The Reformation of the Image

"This is a hard book, it can’t be read—or summarised—in the sort of light way the other two can. Sure. when we think about Protestants and their art, we think of—at least in America—whitewashed Congregationalist churches on the green in New Haven, or Boston. In fact, argues Joseph Leo Koerner—another Jew—there was a Protestant art, and it was particularly didactic. It involved, for instance, images of Luther facing an audience, with Luther on the right, the audience listening to the sermon, divided by sex, on the left, everybody’s dressed very Protestant and the image is very spare—it’s just a stone room—and yet, in the middle of the image, is an image of the crucified Christ, and there are rays coming from Luther’s mouth. You realise that Luther’s sermon is making real, making manifest, the crucified Christ just as transubstantiation made the real presence of Christ made known to a Catholic congregation. Paul’s assertion that “We preach Christ crucified,” is here literally manifest, and so the image becomes very important in Protestantism. The most fascinating thing for me is to see the same artists—the Cranach family—Lucas Cranach the elder and the younger, in transition between being Catholic artists and being Protestant artists. You’ll see a crucifixion from BL—Before Luther—and it’s a crucifixion that takes place in historical space: it has the three Marys, it has the bad Jews and Romans, it has the Centurion, and it has the thieves, and then you’ll see a crucifixion by the same artist that happens after Luther, and all you’ll have there is the Centurion. He’ll be saying—in German—“Truly this one is the son of God.” It encapsulates what Protestantism is, which is the idea of sola fide , ‘only faith,’ and of individual faith at that. “The Middle Ages was an extremely fluid, dynamic period that in all its impulses, even though it talked a lot about tradition, mitigated against stasis.” People tend to think that history works in neatly periodised soundbites. That one goes to sleep on the evening of December 31st 1299 someplace in Italy in the Middle Ages and wakes up January 1st 1300 and says, “Feels like the Renaissance this morning.” It didn’t happen that way, everything was happening simultaneously. Everything was a process and, to me Koerner’s book both liberates us from the idea Protestants had no art and explains what Protestant art was. It explains that really there were no Protestants. Just like when Jesus was hanging around with a bunch of guys in Galilee, there were no Christians, there were Jesus-people. What were they? Were they Jews? Yeah, were they Christians? Not yet, not quite. Same thing with the Reformation. You heard Luther’s message, but could you dump all your Catholicism? No, so it was a gradual process. This book really exemplifies for me—that word again—the interstitiality, the in-betweenness, the liminality of one’s theological position."