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

A visual transformation of the Bible took place in the Renaissance and Reformation. Initially, this occurred as a result of technological advances, for the printing press proliferated biblical texts and images on a previously unimaginable scale. Equally important, Reformation theology, though also a threat to art, served as a catalyst for the creation of innovative biblical iconography. In the Beginning Was the Image demonstrates the pivotal role that the defining artists of the Northern Renaissance--Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Hans Holbein--played in the reformation of the Bible and the biblical transformation of Protestant art.

This pioneering study focuses on the decisive contributions of the three leading artists of the Northern Renaissance--Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger-- to the printed Bible and to the transformation of ecclesiastical art in the Protestant Reformation. A time of artistic and theological revolution, the Renaissance and Reformation also witnessed a visual reformation of the Bible. In David H. Price''s new interpretation, these artists emerge as major reformers in their own right who created a dynamic and innovative visual culture of biblicism. In the Beginning Was the Image explicitly addresses a key paradox of the Bible''s new cultural status: as divergent Bible editions and translations shattered the unity of Christianity, new artistic approaches arose to accommodate theological and textual diversity. Rulers and theologians produced new Bibles as foundations for transformative socio-political movements, and their success, according to Price''s compelling research, depended on the inventiveness and creativity of these artists. Written in a style designed to be accessible to a broad range of readers, Price''s richly nuanced study explores the art of Dürer, Cranach, and Holbein and the biblical iconographies they developed to connect the new biblicism to faith and political authority.