Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (18.2018)

and religious imagery - “the Word”, “the Sacrament” and “the Cleansing” - of the
Iconoclasm. Koerner stated the primacy of Word in the new visual culture. Despite
iconoclastic riots, images were not completely eliminated, as they had to support the
sermon - being the central point of the Lutheran service. As we aim to showcase in
the present study, at the early stage of the Reformation the Word was also crucial
for the Catholic imagery, which was later replaced by the Tridentine aesthetics.
Contributors to the new collective monograph edited by J. L. Koerner and
B. Heal24 continued to explore the prolific topie of Reformation s visual culture,
but now focused morę on applied arts and engravings, which usually receive far
less attention than easel painting.
Methods
Several analytical tools will be employed to address the highlighted problems. We
will proceed with the formal, iconographic and iconological analyses of two above-
mentioned engravings with a view to identifying the artistic and narrative sources
that inspired Jacob Cornelisz., in order to confirm or refute uniqueness of the
Passover engraving. Then we will scrutinize the ideas of Alardus of Amsterdam
presented in the engraving s caption. After that, we will identify and study the origi-
nal Reformation texts that he was referring to, thus allowing us to reconstruct the
main theses of the early Reformation Eucharist disputes, led at that time by Martin
Luther. In his early treatises, Luther rejected several main Eucharistic dogmas of the
Catholic Canon Missae. Therefore, we will reconstruct the ideological background
of engravings and explain the peculiarities of their iconography, which left its mark
on the Netherlandish art of the sixteenth century.
Results
I
“Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi” stands out in the rangę of similar books on
several counts. Firstly, the artistic value of the engravings created for this book (64
in total) by far exceeds the level of artisanship found in similar books. The histo-
riography portrays Jacob Cornelisz. - if not as a talented innovator but at least as
a gifted disciple of masters of the Northern Renaissance, with Albrecht Diirer being
the most obvious prototype. Secondly, as it has already been mentioned above, the
Passover had been picked for this selection. It is wedged between two scenes: the
apocryphal Christ taking leave of his Mother, and Christ Washing the Feet of the
Apostles. The Fast Supper follows the Washing.
Other authors tended to omit the Passover from the Passion, due to its inconsist-
ency with the narrative logie moulded for this type of prayer literaturę. The narration
unravelled in the following sequence: First came the Fali of Adam and Eve due to its
importance in justifying Christ s claim to be the new Adam, which in turn brought
up the need to explain why Christ had to atone for the sins of the human race. Then
came the account of Christ s life (from the Nativity to Resurrection or Ascension)
or the account of the last week of his earthly life: from the arrival in Jerusalem to
the already mentioned Resurrection or Ascension. The Passover does not fit any
of these storylines despite its presence in the Holy Scriptures and the evidence in
Synoptic gospels linking the Last Supper to the Passover.
24 Art and Religious Reform in early modern Europę, B. Heal, J.L. Koerner (eds.), London 2017, p. 230.

Two Suppers: Illustrations by Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen to Possio DominiNostri...

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