The Protestant Reformation during the 16th century in Europe almost entirely rejected the existing tradition of Catholic art, and very often destroyed as much of it as it could reach. A new artistic tradition developed, producing far smaller quantities of art that followed Protestant agendas and diverged drastically from the southern European tradition and the humanist art produced during the High Renaissance. The Lutheran churches, as they developed, accepted a limited role for larger works of art in churches, and also encouraged prints and book illustrations. Calvinists remained steadfastly opposed to art in churches, and suspicious of small printed images of religious subjects, though generally fully accepting secular images in their homes.
In turn, the Catholic Counter-Reformation both reacted against and responded to Protestant criticisms of art in Roman Catholicism to produce a more stringent style of Catholic art. Protestant religious art both embraced Protestant values and assisted in the proliferation of Protestantism, but the amount of religious art produced in Protestant countries was hugely reduced. Artists in Protestant countries diversified into secular forms of art like history painting, landscape painting, portrait painting and still life.
Art and the Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a religious movement that occurred in Western Europe during the 16th century that resulted in a divide in Christianity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. This movement "created a North-South split in Europe, where generally Northern countries became Protestant, while Southern countries remained Catholic."The Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Historicist and Causes of the Reformation. New Advent.
The Reformation produced two main branches of Protestantism; one was the Evangelical Lutheran churches, which followed the teachings of Martin Luther, and the other the Reformed Churches, which followed the ideas of John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli. Out of these branches grew three main sects, the Lutheran tradition, as well as the Continental Reformed and Anglican traditions, the latter two following the Reformed (Calvinist) faith. Lutherans and Reformed Christians had different views regarding religious imagery.
Martin Luther in Germany allowed and encouraged the display of a restricted range of religious imagery in churches, seeing the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a continuation of the "ancient, apostolic church". The use of images was one of the issues where Luther strongly opposed the more radical Andreas Karlstadt. For a few years Lutheran altarpieces like the Last Supper by the younger Cranach were produced in Germany, especially by Luther's friend Lucas Cranach, to replace Catholic ones, often containing portraits of leading reformers as the apostles or other protagonists, but retaining the traditional depiction of Jesus. As such, "Lutheran worship became a complex ritual choreography set in a richly furnished church interior." The Wittenberg Altarpiece, Schneeberg Altarpiece, Weimar Altarpiece and Gotha Altarpiece are important examples of the relatively small number of attempts to continue the tradition of the altarpiece giving an explicitly Lutheran interpretation. This phase was mostly finished by 1555.
Lutherans continued the use of the crucifix as it highlighted their high view of the Theology of the Cross. Stories grew up of "indestructible" images of Luther, that had survived fires, by divine intervention.Michalski, 89 Thus, for Lutherans, "the Reformation renewed rather than removed the religious image."
On the other hand, there was a wave of iconoclasm, or the destruction of religious imagery. This began very early in the Reformation, when students in Erfurt destroyed a wooden altar in the Franciscan friary in December 1521.Noble, 19, note 12 Later, Reformed Christianity showed consistent hostility to religious images, as idolatry, especially sculpture and large paintings. Book illustrations and prints were more acceptable, because they were smaller and more private. Reformed leaders, especially Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, actively eliminated imagery from churches within the control of their followers, and regarded the great majority of religious images as idolatrous.Institutes, 1:11, section 7 on crosses Early Calvinists were even suspicious of portraits of clergy; Christopher Hales (soon to be one of the Marian exiles) tried to have portraits of six divines sent to him from Zurich, and felt it necessary to explain his motives in a letter of 1550: "this is not done ....with a view to making idols of you; they are desired for the reasons which I have mentioned, and not for the sake of honour or veneration".Campbell, Lorne, Renaissance Portraits, European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, p. 193, 1990, Yale, ; Hales was the brother of John Hales (died 1572)
The destruction was often extremely divisive and traumatic within communities, an unmistakable physical manifestation, often imposed from above, that could not be ignored. It was just for this reason that reformers favoured a single dramatic coup, and many premature acts in this line sharply increased subsequent hostility between Catholics and Calvinists in communities for it was generally at the level of the city, town or village that such actions occurred, except in England and Scotland.
