The Lutheral Reform and the transformation of the religious image in the arts

Abstract

After 500 years of the emblematic gesture of Martin Luther in Wittenberg that would start the Protestant Reformation, it is necessary to study the place that religious images had in the new vision of Christianity from the Lutheran ideas. The significant proposal of two German artists, Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach, the Elder is analyzed. From the first, a unique work, The Four Apostles, which recomposes and reconfigures the religious image from the devotional to the declarative, emphasizing the importance of the Gospel and the word in religious artistic expression. And, of the second, two works that finish sealing the new place that will occupy the religious images in the Lutheran Church, Law and Gospel and Christ blessing the children, with which Cranach approaches the Lutheran preaching and a vision of the religious set of images most linked to the Scriptures. However, in both cases, the demystification of the religious image is remarkable, as long as it takes the place of support for the preaching, avoiding acting as its substitute. The reconfiguration of the religious image that places it in a sphere different from that of the Christian tradition initiated with the official stipulations of the Second Council of Nicaea is analyzed.