Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century, a collection of 80 engravings and woodcuts by Dutch and Flemish masters of the sixteenth century, is on view through January 24, 2010.

FREE DAYS during special exhibition
Free Fridays:  December 4 and January 8 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Wonderful Wednesday:  December 30 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The exhibition, featuring works by Lucas van Leyden, Maarten van Heemskerck, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, and Hieronymus Wierix among others, explores the ways in which printed illustrations of Biblical and other religious themes supplemented and magnified the texts they accompanied during a period of dramatic religious and political upheaval. Atlanta is the only other destination for Scripture, currently on view at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) in New York. The exhibition has received an excellent review in the New York Times.

Popular Function of Scripture
In the sixteenth-century Netherlands, the translation of biblical texts into biblical images went hand-in-hand with the translation of scripture into the common language. Antwerp and Amsterdam became major centers where vernacular Bibles and their woodcut and engraved illustrations were published. The exhibition demonstrates how, as co-curator Walter Melion, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory, points out, “pictorial images. . . offered a clarifying lens through which the word of God was received, pondered, and interpreted” by a growing audience at  the time of  tumultuous struggles between Protestants and Roman Catholics.