The Reformation Had What Impact on Art in the Sixteenth Century

The Milkmaid (1658-60)
Past Jan Vermeer.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
An illustration of Protestant
virtue and pious living.

EVOLUTION OF VISUAL ART
For details of art movements
and styles, encounter: History of Art.
For a chronological guide,
see: History of Art Timeline.

What was the Reformation? How Did Information technology Affect Art?

The Protestant Reformation was a revolt against abuses and other forms of corruption perpetrated by the Papacy and the Church in Rome. The actual spark which ignited the revolt was Pope Leo Ten's conclusion to launch a entrada in Federal republic of germany for the sale of "indulgences" (effectively permits assuasive sinners to purchase their way into sky), in order to finance the building of the new Saint Peter's Basilica, in Rome. The Reformation began on Oct 31, 1517, when the German Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) nailed his 95-bespeak manifesto on the door of All Saints Church, Wittenberg, Frg, and led to a split in Christianity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Protestantism (which comprised iv basic strands: Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican and Anabaptist), took root in Northern Europe in countries associated with the Northern Renaissance, such as northward and west Frg, Switzerland, Holland, Britain and Scandinavia. In plough, this led to a new type of Christian art which celebrated the Protestant religious agenda, and diverged radically from the High Renaissance art of Italia, Spain, Naples and other areas of southern Europe, which remained Roman Catholic. The form and content of Protestant art - in particular, painting - reflected the plainer, more than unvarnished and more personal Christianity of the Reformation movement. Thus big scale works of Biblical art were no longer commissioned past Protestant church bodies. And while Protestant art collectors continued to commission religious paintings privately from artists, notably Rembrandt (1606-69), overall in that location was a huge reduction in the corporeality of religious art produced in Protestant countries. This fall in ecclesiastical patronage forced many Sometime Masters to diversify into secular types of art, such as history painting, portraiture, genre painting and all the same lifes. Just although overt religious art was banned or frowned upon past the Reformation - witness the iconclastic "beeldenstorm" of 1556 - a demand grew upwards for small-scale works containing a Christian message, or moral lesson. In Holland, during the Dutch Baroque era, artists met this need by producing a type of still life painting, known every bit "Vanitas", likewise every bit genre scenes which promoted piety and a devout lifestyle. The difference betwixt Protestant and Cosmic art was further emphasized by the Council of Trent (1545-63), which initiated Cosmic Counter-Reformation art, and in the process issued a new ready of aesthetics for a more stringent style of painting and sculpture. (Notation: Luther, the leader of the Reformation, was excommunicated by the Pope in 1520, but was given protection and asylum by Frederick the Wise (1463–1525), Elector of Saxony.)

Characteristics of Protestant Reformation Fine art

The chief characteristics of Reformation art sprang from Protestant theology which focused on the individual relationship between the worshipper and God. This accent was reflected in the number of mutual people and ordinary everyday scenes that were portrayed in Protestant fine art. Also Protestantism taught that the outcome of conservancy was reserved exclusively for God: it could not occur as a result of earthly intervention by the Vatican or any other ecclesiastical dominance. Protestant art duly reflected this teaching. In addition, a number of important 'mysteries of the faith' were downplayed or ignored by Protestant theologians and artists - including The Immaculate Conception, The Declaration of the Virgin, The Transfiguration of Christ, to name merely three. Transubstantiation (the transformation of the Communion breadstuff and wine into the trunk and blood of Christ) was another fundamental surface area of disagreement between Luther and Rome. Roman Catholicism believed in a strict estimation of this doctrine, and therefore tended to use Crucifixion scenes for their altarpieces, while Protestant Churches - at least those who tolerated figure painting - insisted on a symbolic meaning backside the Eucharist, and then preferred scenes of the Concluding Supper.

In full general, as far as other Biblical themes were concerned, Protestant fine art tended to avoid: grandiose images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary; large set-piece scenes from the Bible (similar the Passion of Christ); images of the Saints; and, in particular, depictions of the Popes and other senior clergy. Instead, Protestant fine art focused on humble depictions of biblical scenes and moralistic depictions of gimmicky everyday life.

Encounter likewise the architectural paintings of Emanuel de Witte (1615-1692) and Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), famous for their whitewashed church interiors.

Non all Protestants had identical views on what Church fine art was acceptable: Lutherans, for instance, tended to be more tolerant than Calvinists, who banned all figurative altarpiece art and considered nigh religious images to exist idolatrous. Some forms of art, notwithstanding, were seen as more than in keeping with a small-scale, personal approach to faith: they included book illustration and various forms of printmaking, such as engraving and etching (centered on Antwerp), all of which were used by Protestant government to convey their religious ideas to their congregations, and religious education into the homes of the mutual people. In particular, these small-scale types of art permitted the evolution of a specifically Protestant iconography, which included Protestant-fashion images of Christ, the Holy Family, Saints and Apostles, too every bit illustrations of all the people and events in the Bible.

