ARTH 3260 - Idols and Images: Visual Arts of Reformation Europe

This course examines European visual and material culture in the context of the religious, social and political transformations of the Protestant Reformation and its aftermath. The late medieval context will form an initial background to our exploration of the intensive critique and physical destruction of religious imagery by Reformers in Northern Europe. While the emphasis is on religious artifacts, we will be concerned with the changing functions, concepts, and uses of a range of images over the course of the sixteenth century.