The history of the German Reformation in the sixteenth century is instinctively associated with the activities of Martin Luther in Thuringia and Saxony, supported by the princes of the Wettin dynasty. It was there that the first Protestant church buildings were erected (the castle chapel in Torgau), and it was also there that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting workshop operated, laying the foundations for Lutheran visual art. As Róisín Watson states in the introduction to her impressive book, the Duchy of Württemberg, located on the western fringes of the Holy Roman Empire, has, so far, remained outside the mainstream of scholarship on the German Reformation, particularly with regard to Protestant church art in this region. The researcher recognized this research gap and devoted her doctoral dissertation at St Andrews University to the problem of church interior decoration in Württemberg during the Reformation (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries); this work formed the basis for the present book.
Róisín Watson's work is a serious study based largely on unknown or little-known archival materials, collected mainly in institutions in Stuttgart (the historical capital of the duchy) and Tübingen (the seat of the local university and the main intellectual center of the province). Her focus is on the decoration of church interiors in the duchy, examined in terms of their conformity with the doctrines of various Protestant denominations, patterns of artistic patronage and financing, local and provincial administration, and finally iconography of church furnishings, with their religious, social, and political content. One of Watson's basic assumptions was to show that the churches of Württemberg demonstrate the diversity of early modern Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire, as this denomination, despite the enormous role of Martin Luther’s authority, was not monolithic. The duchy’s location in southwestern Germany opened it up to the strong influence of the Upper German Reformation, associated with the activities of John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich and the Swiss cantons, and Martin Bucer in Strasbourg. For this reason, in the early period of church reform, Württemberg experienced iconoclastic movements; the dominant aversion to altarpieces in the region became a lasting legacy of the period when church interiors were purged of their late Gothic furnishings. Ultimately, however, the Lutheran model of reformation prevailed here, and decorating churches with various types of furnishings depicting scenes from sacred history remained the norm in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Watson’s work therefore focuses on the visual and material culture of the Württemberg Church as a product of the collective activities of local congregations, led by pastors and operating within the boundaries set by the ruling princely dynasty. The author treats the decorated church interiors of the region as sources that speak about the history of the Reformation, the agents who shaped it, the tensions between their groups, and, finally, the social history shaped by the church art they created.
The book has a clear and well-thought-out structure; it consists of an extensive introduction, divided into several subchapters, and three main parts, divided into chapters with subsequent subchapters; a detailed index facilitates the search for information. It should be noted right away that all parts of the book present extremely rich historical material, providing a detailed picture of the Württemberg church environment in the early modern period, which is certainly unknown to international readership. The book mentions dozens of little-known or completely unknown figures (with the possible exception of the main thinkers and clergy of the German Reformation and the successive princes of the Württemberg dynasty), such as local pastors, Upper German nobility and townspeople, artists, and craftsmen. All this contributes to a picture of “microhistory” centred around the Lutheran churches of Stuttgart and its surroundings, and their decoration. The author’s focus on local history is also one of the dominant impressions left by the reading of the book, to which I return below.
The introduction is divided into four subsections, introducing the issue of the Reformation in Württemberg and the attitudes of the main reformers toward church art. After presenting the sixteenth-century debates on the issue of images in Protestant churches, Watson characterizes Lutheran visual culture in more detail. She refutes the popular opinion that it was merely a shadow of the former richness of late Gothic art, pointing to its predominantly didactic and adiaphoric character. The introduction also provides basic information about the Duchy of Württemberg and the overlapping influences of the Upper German and Lutheran reforms, as well as explaining why the main part of the book is divided into three parts. Referring to the 1607 sermon by Pastor Joseph Elenheintz on the occasion of the consecration of the church in Waldenbuch, Watson assumed that the church interiors were shaped collectively by three groups of agents: the nobility, who constituted the “beautiful decorations” of churches, pastors, who were their “master builders,” and the congregation, who formed the “building bricks.” It is this allegory that forms the basis of the book’s structure.
