This book demonstrates the relationships between images and indulgences
in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish art. In the
Roman Catholic Church, indulgences served as a way to reduce temporal
punishment in purgatory for one's sins. Indulgences could be obtained by
reciting prayers and performing devotional practices. Penitents could
earn this type of devotional indulgence with the aid of paintings and
other artifacts that possessed theological, historical, and aesthetic
values as well as performative and promissory ones. In this study, we
explore not only the power of indulgenced images but also the power of
their audiences, creating a way to communicate with the divine.