Cambridge, MA, 1983), moved to discussions of marriage and the family, and relied heavily on letters and other ego-documents to demonstrate that the early Protestants loved their children (contrary to claims by Philippe Ariès and others), experienced sexually satisfying and affectionate courtships and marriages (contrary to Lawrence Stone and many feminist scholars), and in general espoused firm but realistic expectations about the social dimensions of the evangelical message. Since the 1990s, Ozment has expanded his scope to Protestantism itself, arguing that the Reformation represented a revolutionary, progressive, and unique turning point in Western history.

His latest book lies firmly within this guiding interpretive framework, yet at the same time represents still another shift in focus: to the art of the Reformation—signaling, perhaps, a new, fourth phase in a long and distinguished career. The central prospect must have appeared irresistible: Lucas Cranach was not just the most celebrated publicist of the great reformer, but was allegedly also his best friend. What an inspired way to bring together the word and the image of the early Reformation, while also capturing the human dimensions of their joint endeavor. Certainly Ozment had long ago established his credentials as a scholar of Protestant theology, and his well-deserved acclaim for lucid storytelling and vivid translations promised a simultaneously informed and spellbinding read. Structuring it all around both black-and-white and color illustrations of Cranach’s paintings and woodcuts themselves must have provided the final sweetener, given their high level of accessibility and familiarity.

Why is the final result somewhat less satisfying? The greatest disappointment is Ozment’s portrayal of the Luther-Cranach relationship itself, and here the problem lies principally in documentation. In his previous accounts of sixteenth-century individuals, Ozment was able to draw on extensive correspondence and other revelatory primary sources. Unfortunately, in the case of the artist and the theologian, more has survived about the public than the private dimension of their collaboration. This is not a fatal flaw, and Ozment is too conscientious a scholar to fill in the gaps with excessive speculation. But it does detract from what promised to be the most innovative aspect of this book: the intermingling of friendship and common cause, of faith and practicality.

Instead what we have is more a version of parallel lives, with frequent (albeit one-dimensional) interaction. Cranach gets the bulk of the attention, but Ozment’s characteristically fluid account of his astonishing success as an artist and publisher, as well as his analyses of certain works, is necessarily drawn from a small coterie of art historians, particularly Max Friedländer, Heinz Lüdecke, and Joseph Koerner. As a social historian of the period, I found Ozment’s discussion of individual paintings and woodcuts enlightening (especially the final section on Cranach’s altars), but I doubt many specialists would find much that was new or noteworthy. Of course the intended audience for the book is clearly not the scholar, which explains the familiar Luther stories and early Reformation narrative—both, for the most part, even-handed and well done.

At times, Ozment seems aware that, in this instance, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts—and, to a certain extent, is not even whole. Even his famed translations and silken prose frequently try too hard to engage a reader whose attention might be sagging. We are reminded at least a half-dozen times that Cranach was “a fast brush,” and...