The first part focuses on the ecclesiastical and foundation activities of the Württemberg princely dynasty, beginning with the quarrelsome and volatile Prince Ulrich (1487-1550) and his successors, Christoph and Ludwig. Watson shows Ulrich’s changing attitude towards the reforms of Zwingli, Bucer, and Luther, and the final adoption of the Wittenberg model of church organization in the duchy; she also discusses iconoclastic incidents in Württemberg churches, which, however, did not become the norm in the region and did not deprive the local churches of their rich late Gothic decorations, with the exception of the removal of paintings with particularly problematic iconography. The important foundations of Protestant church art made by the Württemberg princes are presented separately, in particular the castle chapel in Stuttgart, the painted retables from Mömpelgard and Gotha, and the ceiling of the magnificent festive hall in the Lusthaus in Stuttgart (not preserved to this day). The second part of the book, devoted to Württemberg pastors, focuses on several leading clergymen, such as Andreas Veringer (creator of the concept of the unusual L-shaped church in Freudenstadt), Johannes Schuler (responsible for the church program in Kirchheim unter Teck) and Johann Valentin Adreae (author of a work describing the concept of the ideal Christian city and its richly decorated temple); it was they who laid the foundations of the regional Church and defined the role of art in its didactic and moralizing mission. The last part of Watson’s work highlights the role of the congregation as founders and sponsors of church interior decoration, discusses the methods of administering church funds (especially the so-called “poor fund,” which came from donations to church coffers, which were also used to finance the maintenance of the church building) and presents iconographic programs of pictorial epitaphs, which were a particularly important and prestigious element of church furnishings, funded by individual members of the community. This chapter concludes with a case study of the founding activities of Princess Magdalena Sibylla von Württemberg at the end of the seventeenth century, in particular the interior decoration of the castle church in Stetten im Remstal, which she founded and co-created, and which is distinguished by a rich program consisting of numerous emblems with complex religious content. Each chapter of the book ends with a separate conclusion, which systematizes the complex historical, theological, and social issues discussed by Watson.
The monograph discussed here is admirable for the wealth of historical sources it draws on, the detail of its analysis, and the skill (including its linguistic clarity) with which Watson discusses the complex issues of Württemberg microhistory, confronted with Lutheran theology and the problem of the place that images played in Protestant religious life. If this book were to be treated as a work belonging exclusively to the discipline of historical research, it would be difficult to find fault with it. However, as an art historian, I regret to say that it leaves much to be desired from the point of view of my own discipline, which is, after all, best placed to deal with church buildings, their decoration, and their ideological content. The numerous works of art mentioned by Watson are analyzed only from a microhistorical and iconographic perspective, aiming only to reconstruct their intended ideological, religious, and didactic content.
Clearly, the author did not intend to conduct art historical analyses, but the study of Lutheran religious art in Württemberg, announced in the introduction, is incomplete without addressing questions typical of art history. The author’s “historical” profile has undoubtedly contributed to the fact that the book is exceptionally modestly illustrated, containing only 29 figures; most of the buildings mentioned are not illustrated, even those as important as the castle chapel in Stuttgart. The extensive subchapter on the retables from Mömpelgard and Gotha contains only a photograph of the latter (only one panel from the former altar is shown), and the discussion of the church in Freudenstadt is accompanied by only one photograph of its interior, which does not show any details of the decoration of the wooden gallery discussed. A serious shortcoming of the work is its complete disregard for the problem of the style of Protestant art in Württemberg. For example, the aforementioned church, built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, is maintained in the pure forms of late Gothic architecture, while the church in Mömpelgard was built, as the author herself writes, in an all’antica Italianate style. The choice of these stylistic modes, which are so rich in content, has not been given any thought, despite the extensive literature on the subject, starting with Hermann Hipp’s monumental work on the phenomenon ofNachgotik in southern Germany (which is available online). The title of Watson’s book will certainly attract the attention of any art historian specializing in early modern art, but the work itself proves useful only for strictly historical, religious, and iconographic analysis. The author's lack of insight into art history is also evident in minor terminological errors and statements that are little more than truisms. In the subchapter on Sibylla von Württemberg, Watson writes about Baroque Lutheran art as if it had been a recent discovery in art history, which supposedly associated Protestantism mainly with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; this seems to suggest that the otherwise meticulous researcher is unfamiliar with the magnificent Baroque Lutheran churches in the historical areas of the Holy Roman Empire, for example in Silesia, where the Friedenskirchen in Jawor/Jauer and Świdnica/Schweidnitz and the Gnadenkirchen in Jelenia Góra/Hirschberg and Kamienna Góra/Landeshut are among the most important works of Baroque art in this part of Europe.
The “microhistorical” nature of this work also stems from the fact that Lutheran art in Württemberg is discussed here exclusively in a local context. It is not compared with art from other regions with a predominantly Protestant denomination, which makes it difficult to place it on the broader map of art of that time in Germany and throughout Europe. Again, this is probably due to the failure to incorporate art history methods, for which comparative research remains one of the most important analytical tools. Overall, however, the wealth of source material that Watson has compiled in her book should be emphasized. She does not exhaust the list of questions concerning Protestant church art in the Duchy of Württemberg, but at the same time she provides a very serious source of historical knowledge on the subject. The author therefore deserves great credit for her recognition of this phenomenon, which will, however, require further, more interdisciplinary analysis in the future.