The Reformation of the Image

Martin Luther preached the radical notion that we are saved through faith alone. With one stroke, he overturned a thousand years of practice and teaching. Gone was the need for saintly intercessors and a special priesthood or the richly decorated and image-filled churches in which such mediation could take place. What counted now was faith arriving inwardly, in each individual, through the text of the Bible€"the naked Word of God itself.

But if words€"not iconic images€"led the believer to salvation, why didn€t religious imagery disappear during the Reformation?  The answer, according to Joseph Leo Koerner€s masterful The Reformation of the Image, lies in the paradoxical nature of Protestant religious imagery itself, which is at once both iconic and iconoclastic. According to Koerner, it is this €œiconoclash€ that characterizes Reformation art. The Reformation of the Image compellingly shows how visual art became indispensable to a religious movement built on words.  It also reveals in Protestant images a powerful instance of modern disenchantment:  the disappearance of magic both from images and from the world.

€œUnfailingly arresting and inventive . . . it is a long time since a work of art history has kept me so consistently reaching for a pencil to register ardent appreciation or violent dissent.€€"Eamon Duffy, London Review of Books