Reformed Theology and Visual Culture: The Protestant Imagination from Calvin to Edwards. By William A. Dyrness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xv+ 342 pp. 85.00cloth;85.00 cloth; 85.00cloth;29.99 paper (original) (raw)

The book is a study of the 'the interaction between theology and visual culture', the 'Protestant imagination'. As Dyrness admits, many will see this as an oxymoron. Protestantism, with the honourable exception of seventeenth century Dutch art, is commonly seen as a destructive, iconoclastic movement, hostile to the visual image, and to the fine arts generally. Many readers will be familiar with this theme in the work of Eamonn Duffy, recently popularised in Britain by Sir Roy Strong. Dyrness sets out to show that the reality was much more complicated: that a major shift in the use of the imagination during the Reformation, in which a 'clean break' was made with the visual mediation of faith, and its replacement with 'an internalised faith which privileged the ear over the eye'. However, Dyrness believes, the iconoclasm of the Reformers had positive as well as a negative influence on the developing culture, opening up certain pathways in art, whilst it closed off others. After setting the late medieval scene, Dyrness notes the crucial importance of Calvin, and his idea that the world is the theatre of God's glory. This made possible a new aesthetics of ordinary life: in serving our neighbour we are creating a world, 'making images' that reflect God's glory. It is this structuring of both the interior and exterior life as an artistic act, shaped by Scripture, which is the heart of the book. Dyrness then traces these themes through sixteenth century England into seventeenth century Holland and New England. One of the great strengths of this account is that Dyrness takes in not only fine art such as the work of Nicholas Hilliard, and Dutch landscape painters, but also other visual media such as book illustrations, town planning and landscape gardening, through which Reformed Christians constructed a visual world that glorified God. He notes how the Calvinist architect Bernard Palissy