Images and indulgences in early Netherlandish painting

Abstract

This book demonstrates the relationships between images and indulgences in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish art. In the Roman Catholic Church, indulgences served as a way to reduce temporal punishment in purgatory for one's sins. Indulgences could be obtained by reciting prayers and performing devotional practices. Penitents could earn this type of devotional indulgence with the aid of paintings and other artifacts that possessed theological, historical, and aesthetic values as well as performative and promissory ones. In this study, we explore not only the power of indulgenced images but also the power of their audiences, creating a way to communicate with the divine.