Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther (1528) This broadside satirizes the sale of indulgences without the necessity of including any text. Matthias Gerung, Satire on the Sale of Indulgences(before 1536)īroadsides were large sheets of popular woodcuts printed on one side of a sheet of paper, often the least expensive and most shared prints available. Regardless of one’s literacy, this irreverent print would have gotten its point across. The advent of the printing press allowed for the spread of Reformation ideas in the form of pamphlets and propaganda art. 4Įrhard Schön, The Devil Playing the Bagpipe (c. It wasn’t difficult to see the image as an analogy for the ruling class and the church ignoring the needs of common people. This etching recounts the Proverbs passage on the virtues of sharing grain, rather than hoarding it. 3ĭaniel Hopfer, Illustrations to Proverbs 2: The Hoarders of Grain (1534) Death and the Bishop, from his Power of Death cycle, criticizes clerical corruption. A pupil of Dürer’s, Aldegrever was an engraver whose small prints depicted a Lutheran theology. Luther was the most open of the reformers to religious imagery, if it was limited to personal engagement with symbolic spiritual imagery. Heinrich Aldegrever, Death and the Bishop (1541) Dürer’s woodcut expresses a Protestant outlook by depicting Jesus giving his new commandment, after Judas had fled the scene. But certain art forms, such as printmaking, were accepted due to their more modest, private nature. Motivated by the belief that emphasizing religious imagery was idolatrous, the Reformation caused a significant reduction in religious art produced in Protestant countries. This list is not meant as an all-encompassing compendium of everything essential to the Reformation and its theology, but rather as a glimpse of the variety of ways the movement that Martin Luther sparked in 1517 would influence the history of the world. ![]() As we commemorate the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation, Living Lutheran is exploring 500 of its unique aspects, continuing our series this month with 50 Reformation works of art.
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