Christ and The Sheep Shed - Propaganda and Distribution

Propaganda and Distribution

Prior to the reformation, woodcuts were used as devotional images in monastic centres. Artists would be hired to create a woodcut that would illustrate text in chronicles. They found a new purpose when they were used to support humanism in the reformation. The communication and spread of ideas was central to this time period. Arguably, the reformation would not have been as influential without the use of the printing press. Gutenberg’s invention allowed the mass production of texts, giving Luther and his contemporaries the opportunity for widespread theology. Woodcuts were printed on covers of texts to increase interest of potential readers. However, sixteenth-century German society was predominantly illiterate. The learned areas were in the centre of towns and cities, but these numbers remained few. Print culture required a particular social group with the ability to absorb the information at hand. For reforms to be effective then, the reformers would need to target the entire population and not simply the educated elites. Paintings and woodcuts, such as “Christ and the Sheep Shed”, provided visual interpretations of papal corruption which required no literacy whatsoever. Interpretations could be made by the people themselves, facilitated by popular knowledge and word of mouth. Often woodcuts were accompanied by text; nevertheless, this was only used to assist the depiction and message thereof, not to stand independent from it. The printed text was usually simple requiring only basic reading skills. Even without this text the illustrations were to the point and understandable without a broad based knowledge of politics or further explanation. Woodcuts were used rather than copper-plate engravings to produce thousands of copies without damage. The cost of woodcuts depended on the cost of the paper, which by the sixteenth century was in high-demand because of the printing press; therefore, much of the expenses were due to the price of paper. Religious artwork that depicted the Papacy as anything but pious often promoted outward acts against the Clergy and nobility. On Easter day 1525, in Upper Swabia, peasants started taking a more militant attitude. Johann Herlot wrote a report on the instances: “…the peasants roused themselves… arrived so unexpectedly that the count and his subordinates could not return to the castle…” Typically these acts were promoted by artwork that demonstrated the oppression of the peasantry and tasks of the Clergy; much of this was seen in Barthel’s other work.