Kirk Essary is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, based at The University of Western Australia. His research focuses on intellectual and religious history in sixteenth-century Europe, particularly the works of Erasmus and Calvin. He is the author of Erasmus and Calvin on the Foolishness of God: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2017). This paper, ‘Erasmus on the Arts in Luther’s Reformation: A Tragedy’, considers the role of emotions discourse in attitudes toward the arts in Erasmus’ works, with a specific focus on the early years of the Reformation. It was delivered at a conference on ‘Art and Affect’ at The University of Queensland in July 2017.