Image Details

Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hans W. Weigert in memory of Lili B. Weigert.

ON THE COVER: In God’s Hands, by Käthe Kollwitz (1936). Two great hands cradle a weary human head in a self-portrait bronze relief the artist designed for her own gravestone. Kollwitz’s inspiration for this poignant work was the last lines of Goethe’s poem, Westoestlicher Divan: “God is master of the East, God is master of the West. All the northern and southern lands rest in the peace within his hands.” Art historian Jane Dillenberger traces varied representations of God over 1,700 years in “Images of God in Western Art.”