In simple terms, Protestants removed public art from their churches and urban spaces, preferring instead to champion their faith via minor-scale, humble Biblical images in diverse printed formats, including illustrated bibles. At the same fourth dimension, Protestant societies embraced a depression-primal style of art which promoted the need for personal piety every bit well as a respect for the unvarnished beauty of God'due south creations, including people created in His paradigm. In contast, the Catholic Counter-Reformation fully supported inspirational or educational church art - see, for example, the glorious fresco paintings and other quadratura works in Rome - and continued to champion its own brand of "sacred art", which illustrated important issues of Catholic dogma, or celebrated Catholic traditions, notably the liturgy, the sacraments and the saints.

History of Protestant Reformation Art

Although the reaction of churchmen, congregations and secular leaders varied considerably from country to country, and from region to region, in general, the Protestant Reformation triggered a wave of iconoclastic devastation of Christian imagery. Several Protestant leaders, notably John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli, ordered that churches be stripped of their pictures and statues. If a painting (like a mural) could not be removed it was whitewashed over; where sculpture was office of the architectural fabric of the building (either a cavalcade statue or a relief sculpture), it was defaced or smashed, every bit were countless examples of beautiful stained glass fine art. Secondary altars were dismantled or physically removed. All reliquaries (containers of relics), gold chantry furnishings, and ciboria (containers of items used in the Eucharist) were melted down, while large bonfires were used to burn paintings, sculptures, ecclesastical fixtures and other objects, including: triptychs and larger polyptychs, other panel-paintings, most examples of wood carving, including statues, carved choir stalls and confessionals, missals and other illuminated manuscripts, and vestments. This iconoclasm was intensified during the and so-called "Second Reformation" of about 1560-1619.

In that location were comparatively few instances of churches really being destroyed. To deprive them of their "Catholic" identity, all that was needed was to remove their "Catholic" decorations, and insert a pulpit in a prominent position. New churches were designed more equally auditoriums focused more than on the pulpit and less on the altar. Decoration was generally kept to a minimum, although some architects - such as Christopher Wren (1632-1723) - were more High Church building than others. Paradoxically, the removal of "Catholic" architecture and its replacement with less imposing Protestant designs, may take been a factor in the spread of pagan Neoclassical architecture two centuries afterward.

Political leaders in Protestant countries proved highly supportive of the Reformation, not least because information technology enabled them to take over the lands and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church and its monastic orders. For example, when the shrine of Southward. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral was dismantled, it yielded 24 cartloads of treasure, including numerous exquisite items of medieval goldsmithing, which was promptly melted down for Henry Eight'south treasury. The Reformation also gave secular rulers far greater control over the appointment of bishops and other clergy.

Post-obit considerable turmoil, a degree of reconciliation of Catholics and Protestants was achieved in 1555 with the Religious Peace of Augsburg, which granted liberty of worship to Protestants. This compromise did not utilize to art, however, and both painting and sculpture, equally well as architecture, connected to be used as propaganda by the ii rival Churches.

Protestant Art of the 16th-Century

Both the High german Renaissance and the Netherlandish Renaissance were coming to an end by the fourth dimension the Reformation gathered momentum. In Deutschland, most of the leading artists like Martin Schongauer (c.1440-91), Matthias Grunewald (1470-1528), Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538), Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545) and others, were either deceased or in their terminal years. The same could be said of the situation in The netherlands - whose greatest master - Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) - had simply died, and of 16th-century Flemish Painting, whose stars included Quentin Massys (1465-1530), Jan Provost (1465-1529), Jan Gossaert (1478-1532), Joachim Patenier (1480-1525), and Joos van Cleve (1490-1540).

Hans Holbein the Younger

Born in Augsburg, Federal republic of germany, where he trained under his male parent Holbein the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) was active in Lutheran Basel but mostly in London, where he painted Henry 8 and Thomas Cromwell, both of whom were busy establishing the English Reformation and organizing the Dissolution of the Monasteries. His masterpieces include: Portrait of Erasmus (1523, National Gallery, London); Portrait of Sir Thomas More than (1527, Frick Collection); Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (1528, National Gallery, London); The Merchant Georg Gisze (1532, Gemaldegalerie, SMPK, Berlin); Portrait of Thomas Cromwell (1532-4, National Portrait Gallery, London); The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery, London) and Portrait of Henry VIII (1536, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid).

