Abstract

Iconoclasm is one of the central characteristic of the reformation movement. In several books it was argued that there was a connection between iconoclasm and the interpretation of nature as a language and as a text since about 1600. This article discusses the artist as a creator in Renaissance culture. It shows the reaction of Luther to this concept and to iconoclasm, focussing on the connection between the Lutheran control of pictures and images and his conception of the mind and of memory on the one hand and of creatures as images and natural history on the other. In Lutheran context the book of nature was a book made of images as signs of the word of God