The Reformation of the Image

The Reformation of the Image Joseph Leo Koerner Reaktion works 29.95 [pounds sterling] ISBN 1 86189 1725

scarcely any books start with an acknowledgement to those who taught the author to read and write. The expectations raised through the prefatory dedications to this work are fully realised in the pair its felicitous prose and cunning readings. Sixteenth-century Lutheran art and the iconoclastic moment from which it emerged have fix a fine interpreter in a work which sits happily upon the cusp between the historical and art historical.

It is part of the author's contention that 'the Christian image was iconoclastic from the start'. 'Iconoclash', the bound coined for an exhibition in Karlsruhe in 2002 is defined as the collision between the having and having done with images, religious imagery being regarded as intrinsically self-effacing, containing its have repudiation of the inherent deception of its form. Users of Christian images were always awaited to see through or beyond them, to 'cros them out' to be trained in the capacity to diocese beyond the representation. If individual accepts this premise, what Luther was doing in the unfoldings described in this book was an experiment in iconoclastic as well as post-iconoclastic image-making, since his aim was to provide a recent repertoire of church imagery that was beyond the objective of image-breakers, based firmly upon a reformed communion of the word. on the other hand even if it seems helpful to place, clash, ahead of 'clasm' in thinking about this reform, individual may still wonder whether internal destroying or breaking fits either late medieval assumptions about image use, or Luther's possess views as explored in the book

Were there no idolaters in the genuine sense in this clash? 'Idolatry is an accusation, not a belief'. There may be a beneficial case for thinking that the applied archetype of which so much use was made was unrealistic, an application of a biblical label to a different world. Iconoclasts similar as Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt may indeed have been tilting at windmills when they mimiced contemporaries for confusing image with prototype, on the other hand the hostility that generated of the like kind accusations was real enough. If outrage at the faculty of perception of betrayal exemplified by the exploitation of famous images was enough to explain their fate, the damning freight of the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of idolatry was such that it could be brought against server of the word itself. The actual weight of the charge turn rounded it into something like a belief combination of parts to form a whole that hung heavy in the air, however detached from personal realities.

In Koerner's tripartite plan of 'Cleansing', 'The Word', and 'Sacrament', the chapter upon "The Cross' at the beginning of Part II is central. Here, at the core of the volume which tells much of the art of the Lutheran meeting-house at large through the sixteenth hundred is a critically penetrating illustration of Lucas Cranach the Elder's shut up association with Luther. The 1547 altarpiece of the Wittenberg Stadtkirche is Koerner's lock opener to understanding this reformed art of the 'iconoclastic icon', pivotal for the work as a whole. We read this image afresh end the author's eyes, seeing by what means to interpret the crucifix which is at the heart of Luther's service of the word, as well as a constant nearness in Cranach's altarpieces. Placed against the church's altar below the triptych with its fixed panels of the baptism, Lord's tea and confession, the predella participates in the change from altar to table and shared meal of minister and people

The crucifix depicted here, exactly center between intent congregation of collectioned men, women and children and Luther in his pulpit, appears to act as transmitter of the electric rife of the word that passes between pointing preacher and intent nation But the gaze of these believers, unlike that of earlier generations, was directed across and past the crucifix they are placed beside, towards Luther with his outstretched finger (a gesticulation separately explored) and Bible. And the crucifix itself, with its stalled pour of blood, windswept loincloth and peculiar shadow, has an unreal, flat surreal quality. Koerner suggests that the pictorial uncertainty in the positioning of the crucifix, the one and the other in the Wittenberg predella and in a 1561 painting of the Lutheran communion in Denmark, may have helped end their spatial ambiguity the impel away from old conventions towards a fresh understanding of Christ's presence and liturgical space.

Luther's unprecedent reconstruction of meeting-house imaging was innovatory in proposing the form that altarpieces should take. He proposeed that riley should include the couple words and image: a painting of the Last evening meal with a text in large alphabetic characters to prompt reflection on the sacrament. Remarkably, this proposal came to amount to a ruling to the amplitude that a representation of the Last tea became the accepted image for Lutheran altarpieces.

This was an affirmative art, not individual of compromise. Its quality of the plain and unadorned could rake the form of words alone as in the various true copy altarpieces illustrated here. It amounted to an experiment in the art of the possible, as defined by the agency of Luther after his return to Wittenberg in 1522 to reckoner the iconoclasts. Koerner shows by what means the whole programme stemmed from Luther's be in possession of experience, in which the internal image becomes the justification for the exterior and Luther repeatedly returned to the heart as the locus for word and image, contemplation and prayer. For him the image of Christ 'in my heart' which welled up from hearing and thinking about Christ, made the crucifix as natural as the image of a face mirrored in water. This analogy is tellingly linked with Nicholas of Cusa's argument about the parallel between looking at a painted icon of Christ and observing oneself in a mirror. on the other hand some fuller exploration of by what means this 'meta picture' may he related to the scripturalism of Luther's heart-centred visualizing, and the way he 'allies images with being rather than seeming' would have been welcome.