Conflicting attitudes towards devotional art was a major factor in the confessional divisions that split Reformation Europe. By presenting essays concerned with both European subjects and European perceptions of other cultures, The Idol in the Age of Art contributes to ongoing attempts to globalize the study of European art. Approaching the Reformation idol as an essentially international problem, and placing particular emphasis on cultural encounters, it provides fresh perspectives on the very nature of Renaissance art, and underscores how colonial issues came to be often framed in terms of European religious conflicts.

Contents: Introduction, Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach; Capricious arts: idols in Renaissance-era Africa and Europe (the case of Sapi and Kongo), Suzanne Preston Blier; Reforming idols and viewing history in Pieter Saenredam's Perspectives, Celeste Brusati; Perpetual exorcism in Sistine Rome, Michael W. Cole; The golden calf in America, Thomas Cummins; The grotesque idol: imaginary, symbolic and real, Claire Farago and Carol Komadina Parenteau; The shadow of the wolf: the survival of an ancient god in the frescoes of the Strozzi chapel (S. Maria Novella, Florence) or Filippino Lippi's reflection on image, idol and art, Philine Helas and Gerhard Wolf; Ex-votos: materiality, memory, and cult, Megan Holmes; Ad fontes: iconoclasm by water in the Reformation world, Donald A. McColl; 'Nor my praise to graven images': divine artifice and the heart's idols in Georg Mack the Elder's painted print of The Trinity, Walter S. Melion; Idolatry and Western-inspired painting in Japan, Mia M. Mochizuki; Creaturely-invented letters and dead Chinese idols, Dawn Odell; Full of grace: 'Mariolatry' in post-Reformation Germany, Larry Silver; Meditation, idolatry, mathematics: the printed image in Europe around 1500, Rebecca Zorach. Index.