18 August 2021
Multi-volume work by Jan Rohls, tracing the diverse relationships between art and religion from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century in the fields of visual art, literature, and music.
Volume 1: Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is at the pinnacle of medieval literature and the poetic adaptation of scholastic theology. At the same time, it opened the door to the Renaissance, which meant a new beginning, not just in literature, but also in painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. Starting in Italy, the Renaissance spread throughout Europe, its humanism drawing on antiquity to create new forms of religiosity as well.
Volume 2: Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The Reformation leveled criticism at cultural images, which sometimes led to iconoclasm. While Calvinism drew on the Old Testament’s aniconism, Counter-Reformatory Catholicism clung to iconodulism. In church music, various forms of worship led to the mass, the chorale, and the psalter, while literature was frequently called into the service of confessional propaganda.
Volume 3: The Age of the Baroque
In the Baroque period, ecclesiastical painting bloomed in Italy and Spain, but also in the Spanish Netherlands, whereas the fine arts in the Calvinist north had to look for tasks outside the church. While Rome and Paris developed architecturally into centers of Catholicism, a culture of religious music took shape in the Lutheran territories of the empire, which reached its pinnacle in Bach.
