The beauty of belief: decorating the Württemberg Church during the Reformation

Abstract

"The Beauty of Belief sheds new light on Lutheran relationships with ecclesiastical decoration in southwest Germany following the Duchy of Wurttemberg's Reformation in 1534. Based on extensive original archival research and engagement with surviving images and objects, Róisín Watson compellingly demonstrates how Lutherans moved away from initial acts of iconoclasm and towards embracing the possibilities of the religious image in their devotional routines. She explores the interactions of Wurttemberg rulers, pastors, and congregations with their ecclesiastical spaces across the political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In doing so, this book tells not only the story of the visual culture of the Reformation, but an account of Wurttemberg's Reformation itself"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Debating images : the Württemberg dukes and the image question in the sixteenth century -- Commissioning images : artists and Lutheran art at the Württemberg court -- Defining images : pastors and the demarcation of church space -- Overseeing images : pastors and the management of church interiors -- Bequeathing images : donors and donation in the later reformation -- Commemorating images : memory, piety and the Lutheran funerary monument -- Contemplating images : Magdalena Sibylla von Württemberg and Lutheran visual piety in the late seventeenth century.