Sacral Image—Scripture—Body—Art: On a Fundamental Media Theory of Mono‐theism Eckhard Nordhofen My main thesis in this contribution is that we will better understand the history of biblical monotheism, as well as the history of mono theism in general, if we reconstruct it as a media history, or rather a history of media changes. I Although the prohibition of images, the second of the Ten Commandments, is part of the foundational history of monotheism, I will begin precisely with an image: Still Life, or Christ with Maria and Martha by Pieter Aertsen, dated to 1552. Aertsen is a good example to show two important, but temporally very distant moments of a media change (Fig. ). Click for larger view View full resolution Pieter Aertsen, Christ with Maria and Martha (1552). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. This painting introduces us to Aertsen's style, whose life, from 1508/1509 to 1575, coincides with the Reformation era in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Many of his earlier works were destroyed in a wave of Calvinistic iconoclasm. However, as is well known, the destruction of images in Dutch churches did not put the painters out of work: A great change of roles took place, and instead of painting for churches, these painters now decorated guild halls and other representative public spaces. Most of all, they worked for the well‐off bourgeoisie who loved, knew, and collected their works. Amsterdam was, during its “Golden Age” that began at that time, the richest city of the world, and thus, the images found a new role and function, a new Sitz im Leben. In art history, the process of the displacement of paintings from sacred space to the profane world of bourgeois apartments has traditionally been understood as a progress: First, because it took place at the same time as some aesthetic developments, such as an increase of the “artistic” in the sense of an ability or craft. And second, since progress is closely correlated with the disappearance of religion according to some views of historical development, the displacement of the images from the sacred to the profane sphere was often interpreted within the framework of an older theory of secularization that now is no longer valid. Somebody like Aertsen, who painted still lifes, market scenes, vegetables, fruit, or a meat stall, seems to have turned away from sacred subjects. He is true to the world and represents the magic of immanent reality. His art appears to consist in a joyfully illusionary duplication of the world: Objects known from everyday life are re‐created in the painting, and the more easily they can be confused with their three‐dimensional counterpart, the greater the art of the artist: Soon, the trompe l'œil will have become an artistic genre. If secularization is understood as a turn away from religion, however, Aertsen would not be a good example—indeed, the move from heaven down to earth would be taking place in the mind of the interpreting art historian rather than in that of Aertsen, because quite regularly in his paintings, on a second image plane behind the still life in the foreground, there is a biblical scene to be found. In this case, the painter refers to the episode of Jesus' visit to the house of Lazarus showing the scene when Lazarus' sister Martha complains that she has to do all the work by herself while Mary sits to listen to Jesus and his teachings (Luke 10:42). After having “read” this biblical scene a further look will return to the still life scene in the foreground, a strange arrangement of objects that in domestic life would never be found together in this combination. In the center, and most prominently, is a lamb's leg, nearly floating in a position that would require an improbably complicated construction. It is draped dangerously and unstably over the edge of a bowl, with a wine pitcher underneath, three pieces of bread linked in the shape of a triangle, and a plate with a white object in which is placed a carnation. Of course, bread and wine and the slaughtered lamb are symbols of the eucharist. The seeds of the carnation, known as clove...