| Abstract
|
:
|
Since the nineteenth century, Bernhard Plockhorst’s Jesus as the Good Shepherd has enjoyed great popularity and is reproduced in a wide variety of media, appearing in American homes, schools, and churches and even Hollywood sets. Jesus as a Good Shepherd is traced to the early Christian period through the fourth century when he disappears from the iconographic lexicon. He regains popularity during the Protestant Reformation as a didactic tool. Resurging once again in the nineteenth and twentieth century, this Good Shepherd is markedly different from his historical iterations. Tracking visual comparanda and textual sources, the Plockhorst Good Shepherd emerges as a figure that engenders strong emotions of love, protection, and community only possible in a post-agricultural society. Since the nineteenth century, Bernhard Plockhorst’s Jesus as the Good Shepherd has enjoyed great popularity and is reproduced in a wide variety of media, appearing in American homes, schools, and churches and even Hollywood sets. Jesus as a Good Shepherd is traced to the early Christian period through the fourth century when he disappears from the iconographic lexicon. He regains popularity during the Protestant Reformation as a didactic tool. Resurging once again in the nineteenth and twentieth century, this Good Shepherd is markedly different from his historical iterations. Tracking visual comparanda and textual sources, the Plockhorst Good Shepherd emerges as a figure that engenders strong emotions of love, protection, and community only possible in a post-agricultural society.
|