The Art of Confessionalism: Picturing Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic Faith in Northwest Germany, 1580-1618

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the status of religious imagery in Lutheran,

Reformed, and Catholic contexts in the decades preceding the outbreak of the Thirty

Years' War in 1618. Typical characterizations of the art created for each religious

confession, which generally posit a more sober style in reaction to Protestant critiques of

Catholic practice, do not fully account for the artworks commissioned by three

neighboring Westphalian courts that form the core of this study. The Reformed Count

Simon VI of Lippe at Schloss Brake in Lemgo, the Lutheran Prince Ernst of Holstein-

Schaumburg in Bückeburg, and the Catholic Prince-Bishop Dietrich von Fürstenberg of

Paderborn all looked to the imperial court of Rudolf II in Prague for artists and print

models when commissioning works to decorate their palace chapels and reception halls.

In addition to sharing some of the same artists, who often drew from common print

sources, the ties connecting these patrons included shared borders, mutual defense pacts,

marriages, and friendships. Relying on such sources as diaries, contracts, inventories,

and textual marginalia, along with church ordinances, sermons, and colloquy

proceedings, this dissertation lays out the close relationships that existed between these

three patrons of different religious confessions, reconstructs the history of their artistic

commissions, yields insights into their stylistic and iconographic choices, and establishes

each artistic project in its larger cultural and confessional context. Among the themes

explored are the fundamental relationship between the spiritual and material, the interplay

between word and image, the role of religious and secular authority, and the reckoning of

historical and liturgical time. This study also considers the limits of confessionalism

from the point of view of the artists who carried out these commissions. A mix of

internationally renowned and local painters, sculptors, and architects from various

religious backgrounds served patrons of different confessions, demonstrating that art

production was an interconfessional endeavor. This dissertation ultimately argues that

confessional self-fashioning involves factors beyond theological conviction. The desire to

be represented in a “princely manner” comparable with one's peers is transconfessional,

leading to a re-evaulation of what defines Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic art at the

turn of the seventeenth century.