c. 1740

Plate

This plate is painted with a portrait of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, above a depiction of Christ and the disciples—images that derive from an engraving by Franz Brun (German, active c. 1559 to 1596). Brun’s engraving appears on the title page of a Bible published in Amsterdam in 1648 and in a 1734 Bible that includes illustrations by Dutch artist Jan Luyken (1649–1712), whose engravings were also often used as a source for decoration on Chinese export wares.