Jacobus Vrel: Looking for Clues of an Enigmatic Painter. Quentin Buvelot, Bernd Ebert, and Cécile Tainturier, eds. Munich: Hirmer, 2021. 256 pp. + color pls. $50.

Abstract

“reflection as an alternative to the sacred materialism of the cult of the saints,” as Price summarizes Erasmian theology (183). One highlight is the infrequently reproduced portrait drawing of Cranach by Dürer, amid discussion of the two artists’ mutual influence on each other and on Reformation visuality: though one may quibble with Price’s word choices, he is right that the distinction lies between promoting a theological truth about scripture (“didactic” Cranach) and promoting attitudes toward scripture (“psychological”Dürer). Price’s reading of Dürer’s 1526 Four Holy Men is also helpful in its emphasis on biblicism as a governmental virtue. The fifth chapter is the best in the book: its key intervention is to showcase Cranach’s underappreciated use of continuity—across traditional and Lutheran art as well as across paint and print media (one might also have added relief sculpture!)—as an authorizing strategy for innovative biblicist iconography. To anchor this point, Price offers generous footnotes: from Luther’s more obscure pronouncements to scholarship on period armor, Price has mastered this context and reframed it. Finally, the final chapter, taking on the trickiest artist of the three, does not bother interrogating Holbein’s Reformation or lack thereof; more usefully, Price establishes how Holbein’s unique forms of attention to biblical detail made his Bible illustrations the industry standard for decades, not just in Lutheran zones. While some may be unconvinced by the coda concerning Holbein’s Christ Dead in the Tomb, it showcases Price’s poetic side as he pits Fyodor Dostoevsky against Pope Francis; I longed for more such moments of free rein in the book. Price regularly invokes details in finely engraved frontispieces and illustrations of books, details crucial to his argument and/or potentially delightful to the reader. The book is charmingly designed, with a hollow typeface printed in red ink for intertitles, recalling incunabula and early sixteenth-century printed bibles without cornily aping the actual typefaces used. The clear writing and convincing argumentation make it perfect for Reformation and Renaissance syllabi as well as an aid to future scholarship.