Images, faith and power · 02 / 03
How Did Print Turn Art into Mass Media?
From Cranach’s woodcuts to Luther’s portraits: images travel beyond the church and enter debate
Look first, then read
If you had never met Luther, what difference would it make whether your first image showed a thoughtful friar or a seven-headed monster?
Pause and find the details that support your interpretation.
Begin reading01Identify the Support
Locate paper, page, title, and edges. Is the work an independent sheet, a book illustration, or a panel fixed in a church? How does that format extend or restrict circulation?
02Trace the Viewing Route
Follow pointing hands, gazes, left-right divisions, and text. Who attracts attention first, and where does judgment lead? Cover the inscription temporarily and test how the interpretation changes.
03Recognize the Position
Compare a Luther portrait, an anti-Luther title page, and an anti-papal image. Which formal choices make someone credible, absurd, or dangerous? Distinguish these effects from historical evidence.
Sixteenth-century religious debate took place on paper as well as in churches and theological institutions. A portrait, a woodcut mocking the pope, or a booklet pairing contrasting actions could be carried, passed on, and reprinted. Images reached places where their makers and polemicists could not appear in person. Print brought art into a wider public argument.
The English Art and Reformation lecture makes the relationship between medium and circulation central. “Mass media” here means images and text reaching an enlarged audience through reproduction. It does not imply universal literacy, books affordable to everyone, or a Reformation caused by printing alone. The change involved woodblocks, paper, workshops, booksellers, and people who read aloud or explained pictures to others.
Start with the Image as an Object on Paper
Woodcut is a relief-printing process. Areas not intended to take ink are cut away, leaving raised lines to receive it and transfer it to paper. Reusing the block means the image need not be drawn anew for each impression. European woodcuts on paper existed in the fifteenth century, including in religious books and playing cards. The Reformation adopted a medium with established uses and craft traditions.
A picture printed on a separate sheet and an illustration bound into a book invite different viewing habits. One can be displayed independently; the other can guide a reader through successive pages. A pamphlet is easier to carry than a large volume. Reproduction reduces the work needed to add one more image, but paper, ink, cutting, and transport still cost money. Potential mass production means neither free distribution nor guaranteed attention. A print can also be an original artwork without a painting as its model. Cut lines and unprinted paper show how artists designed specifically for this medium.
Cranach’s Workshop Participates in Publishing
Lucas Cranach the Elder was both court painter to the Saxon electors and head of a substantial Wittenberg workshop. Sons, assistants, and collaborators produced different types of work together. Closely associated with Luther, Cranach supplied reforming portraits and images and helped oversee the printing of writings. Religious conviction, courtly connections, and manufacturing capacity met in one working environment. “Cranach” names an artist but also points to an enduring organization. Asking who designed and who executed an object is more useful than imagining every line as the master’s own hand.
Crediting a print solely to its named artist overlooks design, block cutting, typesetting, printing, and selling. Circulation did not necessarily mean transporting large quantities of Wittenberg products to every city: local printers could reissue texts that had attracted interest. Publishing served conviction while remaining a business requiring estimates of demand. Publishers’ willingness to invest helped images keep reaching new readers.
Pictures Do Not Bypass Words
Pointed hats, crowns, skulls, and monsters can quickly signal identities or emotions, but recognizing a sign differs from understanding an argument. Prints often carry headings, dialogue, scripture, or commentary. Words identify figures and constrain interpretation. Without them, kneeling could mean humility, obedience, or humiliation. Reading is not one uniform ability, either: understanding a vernacular language does not imply understanding Latin. Choices of language and typographic prominence both select and shape an audience.
Literacy varied, as did encounters with images. Some people read privately; others listened to reading aloud and interpreted through preaching or conversation. An impression’s audience could therefore exceed its purchaser without everyone accepting the same meaning. Paper and social relationships extended one another’s reach. Images did not automatically say the same thing to every person.
Making an Opponent Look Wrong
Published in 1521, the Passional Christi und Antichristi organizes twenty-six woodcuts designed by Cranach into paired comparisons. One pair shows Christ bending to wash the disciples’ feet and the pope receiving a kiss on his foot. Similar bodily arrangements are given opposite moral meanings: service to others against the demand for reverence. This is the reforming side’s accusation against the papacy. A composition’s clarity of argument does not make it a neutral record of events.
Attacks on Luther also used exaggerated imagery. The Seven-Headed Luther appeared on the title page of a work by the Catholic polemicist Johannes Cochlaeus in 1529; the woodcut is attributed to Hans Brosamer. Multiple heads on one body suggest inconsistency and unreliability. Comparing the works is less a contest over which is more ridiculous than an inquiry into how contrast, distortion, and labels predefine trustworthy figures and enemies. Shared use of imagery does not imply equal editions, publishing resources, or impact. Visual comparison cannot replace research into actual publication and circulation.
How Does a Face Make Ideas Credible?
Against the monstrous Luther, Cranach’s engraved portrait of 1520 presents monastic clothing, a tonsure, and concentrated expression. The Latin inscription distinguishes visible appearance from thought, also reminding viewers of the limits of paper and flesh. It does not explain an entire theology. Instead, it offers a person whose inner life deserves attention. When an audience cannot meet the subject, a name and recognizable face provide an entry into ideas. The portrait can thus function in public controversy as well as commemorate an individual.
This arrangement can be read as a strategy of credibility without assuming that all viewers were convinced. A portrait is no unselected record: clothing, expression, pose, and inscription construct identity together. Luther’s portraits changed over time, and their circulation differed; no version should automatically be assumed equally widespread. Comparison with an attacking title page shows that “knowing a person” may mean receiving the appearance chosen by one side.
