This lecture will ask how and why Lutheranism – a confession that insisted upon the pre-eminence of God’s Word – became a visually magnificent faith, a faith whose adherents sought to capture Christians’ hearts and minds through seeing as well as through hearing. It will explore the legacy of Martin Luther’s Wittenberg Reformation and the development of a theologically grounded aesthetic, and will consider the ways in which images were used to articulate Lutheran identity into the eighteenth century.