This engraving, attributed to the Dutch artist Robert Willemsz. de Baudous (1574–1659), depicts the interior of a Roman Catholic church, its nave wall removed to reveal a detailed scene of grotesque debauchery and corruption within.

A priest at the left guzzles the Communion wine, while other clergymen have set up stalls for a thriving trade in religious objects. Insect-like demons wander freely, and the worshippers and clergy are all depicted with monstrous, mask-like faces. One seller of religious objects is shown to have multiple arms, each either retrieving coins or grasping at the objects laid out for sale. Other grotesque figures form a crowd outside. At the entrance sit two figures, labelled Ohola and Oholiba, who in Ezekiel 23 are described as having ‘played the whore’. They are clearly to be linked to Roman Catholic clergy: one has a bishop’s mitre on her head. Throughout the image are engraved numbers, suggesting the original existence of a key detailing the names of various characters, now lost. At the far left, the figure of a beautiful woman labelled Evangelie – the Dutch word for ‘gospel’ – holds up draperies, and with her brightly burning torch reveals the corruption within.

This image is a reminder that Netherlandish print production, professionalised by the mid-sixteenth century, was a major means of disseminating Reformist themes and propaganda. The Dutch destruction of sacred objects and images in churches begun with the iconoclastic riots of 1566, and continued for several decades. Roman Catholic interiors were refurbished for the purpose of Reformed Calvinist worship, and religious images were often replaced with inscriptions of biblical texts, or bare whitewashed walls. The rich altarpieces and seething religious marketplace depicted in de Baudous’s engraving would have been in stark contrast to these bare-walled, empty Protestant church interiors. Print production in the Netherlands initially functioned as a source of simple devotional imagery. Yet because of prints’ relatively low price and potential for wide circulation, they soon played a significant role in the voicing of religious arguments. The distorted and disgusting bodies in The Roman Church are not unique. A cycle of twelve engravings produced in the 1570s by Adriaan de Weert and Haarlem Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert, known as The moral decline of the clergy, or the root of the Dutch revolt and the iconoclastic fury, depicts the progression of the Roman Church into corruption. In one image from the series, Martin Luther holds up the cloak of the Pope, his burning torch revealing a deformed, animalistic body that appears to merge and become one with the papal throne. De Baudous’s female figure Evangelie mirrors this action of ‘lifting the veil’ and shedding light on the corruption of the Church, which in both prints is symbolised by the monstrous physical deformities of Catholic worshippers and clergy.

Catherine Mahoney, University of Melbourne