An intriguing, substantive look into the relationship between the church and the world of art.

Religion, Art, and Visual Culture is a cross-cultural exploration of the study of visuality and the arts from a religious perspective. This forward looking and accessible collection gathers together the most current scholarship for those interested in art, religion, visual culture, and cultural studies. Inherently interdisciplinary, this reader approaches the study of world religions through the human, meaning-making activity of seeing. The volume oscillates between specific visual subjects (painting, landscape gardens, calligraphy, architecture, mass media) and the broader theoretical discourses which are relevant to Humanities students today.

This volume offers 37 original essays from leading scholars on the crucial topics, issues, methods, and resources for studying and teaching religion and the arts.

This richly illustrated book provides the visual keys for any art lover to decode and understand the iconography, tenets, sites, and rituals of the Catholic faith through accessible analysis of its visual and material culture. Focusing on a carefully curated selection of Catholic art and artifacts, this volume explores the influence of iconography and the mystic power of a range of ritual objects. Expert Suzanna Ivanic identifies hidden visual symbols in paintings and examines them close-up, building a catalog of key symbols for readers to use to interpret Catholic art and culture. Catholica is organized into three sections—”Tenet,” “Locus,” and “Spiritus”—each with three themed subdivisions. Part one introduces the centerpieces of the faith, surveying symbolism in the artistic representation of the holy family, apostles, and saints in stories from scripture. The second part examines places of worship, identifying the essential elements of the cathedral and presenting evocative images of roadside shrines. The third part explores celebrations and traditions, in addition to personal devotional tools and jewelry. For each of the nine central themes of the faith, introductory text is followed by pages that look in-depth at paintings and artifacts, identifying and explaining the symbolism and stories depicted. As the book progresses, readers build up their knowledge of the entire Catholic visual code—the symbols that define Catholic practice, the attributes of the saints, the parts of the cathedral—allowing them to interpret all Catholic imagery and objects wherever they find them and consequently to better understand the tenets, sites, and rituals of this faith.

Images have caused uproar, violence and even casualties in the meeting of religions and cultures during the last years. Iconoclasm and iconolatry are on the agenda once more. Late Modern Culture is dominated by images and is understood in concepts such as aestheticization and symbolisation. Theological debate is likewise performed through images, symbols and rituals rather than through doctrines and beliefs. In this book, authors from various research backgrounds seek to clarify the terms of reference, and explore the diversity and disagreements in their use from a Christian perspective.

Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed monumental upheavals in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the repercussions rippled down to the churches’ religious art forms. Nigel Aston now chronicles here the intertwining of cultural and institutional turmoil during this pivotal century. The sustained popularity of religious art in the face of competition from increasingly prevalent secular artworks lies at the heart of this study. Religious art staked out new spaces of display in state institutions, palaces, and private collections, the book shows, as well as taking advantage of patronage from monarchs such as Louis XIV and George III, who funded religious art in an effort to enhance their monarchial prestige. Aston also explores the motivations and exhibition practices of private collectors and analyzes changing Catholic and Protestant attitudes toward art. The book also examines purchases made by corporate patrons such as charity hospitals and religious confraternities and considers what this reveals about the changing religiosity of the era as well. An in-depth historical study, Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe will be essential for art history and religious studies scholars alike.

In Religion and the Arts: History and Method, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona presents an overview of the 19th century origins of this discrete field of study and its methodological journey to the present-day through issues of repatriation, museum exhibitions, and globalization. Apostolos-Cappadona suggests that the fluidity and flexibility of the study of religion and the arts has expanded like an umbrella since the 1970s - and the understanding that art was simply a visual exegesis of texts - to now support the study of material, popular, and visual culture, as well as gender. She also delivers a careful analysis of the evolution of thought from traditional iconographies to the transformations once scholars were influenced by response theory and challenged by globalization and technology. Religion and the Arts: History and Method offers an indispensable introduction to the questions and perspectives essential to the study of this field.