ABSTRACT
In recent decades, scholars of the Reformation have become adept at making a distinction between ‘iconoclasm’ and ‘iconophobia’. e spread of Protestantism may have recast the role of imagery in the sphere of devotion – and cast it out of the fabric of many churches – but the notion that such negation hampered the development of visual culture more broadly has been subject to considerable re-evaluation. If in print, households and civic spaces post-Reformation visual culture was rich, it was also fecund – indeed, images crossed confessional, national and temporal boundaries, nding new meanings through their use in fresh contexts. Much of this was a commercial ploy of print houses to make the most of costly woodblocks and metal cuts, and historians of the book have shown us that the spread of images far beyond the context of their original commission stimulated a mingling of literary and artistic traditions, which stimulated Europe’s religious cultures in new and vibrant ways.1
