European Church Art, 1100-1350. Unity in Diversity

2021

The Reformation, with its iconoclasm and its emphasis on the preached word of God, has traditionally been seen as an enemy of the arts. During recent decades however, scholarly interest in the relation between confession and arts has been complemented by a growing awareness of the continued importance of images and music within Protestant culture. Addressing both the Protestant and the Catholic traditions, the plenary papers at the conference will explore not only the theological and devotional significance of images and music, but also their role in expressing power and status in early modern Europe.

Cambridge History of Medieval Western Monasticism, (Series: Cambridge New History), Alison Beach, Isabelle Cochelin (ed.), 2020

With the inclusion of medieval artifacts in the art-historical canon increasingly assured, scholars now turned precisely to those questions of religion and function that in Shapiro's time had been used to denigrate medieval art. 6 As a result, the characteristics of medieval art that had confounded earlier writers, in particular the absence of a stable stylistic progression, now provided the basis for new approaches to medieval art, including the question of how ecclesiastical art was made to function within the church liturgy. Summarizing such views, Herbert Kessler argued in 1988 that the medieval artifact was more agent than object, made to invite reflections on issues of devotion, learning and ritual. 7 The idea of a separate norm for medieval art was taken farthest by Hans Belting, who argued that medieval images should not be categorized as "art" in the way that the term has been understood since the Renaissance. He advocated a contextual approach that takes into account the reception of images. 8 Since the 1980s, there has been continued interest in what might be called the "functional approach," starting from the basis that medieval "images, far from being ends in themselves, always stood in the service of other goals." 9 As a result, the medieval church is studied today as a space for performances that derived its sense from the rituals that took place in it, such as the celebration of the liturgy of the hours (opus dei), processions and the sacrament of the Eucharist, as well as private devotion. 10 One of the major insights of this line of research has been to include not just architecture, sculpture and stained glass as active parts in this holistic experience, but to recognize that all of the objects present in the church, from the altar itself to liturgical manuscripts, from the censer to the priest's 6

Every Painter Paints Himself (www.epph.org), 2011

An explanation of how an artist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance might have a completely different view of spirituality than his or her patron