But reformers often felt impelled by strong personal convictions, as shown by the case of Frau Göldli, on which Zwingli was asked to advise. She was a Swiss lady who had once made a promise to Saint Apollinaris that if she recovered from an illness she would donate an image of the saint to a local convent, which she did. Later she turned Protestant, and feeling she must reverse what she now saw as a wrong action, she went to the convent church, removed the statue and burnt it. Prosecuted for blasphemy, she paid a small fine without complaint, but flatly refused to pay the additional sum the court ordered be paid to the convent to replace the statue, putting her at risk of serious penalties. Zwingli's letter advised trying to pay the nuns a larger sum on condition they did not replace the statue, but the eventual outcome is unknown.Michalski, 87-88 By the end of his life, after iconoclastic shows of force became a feature of the early phases of the French Wars of Religion, even Calvin became alarmed and criticised them, realizing that they had become counter-productive.Michalski, 73-74
Subjects prominent in Catholic art other than Jesus and events in the Bible, such as Mary and saints were given much less emphasis or disapproved of in Protestant theology. As a result, in much of northern Europe, the Church virtually ceased to commission figurative art, placing the dictation of content entirely in the hands of the artists and lay consumers. Calvinism even objected to non-religious funerary art, such as the heraldry and effigies beloved of the Renaissance rich.Michalski, 72-73 Where there was religious art, iconic images of Christ and scenes from the Passion became less frequent, as did portrayals of the saints and clergy. Narrative scenes from the Bible, especially as book illustrations and prints, and, later, moralistic depictions of modern life were preferred. Both Cranachs painted allegorical scenes setting out Lutheran doctrines, in particular a series on Law and Gospel. Daniel Hisgen, a German Rococo painter of the 18th century in Upper Hesse, specialized in cycles of biblical paintings decorating the front of the gallery parapet in Lutheran churches with an upper gallery, a less prominent position that satisfied Lutheran scruples. Wooden organ cases were also often painted with similar scenes to those in Catholic churches.
Lutherans strongly defended their existing sacred art from a new wave of Calvinist-on-Lutheran iconoclasm in the second half of the century, as Calvinist rulers or city authorities attempted to impose their will on Lutheran populations in the "Second Reformation" of about 1560–1619.Michalski, 84. Google books Against the Reformed, Lutherans exclaimed: "You black Calvinist, you give permission to smash our pictures and hack our crosses; we are going to smash you and your Calvinist priests in return". The Beeldenstorm, a large and very disorderly wave of Calvinist mob destruction of Catholic images and church fittings that spread through the Low Countries in the summer of 1566 was the largest outbreak of this sort, with drastic political repercussions. This campaign of Calvinist iconoclasm "provoked reactive riots by Lutheran mobs" in Germany and "antagonized the neighbouring Eastern Orthodox" in the Baltic region. Similar patterns to the German actions, but with the addition of encouragement and sometimes finance from the national government, were seen in Anglican England in the English Civil War and English Commonwealth in the next century, when more damage was done to art in medieval parish churches than during the English Reformation.
A major theological difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is the question of transubstantiation, or the literal transformation of the Communion wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ, though both Lutheran and Reformed Christians affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the former as a sacramental union and the latter as a pneumatic presence. Protestant churches that were not participating in the iconoclasm often selected as altarpieces scenes depicting the Last Supper. This helped the worshippers to recall their theology behind the Eucharist, as opposed to Catholic churches, which often chose crucifixion scenes for their altarpieces to remind the worshippers that the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Mass were one and the same, via the literal transformation of the Eucharist.
The Protestant Reformation also capitalized on the popularity of printmaking in northern Europe. Printmaking allowed images to be mass-produced and widely available to the public at low cost. This allowed for the widespread availability of visually persuasive imagery. The Protestant church was therefore able, as the Catholic Church had been doing since the early 15th century, to bring their theology to the people, and religious education was brought from the church into the homes of the common people, thereby forming a direct link between the worshippers and the divine.
There was also a violent propaganda war fought partly with popular prints by both sides; these were often highly scurrilous caricatures of the other side and their doctrines. On the Protestant side, portraits of the leading reformers were popular, and their likenesses sometimes represented the Apostles and other figures in Biblical scenes such as the Last Supper.
Genre and landscape
After the early years of the reformation, artists in Protestant areas painted far fewer religious subjects for public display, although there was a conscious effort to develop a Protestant iconography of Bible illustration in book illustrations and prints. In the early Reformation artists, especially Cranach the Elder and Younger and Holbein, made paintings for churches showing the leaders of the reformation in ways very similar to Catholic saints. Later Protestant taste turned from the display in churches of religious scenes, although some continued to be displayed in homes. There was also a reaction against large images from classical mythology, the other manifestation of high style at the time. This brought about a style that was more directly related to accurately portraying the present times. The traditions of landscapes and genre paintings that would fully flower in the 17th century began during this period.