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Just the great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569) was around to put his postage on Protestant-style painting in the Depression Countries, with a series of dandy genre paintings (including tavern scenes), and to pass on his skills to pupils like Frans Snyders (1579-1657). Bruegel'southward all-time genre works include: Netherlandish Proverbs (1559, Gemaldegalerie, SMPK, Berlin); Hunters in the Snowfall (1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and Peasant Wedding Feast (1568, KM, Vienna). His all-time religious works - all set up in commonplace landscapes or situations include: Tower of Boom-boom (1563, KM, Vienna); Massacre of the Innocents (1565-67, KM, Vienna); and Parable of the Blind (1568, Capodimonte Museum, Naples).

In fact, Flanders was (mostly) a Roman Catholic country, which was dominated by a small number of affluent (if declining) commercial centres including Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres. During the mid-16th century, a Protestant lawyer fled Antwerp for Federal republic of germany, in order to escape religious persecution. In Federal republic of germany, he fathered a son who duly returned to Antwerp to become the greatest ever exponent of Catholic Counter-Reformation art - his name was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Protestant Art of the 17th-Century

Dutch Baroque art of the 17th century exemplified the new forms of Protestant painting. It illustrated the downwards-to-earth, everyday context for Biblical subjects, required by the Protestant authorities; it gave nascence to many of the best genre painters of the 17th century - whose works offered articulate moral guidance on how to alive a pious life - and to several of the best still-life painters nosotros have ever seen.

Protestant Biblical Painting

This is exemplified by the piece of work of Rembrandt (1606-69), whose religious paintings e'er emphasized the homo individuals involved, rather than whatsoever grandiose doctrinal bug. Examples include: Bathsheba Holding King David's Letter (1654, Louvre, Paris); The Jewish Bride (c.1665-viii, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); and Return of the Prodigal Son (1666-69, Hermitage Museum).

Protestant Genre Painting

Dutch Realist Genre Painting - by and large small-scale oil paintings of everyday scenes, containing a covert Christian or moral message - involved some of The netherlands's greatest Old Masters. Tavern scene painters included Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85) and Jan Steen (1626-79); domestic scene painters included Gerrit van Honthorst (1592-1656), David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), Gerard Terborch (1617-81), Gabriel Metsu (1629-67) and Pieter de Hooch (1629-83). Run into, for instance, moralistic pictures like The Concert (1625, Borghese Gallery, Rome) past Gerrit van Honthorst, Couple Flirting Outdoors (c.1650, Stedelijk Museum, Leiden) past Jan Steen, and Mother Lacing Her Bodice Beside a Cradle (1662, SMPK, Berlin) by Pieter de Hooch.

The greatest genre-painter nevertheless was the Delft painter January Vermeer (1632-1675), whose masterpieces include: The Little Street (1657-58, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); The Milkmaid (1658-60, Rijksmuseum); Woman Holding a Residual (1662-63, National Gallery, Washington DC); Immature Woman with a Water Jug (1662, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY); Adult female with a Pearl Necklace (1663, Gemaldegalerie, SMPK, Berlin); and The Lacemaker (1669-lxx, Louvre, Paris).

Protestant Still Life Painting

Protestant however lifes were basically symbolic pictures, containing a covert religious narrative. A detail example is the "Vanitas nevertheless life painting" - derived from Ecclesiastes 12:8 "Vanity of vanities saith the preacher, all is vanity" - which typically contains symbolic images (including skulls, snuffed candles, hourglasses with the sand running out, watches, butterflies etc.,) to remind the observer of the transience of mortal life, compared to the permanence of true Christian values.

Specialist nonetheless life artists included: Frans Snyders (1579-1657), who is noted for still lifes of dead game and meat, crammed with religious allusions and moral pointers; Harmen van Steenwyck (1612-56), the leading vanitas painter; Willem Claesz Heda (1594-1681), an exponent of monochrome banketje; Pieter Claesz (1597-1660), a specialist in ontbijtjes (breakfast still lifes); Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-83) and Willem Kalf (1619-93), who specialized in decorative notwithstanding lifes; Samuel Van Hoogstraten (1627-78), whose speciality was interiors with deep linear perspective; and Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), arguably the greatest ever female person flower painter.

Amongst the greatest Protestant still-lifes are: The Vanities of Homo Life (1645) by Harmen Steenwyck; A Vanitas Still Life (1645) past Pieter Claesz; Breakfast of Crab (1648, Hermitage, St Petersburg) by Willem Claesz Heda; Withal Life with Chinese Porcelain Jar (1662, SMPK, Berlin) by Willem Kalf; The Slippers (1654) by Samuel Hoogstraten; Decorative Nonetheless Life in forepart of Architecture (A Dessert) (1640, Louvre, Paris) by Jan Davidsz de Heem.

Protestant Reformation art can be seen in some of the best art museums around the world.

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/protestant.htm

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