Day 41 - Catholic vs Protestant Imagery

After the early upheaval of the Protestant Reformation on the view of art within the church painting became more a reflection of things as they were.  Far fewer religious subjects were created for public display and instead Protestant iconography was developed for illustrations and prints that afforded them low-cost and mass produced copies that could be easily distributed to all including the common worshipers.  Protestant taste soured on the classical images from mythology and other styles that were popular at the time which brought about traditions of landscape and genre painting that relied on portraying things accurately, as they were at the time.

The scenes of everyday secular life are very bland, but informative and portray things as they were in the Protestant view. As seen in Peter Bruegel's Peasant Wedding Feast, he shows things as they were, carefully describing the event with paint.  Secular paintings in the Catholic tradition show more pomp and ceremony, showing the elevated status of wealthy patrons - scenes that were meant to rival other artworks of the Catholic empire, as seen in Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time the boundaries of good taste were being tested as the artists explored classical mythology - the scene is very dramatic with a stage set for the characters to act out an allegorical theme from the artist's and the world's collective psyche.

Pieter Bruegel, Peasant Wedding Feast (1568)

Bronzino, Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time
(c. 1540-1545)

While the Protestants looked to daily life and daily scenes, the Catholic church fought to have the great artists grace their cathedrals with artwork inspired by classical references. It became expected that each Pope was to out-do the last with public works for Rome and they embraced and encouraged the development of the classical revival.

Catholic art is wrought with drama, portraying scenes that spill forth in battles, haloed in heavenly light, and laden with idealized characters with faces that show the heightened state of their emotion. By contrast Protestant art shows demure scenes, portraying naturalistic scenery and landscapes with characters that are not idealized, but are instead modeled after the everyday man going about daily life, stopping briefly to act out a spiritual or secular scene. In the Last Judgment  by Jan Provost (Flemish, c. 1525) the iconography is strong, but set in a bleak landscape, portrayed without the grandeur and flourish that Michelangelo infused the scene with in his portrayal of the same subject in his fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1534-41).  The characters float in the heavens and are illuminated by heavenly light.  In Provost's image the figures are draped demurely with cloth and they are modeled after regular people, while Michelangelo's figures present their nudity proudly with classically modeled bodies; the nudity in Michelangelo's Last Judgment became a great controversy during the Catholic Counter-Reformation, when the figures were painted over for a few centuries.

Jan Provost, the Younge, The Last Judgment
(c.1525 Flemish) Oil on Wood Panel

Michelangelo, The Last Judgment,
fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1534-41)

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reformation_and_art
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._011.jpg
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Angelo_Bronzino_001.jpg
4. http://www.superstock.com/stock-photos-images/1100-823
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Michelangelo_-_Fresco_of_the_Last_Judgement.jpg