ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the point where the two notional 'traditions' intersect. How, at the very outset of the Reformation, did artists, caught up in the reform movement, respond in their art to the changing nature of worship, both public and private? The association of garlic with the Jews is an ancient one. It is embedded in popular names for the plant, found all over Germany and the Low Countries: 'Judenkost', 'Joddelok', 'Judenlauch', 'jodenjuin' and variants. The Augsburg painter Jorg Breu the Elder was in his forties and the head of a flourishing workshop when his city became embroiled in religious and social turmoil, rioting and sporadic iconoclastic outbursts. The two paintings of The Mocking of Christ may be dated c.1520 and c.1525 respectively. They were discussed by Gode Kramer in an important article of 1980, which for the first time considered Breu's works of the 1520s in the light of the artist's evangelical views.
