The Primitive Reformers

The primitive Reformers  is a superb original oil painting on canvas, realized by an anonymous artist of the  English School  around the  XVII-XVIII century .

Original title:  The Primitive Reformers (Portrait of Martin Luther with the main figures of the Protestant Reformation with a cardinal, a devil, a pope and a monk at the bottom trying to extinguish the candle of Protestantism) .

This original painting recalls an original etching (specular in the composition), titled  The Primitive Reformers , published between 1768-69, in a literary volume called  England's bloody tribunal or popish cruelty display  by  Matthew Taylor .

Our painted specimen is really precious because this is the unique important testimony known today.

The scene, horizontally built and closed at the sides by two curtains, represents a group of twenty-three characters arranged on two foils around a long table. The figures represented are the most important personalities of the Reformation, of Protestant martyrs, and of some late medieval theologians, considered precursors of Protestantism.

At the center of the composition, facing the figure of Martin Luther, there is a lit candle (a symbol of the Reformation itself). In the opposite side of the table, there are a pope, a devil, a cardinal and a monk with the aspergillum; these are the allegories of the Catholic Church trying in vain to extinguish the fire of the Reformation. Further information is provided by the writing on the table (reported only on the etching):  The candle is lighted, we cannot blow it out .

The Primitive Reformers  published in the literary volume by Matthew Taylor is one of the many versions taken from the engraving printed around 1640 by the London publisher  Thomas Jenner , considered the prototype of a Protestant iconography, popular until the end of the 18th century.

Reference bibliography :

Joke Spaans,  Face of the Reformation , Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, Church History and Religious Culture 97 (2017), pp. 408 - 451.