In the Beginning Was the Image : Art and the Reformation Bible

"This pioneering study focuses on the decisive contributions by Albrecht Dèurer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger to the popular promotion of the printed Bible and, beyond that, to the evangelical impulses that transformed ecclesiastical art. The Renaissance, always recognized as a time of artistic and theological foment for Christianity, also witnessed a visual re-formation of the Bible. Material culture played its part since the printing press allowed proliferation of biblical images and texts on a previously unimaginable scale. Contrary to commonly accepted claims that the Reformation resulted in the atrophy of art, artists offered richly visual experiences for the biblical culture of the new Protestant churches. This book further explicitly explores the paradox of the Bible's cultural status. The Bible, authority for Christian culture, shattered the unity of Christianity with its divergent editions and translations. Reformation art required new approaches to accommodate confessional and textual diversity. Rulers, theologians, and artists created new Bibles as foundations for transformative socio-political movements. In Price's richly nuanced study, a new understanding emerges of how Dèurer, Cranach, and Holbein invented biblical iconographies as they promoted the relationship of biblicism to faith and political authority"--