David Price (Vanderbilt University) is one of the most astute and wide-ranging scholars of early modern Germany. He has published extensively on Erasmus, Johannes Reuchlin and anti-Judaism, the history of early printed Bibles, the Reformation, and Albrecht Dürer as a humanist artist. These diverse interests are beautifully interwoven and enriched in his marvelous new book. Although some sections tap into his past writings, these are incorporated into a broader narrative about German humanism, the power of art even in a confessionally charged period, and the outpouring of new illustrated Bibles in the sixteenth century. The book focuses on three artists (Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger) within their creative environments.

Chapter 1 (“In the Beginning Was the Image: Art and the Renaissance of the Bible”) explores the rise of biblical humanism, its scholars, and the importance of book publishers, notably in Basel, Nuremberg, and Wittenberg. The technology of printing books and printed images would revolutionize European culture and the history of the Bible. Price notes that sixteen of the eighteen complete German-language Bibles prior to Martin Luther's New Testament of 1522 included illustrations. This engagement of artists would transform how readers would experience their direct engagement with the Bible. He defines Dürer as an intellectual and “committed proponent of biblical humanism” (6), Cranach as the Reformation's defining artist, and Holbein as the most prolific creator of biblical illustrations. They championed “the value of visual art as a theological discourse in the Protestant world” (8). Price briefly explains the importance of the studia humanitatis, such as Johannes Reuchlin's lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and his willingness to point out mistranslations in St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate text. Erasmus's New Testament (1516), published in Greek (with commentary) and in a new Latin translation, challenged the authority of the Vulgate and subsequently inspired Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, and others to improve and translate the Bible.

Chapter 2 examines Dürer as a biblical humanist. Price credits the Nuremberg artist with developing a “humanistic visual style,” one based on his early interest in classical art, such as modeling Adam and Eve after ancient sculptures or Christ as Apollo. His Latin and German editions of the Apocalypse (1498 and 1511), in which his large woodcut illustrations and the text were given equal space, elevated the authority and power of printed art. Dürer imaged St. Jerome as the ideal scholar, a type that he would later adapt for his engraved portrait of Erasmus (1526). The artist returned repeatedly to the themes of Christ's passion and the life of the Virgin. He collaborated with the Benedictine monk Benedict Chelidonius who composed Latin poems based on the gospels for three of Dürer's books published in 1511.

Price opens chapter 3 (“The Artist as Reformer”) by stating that Lucas Cranach the Elder “enabled posterity to think about Luther and the Protestant movement visually” (85). His innumerable portraits of Luther served as an icon of authority. Price considers the Bible as propaganda in his detailed discussion of the Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521). Each woodcut of Christ, accompanied by a biblical text selected by Melanchthon, is paired with a polemical image of the pope as an anti-type. The heart of this chapter is the Septembertestament (1522), Luther's German translation of the New Testament from the Greek. Cranach's role in the creation of the first Protestant Bible is underscored since he and his assistants designed the woodcuts; the book was printed on presses located in his workshop using paper from Cranach's own paper mill. Cranach and goldsmith Christian Döring financed the presswork by Melchior Lotter the Younger. While much of the history of Cranach and Luther's relationship is well known, Price concludes the chapter with a succinct yet insightful examination of the outpouring of different editions of the Bible that were subsequently published in Wittenberg.

Chapter 4 (“Dürer's Reformation—Art and Politics of Biblicism”) draws extensively on Price's 2003 book on the artist. He presents a useful summary of Dürer's involvement in the religious debates in Nuremberg as the city moved towards embracing Protestantism in 1525. Price discusses Dürer's portraits of humanists (Albrecht von Brandenburg, Willibald Pirckheimer, Melanchthon, and Erasmus), the Last Supper woodcut of 1523, and the so-called Four Apostles, which the artist gave to the city council in 1526. Less familiar is the history of Bible production in Nuremberg from 1523 to 1528.

Deep into chapter 5 (“Word Made Image – Cranach's Biblical Iconography”), Price asks, “Would it be appropriate to speculate that his successful adaptation of traditional art contributed to the survival of religious art and specifically ecclesiastical art in Lutheranism?” (256). His answer is affirmative given, among other reasons, Cranach's critical influence on Luther's appreciation for the power of certain types of art in the correct contexts. Cranach also devised many of the themes, such as Law and Gospel, and programs for the first evangelical altarpieces.

Chapter 6 (“Holbein and the Art of the Heterogeneous Bible”) is perhaps the book's most important new contribution. Holbein's extensive corpus of prints used to illustrate Bibles is understudied. Price remarks that his woodcuts and metalcuts can be found in at least 72 Bible productions in 7 languages. These illustrate translations by Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, and the Coverdale Bible. Holbein worked for several Basel printers, notably Johannes Froben, Erasmus's publisher. Many of his prints were reused (or pirated) locally and in other cities without the artist's knowledge. In December 1522, he was the first artist outside of Wittenberg to contribute prints for one of Luther's Bibles. Holbein's Icones or images of Old Testament stories, published in Lyon in 1538, was a picture Bible without the biblical text. Price discusses the significance of the Coverdale Bible's title page featuring King Henry VIII as the head of the new Anglican Church.

The epilogue (“For the God-Fearing and the Art-Loving”) lists the various editions that used the Icones and other Holbein prints. His precedent inspired the later picture Bibles of Virgil Solis, Jost Amman, Tobias Stimmer (1576), and Matthäus Merian, among others. Prints made for a Protestant Bible often appeared in Catholic ones as these were not confessionally specific in design or content. Price concludes, “As Erasmus's vision of the Bible functioning as the direct source of culture and political life became a reality . . ., the Bible image became a significant visual source for common cultural knowledge and experience, even though the textual uniformity of the Bible was forever shattered in Europe” (331). David Price's In the Beginning Was the Image is a smart, beautifully written, and methodologically sensitive contribution to Reformation scholarship.