How Did the Protestant Reformation Influence European Art?

The Protestant Reformation triggered one of the most violent and dramatic events in the history of art. In the 1520s, violent anti-Catholic crowds raided churches in England, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, pillaging and destroying all artworks and decorations. The iconoclasm of the Reformation gave birth to an era-specific painting genre that represented church interiors stripped of their treasures, often with hooks and nails used to support works of art still attached to the barren walls.

In 1566, a wave of iconoclastic attacks led to a full-blown revolution that freed a large part of the present-day Netherlands from Spanish Catholic rule. Sculptures and paintings were not the only victims: thousands of people from both sides died during street fights. The bloodshed calmed down only around the 1630s when the majority of regions and provinces introduced the concept of religious toleration.

Before the Protestant Reformation, the overwhelming majority of artworks were religious and had three particular functions. First of all, the images were supposed to act as the Bible for the illiterate majority of church-goers. Other functions were facilitating memorizing of the biblical subjects and evoking an emotional response, thus strengthening the followers’ faith. Since the Bible directly prohibited idolatry, the image or a sculpture acted as a mediator, channeling the prayers to the saint behind it. Thus, it was not an object that was worshipped, but a concept it represented.

Whether the means of destruction is brutalism, iconoclasm, or Dadaism, Satan hates art. We all kinda know this, instinctively, which is why Satan calls obscenity and anti-art, “art.”

Art is that which inspires a love of God. It can do so by inspiring pity or compassion in humanity. We must be careful in judging because what inspires one person to pity or compassion may be what inspires another person to disgust or revulsion in another, and there may even be a considerable blend of both. (I consider Pink Floyd’s The Wall, for instance, to contain both one of the most masterful expressions of human longing for God and some profoundly unsettling visual imagery.) And sometimes it’s hard to know: some 20th century art expresses an artist’s fascination with the way humans experience the world but to someone who doesn’t “get it” looks the same as brutalism’s state-enforced nihilism, but the objective of Dadaism was to express despair, nihilism and hatred of art itself.

What should have been obvious to the iconoclasts is that the art they were destroying was an expression of love. No-one ever needed look any further than the statues they were erecting to themselves to see that their citation of the decalogue was merely an excuse to hate.

I’m not so much convinced the reformation influenced Europe so much as the art was part of what the free thinking of the Renaissance influenced desires to think outside the box of the Church’s control. I wrote this as part 4 of my Seminary thesis for my Church History class on, “How The Renaissance Led to The Reformation.” I wrote it in 2005.

My thesis overall thesis consisted of 5 parts,

Part I ——— An Introduction and Overview of the Renaissance
Part II -—— Political and Social Changes
Part III —— Literature
Part IV —— Art, Inventions & Explorations
Part V -—— Conclusion

What follows is the art portion of, “Part IV —— Art, Inventions & Explorations

Art.

It has been said that if a work of art dwells upon beauty, it will inspire the viewer to make that beauty a part of his life and their outlook on the world. In this sense, the art of the Renaissance Age gave men a reason to reflect upon their place in the World more then their relationship with God. This new style allowed some men, known as the secular humanists, to see themselves as being separate and autonomous from God. Francis Schaeffer, in his book ”Escape from Reason”, describes this as man dwelling more and more on the nature of his reality and less on the spirituality of his soul.

Then there was the religious humanists, who would be influenced by seeing the true beauty of what God created. Michelangelo, said “I’m only the tool God uses to release the beauty he has encased in the marble.” These religious humanists felt like they were part of God’s world not just a spectator that was in the way of the Churches ambitions.

Contributions to the arts were closely related to the broad transformations that were taking place in society. With funding supplied by wealthy men such as the Medici family, artists were able to experiment with innovative new ideas. These artists learned how to use linear perspectives in their paintings, while representing objects in relative sizes so that smaller objects appeared to be farther away than larger objects. Art began resembling the philosophy that the created was more important then the creator. They used the light and shadows that God created to make objects on the canvass look full and real. Schaffer described this as nature eating up grace, that’s why human figures were depicted so realistically.

Nicholas V (reigned 1447-55) was the first pope to be influenced by the style of the Renaissance. Nicholas would begin the transformation of Rome from a city of ruins and desertion to a capital adorned with works of art and architectural construction. All this transformation would cost money, and the sudden wealth of the bankers, merchants, and other members of the new influential middle class made for a prime source.

While the Renaissance man appreciated the finer aspects of the arts, he would eventually get fed up with the papal’s constant demand for the indulgences needed to finance these enterprises. Painting a picture of doom and gloom, John Tetzel traveled around Germany fleecing the citizens out of more money to pay for this expensive taste. In a scene reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of “The Emperors New Clothes“, a monk would open the people’s eyes to the churches nakedness, and the truth would set them free.

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