Christian Art

P. Brown Michelle

Description

Explore the rich history and influence of Christian art from Antiquity to the present day. Michelle Brown traces the rich history of Christian art, crossing boundaries to explore how art has reflected and stimulated a response to the teachings of Christ, and to Christian thought and experience across the ages. Embracing much of the history of art in the West and parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia, Michelle considers art of the earliest Christians to the modern day. Featuring articles by invited contributors on subjects including Icons; Renaissance Florence; Rubens and the Counter-Reformation; Religious Folk Art; Jewish Artists; Christian Themes; Making the St John's Bible, and Christianity and Contemporary Art in North America, Christian Art is an ideal survey of the subject for all those interested in the world's artistic heritage. * Comprehensive and authoritative text from the Early Christian period to the modern day* Wide international coverage* Feature articles on special subjects by a team of experts from around the world

Sujets

• History of art

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 22 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912552566
• Langue: English

Extrait

CHRISTIAN ART
Michelle P. Brown
 
In Memoriam, John Higgitt
Text copyright © 2008 Michelle P. Brown
This edition copyright © 2021 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of Michelle P. Brown to be identified as the author and of the contributors to be identified as the contributors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Hudson Limited Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www .lionhudson .com
ISBN 978 1 9125 5255 9
e-ISBN 978 1 9125 5256 6
First hardback edition 2008
Acknowledgments
Scripture quotations are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.
Extracts pp. 163, 164, 166 taken from M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition , copyright © 1971, Oxford University Press.
Cover image: copyright © Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
 
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Victoria Avery, The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK
Emily D. Bilski, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Jerusalem, Israel
Professor Sheila S. Blair and Professor Jonathan M. Bloom, Boston College and Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Professor Iole Carlettini, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Università di Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Professor Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero, Department of Art History, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Italy
Meryl Doney, Freelance Curator, London, UK
Dr Mark Evans, Senior Curator of Paintings, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
Dr Peter Forsaith, Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Donald Jackson, The Scriptorium, Hendre, Monmouthshire, UK
Professor Emeritus Herbert L. Kessler, Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA
Dr Griffith Mann, Curator in Charge, The Met, New York, USA
Professor Nancy Netzer, Boston College, Massachusetts, USA
Revd Regan O’Callaghan, Emmanuel Church, London, UK
Professor Virginia Raguin, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Dr James Romaine, Professor of Art History and Chair, Department of Fine Arts, Nyack College, New York, USA
Professor Conrad Rudolph, University of California, Riverside, USA
 
