The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation Paperback – 11 Jun. 2013

Interesting and even important thesis, but overwritten and repetitive. Should probably have been a long journal article rather than a full-length book.

This book offered so much, and delivered astoundingly little.Apart from the fact that the relationship between Luther and Cranach is poorly drawn (pardon the pun) and the period equally so, the author's style is simply lamentable. Beware any work of non-fiction where exclamation marks occur frequently (was is too much to expect just a well reasoned attempt at an interesting synthesis of a fascinating time and a marvellous artist?).Let his words speak for themselves, and weep:Page 3:" Among the profitable enterprises that made him rich and powerful were the city's only publishing house and a full-service pharmacy". The book is chock full of wince inducing anachronisms, of which full-service pharmacy is the first of many.My personal favourite was on page 14: "Having sworn to himself as early as 1504-5 that he would paint in his own eclectic and expressive way, he now found himself measuring Durer's shoes and beginning to step on his toes". Aaaaaghhhhh.Visions of Cranach stretching one morning and saying " I swear today I will paint more eclectically and expressively".Or how about page 188 "Smitten by her pluck, Cranach early admired and embraced Venus as a soul mate". Really. That sentence just about sums up this book: silly and fatuous.Other annoyances include the frequent use of quotations which are unreferenced, which, as with the introduction being a cut and paste from the first chapter, underscores the strong likelihood that not only is the author generally illiterate but also that he certainly spent far too little time checking his work.The string of fellow travellers mouthing platitudes of praise on the back cover calls for an inverted bucket list of art historians/critics too be avoided. It is inconceivable that a Mr Korner (author of the Reformation of the Image(remove that from the check-out basket) could possibly state in good conscience "It comes as no suprise that Martin Luther changed the world, but that his incredible influence on the course of history was made possible largely through collaboration with his painter friend Lucas Cranach: this is the surprising contention of this marvelously readable book". Is this just tongue in cheek? Certainly the contention that Cranach had a major influence on Luther is, as the Scots coroner would have it, "not proven".Ummm. The pictures are nice.

Wonderful art history.

This book had lots of information about Lucas Cranach and his relationship with Martin Luther, which I didn't know. But there were so many subjective judgments that I have to take as "not proven". Plus there are likely a thousand sentences that really didn't make sense or were just hilarious. A simple one is (paraphrased), "Martin Luther's socio-cultural milieu changed after he died." Yeah, he was dead! And the paragraphs, trying to follow the flow of thinking, I was often lost. Like that AFLAC duck, shaking my head. And I have another book by the same gentleman, about the Reformation, and I'm hoping he makes more sense there.