In the course of the Reformation, artistic representation famously came under attack. Statues were destroyed, music and theater were forbidden, and poetry was denounced, all in the name of eradicating superstition and idolatry. The iconoclastic impulse that sparked these attacks, however, proved remarkably productive, generating a profusion of theological, polemical, and literary writing from Catholics and Protestants alike.

Reformers like Luther had promised a return to the book, attacking Catholicism as a religion of images and icons. Becoming a religion of the book in the way that...