At times, Reformation scholars and art historians are confused about Luther’s attitude toward the visual arts which depict saints as intermediaries between God and humanity. Rarely do they thematize the issue in relation to the deësis, i.e. Christ enthroned, with Mary and John the Baptist as intercessors. After a review of the wide-spread motif of the deësis, light is being shed on Luther’s statements of the 1530s which reflect his rejection of the motif.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Posset, F., (2025), "Martin Luther on Deësis: His Rejection of the Artistic Representation of "Jesus, John, and Mary"", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Posset, Franz. "Martin Luther on Deësis: His Rejection of the Artistic Representation of "Jesus, John, and Mary"." Renaissance and Reformation 32 (3): 2010. 57-76. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v32i3.11576. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.