The Conversion of St. Paul 1509

Lucas van Leyden made this print, 'The Conversion of St. Paul,' in the Netherlands sometime in the first third of the sixteenth century. It depicts the Apostle Paul's famous turn to Christianity. What interests me about this image is that it shows us how the early Protestant reformers of Northern Europe understood the role of images in religious life. Protestants were often accused of being against religious imagery altogether. But the visual culture of the Reformation was actually far more complex than that. Reformers sought to make religious imagery more directly and powerfully accessible to a wider public. Prints were crucial to that project, allowing artists to disseminate biblical scenes far and wide. Lucas van Leyden was one of the most important of these artists. To understand his work better, we can look at the vast print collections in museums, as well as the writings of the reformers themselves.