CONTENTS
Introduction
What is Christian Art?
1. The Art of the Earliest Christians
Judaic and Graeco-Roman Roots
2. In the Sign of the Cross
Constantine and the Entry of Christianity into the Social Mainstream
3. Martyrs and Mosaics
The Early Churches of Italy
4. The Christian Orient
The Christian Art of Palestine, Armenia, Georgia and Syria
5. Out of Africa
The Art of the Churches of Coptic Egypt, Ethiopia and Nubia
6. The New Rome
Emperor Justinian and Early Byzantine Art
7. The Art of Orthodoxy
Byzantium and the Iconic Tradition
Icons: An Icon Writer’s Perspective (Revd Regan O’Callaghan)
8. The Rise of Islam
Islam and Christian Art
Christian Art in Muslim Contexts (Professor Sheila S. Blair and Professor Jonathan M. Bloom)
9. Barbarians!
Art and the Re-conversion of the West
10. The Art of Imperialism
Art in the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires
‘Words Passed Down’: Carolingian Pictures of Translation and Transmission (Professor Herbert L. Kessler)
11. Roods, Rituals and Christian Rule
Later Anglo-Saxon Art and the Benedictine Reform
12. Romanesque
Pilgrims, Crusaders and European Style
Monastic Aesthetics and the Rise of Gothic Art (Professor Conrad Rudolph)
13. Gothic
Cathedrals, Universities and Urbanization
Medieval Stained Glass: Patron and Purpose (Professor Virginia Raguin)
14. Italian Gothic
Art and the Seeds of Rebirth
Christian Art and the Italian City-State (Dr Griffith Mann)
15. The Cultural Life of the Italian City-States
Humanists, Artists and the Rise of the Renaissance
Manuscripts, Humanism and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Dr Mark Evans)
16. The Italian High Renaissance
Madonnas, Popes and Princes
Brazen Images and Sounding Brass: The Significance and Use of Bronze in Christian Contexts (Dr Victoria Avery)
17. The Northern Renaissance
Merchants and Mysteries
18. Keeping Your Head in Times of Change
Reformation, Resistance and the Rise of Protestantism
The Dispute on Images During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (Professor Iole Carlettini)
19. Venice the Serene
Mercantile Meditation and the Cost of Sublime Art
From Counter-Reformation to Baroque: Aspects of the Arts in Rome (Professor Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero)
20. Protestantism and the Catholic Counter-Reformation
Domestic Piety, Mannerism and the Theatricality of the Baroque
Rubens and the Theatre of the Counter-Reformation: Biblical Imagery made Flesh (Professor Michelle P. Brown)
21. The Age of Enlightenment
Rationalism, Neo-Classicism and the New Imperialism
The Rise of the Study of the History of Christian Art (Professor Nancy Netzer)
22. Mysticism and Romanticism Reborn
Blake, the Ancients and the Art of Nonconformity
Permission, Prohibition, Patronage and Methodism: A Denomination Engages with Art (Dr Peter Forsaith)
23. Faith and the Origins of North American Art
A New Eden
Religious Folk Art (Professor Virginia Raguin)
24. Industrial Innovation, Aesthetic Nostalgia
Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Rediscovery of Medievalism
25. Art for a New Age
The Realists, Impressionists and Symbolists
26 . The Shock of the New
Mechanization, Expressionism, Spiritual Realism and the Origins of Abstraction
Jewish Artists, Christian Themes (Emily D. Bilski)
27. The Impact of Modernity
Destruction, Creation, Abstraction
28. The Impact of the Second World War
Surrealism, Symbolism and the Resurgence of Figural Art
The Millennium and Beyond: Exhibiting Contemporary Christian Art in Britain (Meryl Doney)
29. The Journey Continues
Earth Art: Landscape, Art and Eco-Theology
30. Innovation and Tradition
Searching for the Spiritual in Contemporary Art
The Scribe Speaks: Making the St John’s Bible (Donald Jackson)
31. Quo Vadis?
Where do we go from here?
Christianity and Contemporary Art in North America: The CIVA Case Study ( Dr James Romaine)
32. Some Concluding Thoughts
References
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
 
INTRODUCTION
What is Christian Art?
A survey of Christian art will perforce embrace much of the history of art in the West, and in parts of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia, from Antiquity to the present. It is, of course, but one strand in the complex interwoven fabric of world culture and history, and one that in large part reflects the cultural amalgam of Europe and the far-off lands colonized by its peoples. For, despite its Middle Eastern origins, Christianity became appropriated as the social norm of faith within these territories, from the time that it became the state religion of the Roman empire – following decrees by Theodosius I in the 380s CE – until the rise of secularism in the wake of the World Wars of the twentieth century. Much of the art produced therein reflected Christian themes and agendas, sometimes overly conflated with those of the secular sphere. Art in the service of the kingdom of God was frequently employed in pursuit of the aims of worldly kingdoms; but it might also challenge them, just as art, advertising, film, broadcasting and publishing still sometimes do today. And yet, such public contexts for art have been counter-balanced by its role in stimulating private contemplation and an emotional, intellectual and experiential response from the individual. Beauty lifts and inspires the beholder and can thus serve the agendas of both culture and faith. And yet art, religious or otherwise, is not always beautiful.
Christian art can be religious when it serves the needs of the religion and conveys its teachings through recognizable symbols and images; it can be spiritual when, like non-faith-specific art, it helps us to access a dimension of being and of meaning that transcends the purely physical and material; and it can be sacred when it enshrines values that are universally considered sacrosanct and sublime.
The didactic role of art in Christianity – in exploring and commenting upon its meaning, inspiring devotion, and providing a focus for contemplation and prayer – has stimulated a rich Christian cultural heritage and has contributed to the development of art in general. But other considerations have also periodically surfaced, including misgivings concerning idolatry related to the veneration of iconic images, and unease concerning the commissioning of expensive artworks when Christ advocated the use of wealth to alleviate the misery of the poor. Iconoclasm and evangelical puritanism, verging on philistinism, have resulted at one extreme, while excessively grandiose acts of artistic patronage – aimed more at the glorification of the individual and the office than that of God – have featured on the other. The gaudy or gruesome images of popular piety, which have more to do with folklore and superstition than aesthetics, also feature in Christian art, for it has a function beyond those of ‘fine’ art. For art associated with faith also has a practical purpose – which is to enable the viewer, and often the maker, to draw closer to God. Such functional images are also part of the story of Christian art, even if they are not usually consider