An Image Can Organize a Theological Argument
Cranach’s Gotha version of Law and Grace of 1529, also called Law and Gospel or Damnation and Redemption, arranges sin and salvation in one comparable field. On the left, Death and the Devil press a naked figure, while Moses’s tablets expose human sin. On the right, John the Baptist points toward the Crucifixion, directing attention to Christ. The central tree is bare on one side and flourishing on the other; biblical text below joins visual structure in organizing a route through the work.
This is a panel painting, not a woodcut, but it demonstrates a reusable teaching method: abstract distinctions become positions, gestures, and contrasts. It articulates a Lutheran understanding in which law reveals sin and gospel announces salvation. It must not be reduced to “evil Judaism on the left, good Christianity on the right.” Viewing the whole and its inscriptions explains its direction of thought better than isolating a skeleton or cross. Later painted and printed versions differ in composition. Identify the version before deciding how figures and texts combine to explain doctrine.
Images Remain in Churches after Reform
The Reformation Altarpiece in Wittenberg’s St Mary’s Church, made by Cranach the Elder, Cranach the Younger, and their workshop around 1547–1548, challenges the assumption that Protestants uniformly rejected images. The Last Supper in the center and baptism and confession on the wings still organize religious practice into a major visual work. The traditional altarpiece form continues while addressing reformed worship and communal identity.
The predella deserves close attention. Luther preaches at the right, the congregation listens at the left, and the Crucified Christ stands between them. The visual center directs attention to salvation communicated through preaching. This is one example of Lutheran acceptance and redefinition of religious imagery, not an attitude shared by every reforming tradition. Retention, placement, and use require a particular regional and confessional context. Fixed within worship, an altarpiece is seen repeatedly; paper prints can move and change hands. Both can teach, but their distances, occasions, and audiences differ.
Changing Demand Changes Art’s Work
Religious conflict damaged traditional ecclesiastical commissions in some areas while giving portraits, teaching images, and polemical prints new uses. Cranach’s workshop produced religious, mythological, and courtly subjects concurrently. Artists did not all follow one path away from faith. Audiences, payers, and display locations could be recombined without making the change an inevitable progression toward a modern secular art market. Even similar subjects could perform different tasks. A religious painting might serve public worship, reading at home, or private collecting. Changes in demand involve customers and uses that two labels, “religious” and “secular,” cannot fully describe.
Modern comparisons may suggest image management, contrast graphics, or satirical memes. These are tools for looking, not claims of equivalence: sixteenth-century print relied on physical objects, human labor, and local circulation rather than digital platforms. The lasting question is who arranged the version we encounter when art appears repeatedly in different settings. What has a familiar face or striking opposition omitted that still needs slower consideration?
A short glossary
Key terms
- Woodcut
- A relief-printing technique in which raised portions of a woodblock receive ink and transfer it to paper. Blocks can be reused and often accompany printed text.
- Engraving
- An intaglio technique in which a burin cuts recessed lines into a metal plate; ink held in those lines is transferred to paper. It differs from woodcut.
- Broadsheet
- A publication carrying text or imagery on a single sheet, able to circulate independently without being bound into a book.
- Polemical Pamphlet
- A short printed publication advancing a position in a dispute, whose influence can expand through reprinting, reading aloud, and retelling.
- Workshop
- An organization producing works through the lead artist, family members, assistants, and collaborators. A work need not have been executed entirely by one person.
- Visual Polemic
- Images using contrast, exaggeration, distortion, or labels to attack opponents and support a particular position.
- Law and Gospel
- A central distinction in Lutheran theology: law exposes human sin, while gospel proclaims salvation through Christ.
- Predella
- The horizontal section below an altarpiece’s principal image, often contributing related scenes to the work’s overall meaning.
Your turn to reflect
What would the paired images in the Passional Christi und Antichristi persuade you of if their words were removed?
Consider another perspective
The opposing poses might remain forceful, but would you know the figures, scriptural references, or fairness of the comparison? Try captions from two different positions. Words can intensify, redirect, or limit what an image seems to mean.
Take this question into your next encounter with art
Printing let images be reproduced and reach more people. Their persuasive force arose from manufacture, words, circulation, and the circumstances of viewing together.
Sources and further reading
These guides draw on the Reformation and art presentations, slide lists and reading materials of Marie-Louise Lillywhite, Clare Ford-Wille and Susan Bracken, alongside collection research. Art Value Lab has developed the looking questions and comparisons for this edition.
Dates, attributions and historical accounts have been checked against the sources below; image sources are identified in individual captions.
- Victoria and Albert Museum｜What is print?
- UC Press／California Digital Library｜Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther
- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin｜Cranach – Identity and the Individual
- University of Oxford, Taylor Editions｜Passional Christi und Antichristi
- British Museum | Septiceps Lutherus Title Page, 1529 (1880,0710.592)
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art｜Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk，1520
- Cranach Digital Archive | Damnation and Redemption, 1529, Gotha Version
- Cranach Digital Archive｜Reformation altarpiece: The Sermon，1547–1548
Read further
The following titles are selected from the course’s further-reading lists.
- Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the ImageUniversity of Chicago Press, 2004
Pursues how the Reformation changed images’ uses and the ways they were viewed.
- Keith Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the ReformationUniversity of Chicago Press, 1989
Extends questions of audiences and social roles through everyday figures and popular imagery.
- Exhibition catalogue, Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach2017 exhibition catalogue (as listed in the course bibliography)
Compares paintings, prints, and other objects to situate Cranach within German art.