Much of what we know about ancient religions has been learned from ancient artwork. Art was often used in ancient times to provide visual images of gods and goddesses. Sculpture was a large component of ancient Greek art. Sculptors often designed images of mythological Greek gods and goddesses or other characters involved in some of the many tales that compose Greek mythology. Greek gods and goddesses were usually created with human-like images. Most of the art we find from ancient Egypt deals with Egyptian religious beliefs about death and the afterlife. Egyptian tombs can be found filled with artwork depicting the deceased, Egyptian gods and goddesses, and scenes from the afterlife. Elaborate sculptures and wall paintings in tombs illustrate the ways ancient Egyptians viewed their gods and goddesses and tell us a lot about their religious beliefs regarding the afterlife.
The major religion of Western Civilization during the Middle Ages was Christianity. The Holy Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope as its leader, was the organized body that made decisions on religious topics for most of Western Civilization. The Middle Ages were a glorious time for the Christian Church. The Church was gaining in political power and wealth. Its church buildings were opulent and richly decorated, and its priests wore gold and jewels. Holy wars were fought in the Middle East to win back the Holy Land, although they were fought mostly to gain the spoils of war. Priests gave sermons denouncing sin, depravity, greed and envy while they contested with one another for political power and wealth. The Pope struggled with kings for influence in the secular world, while kings elected their own bishops to serve in the churches. Overall, the major religion of the Middle Ages was dominated by great displays of wealth and beauty. Unfortunately it was also dominated by hypocrites and greedy church officials. Only the glory and the great displays of wealth, along with the medieval views of morality, were displayed in the art of the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance, a great cultural movement that began in Italy, lasted from the early 1300s to the late 1400s, and ended finally around 1600. During this time, it spread to England, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and other countries. The Renaissance was an age of discovery; a turning away from the ideas and values of a supernatural orientation to those concerned with the natural world and the life of man. The artists pondered the thought that the meaning of the world and human life was not only in religious terms.
Renaissance thinkers in Northern Europe sought to apply humanistic methods to the study of Christianity. Scholars were concerned with editing religious texts, such as the Bible, while artists were concerned with stressing the importance and beauty of the human body in their paintings. Unlike Medieval art, which portrayed unlifelike figures that represented religious ideas rather than flesh and blood people, the Renaissance art portrayed realistic figures in natural settings. Thus, the painters strayed from religion.
According to Fifty Centuries of Art, the great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the world and the discovery of man. Important artist of this period were Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are best known as the "Age of Enlightenment" or the time of "the Scientific Revolution." The time period, however, was also the age of the baroque style in the visual arts. Baroque, which is French for "odd" or "irregular," is a difficult style to define because it reflects religious ecstasy and worldly sensuality, credulity and rationalism, along with violence and respect for order. Baroque artists showed the conflicts of man and his universe. Three elements in the cultural life of western Europe helped form the baroque style. First, artists were rebelling against Renaissance art. Second, many European rulers wanted an art style to glorify their reign. Finally, a movement called the "Counter Reformation" stirred a sense of religious enthusiasm in many parts of Europe.
Baroque religious architecture, such as the massive elliptical colonnades erected to frame St. Peter's in Rome, portrayed the majesty of God rather than his mercy. These churches expressed the drama and emotion of this religious movement. Painters were also more concerned with capturing feelings of space and movement than with painting individual forms for their own sake. Perhaps this is because during the enlightenment of this time period, a new religion of reason, progress, and the "perfection of humanity" was developing. Great thinkers, thanks to humanism, no longer believed that the people of Christiandom were chosen by God. Voyages of discovery and the development of science weakened the people's self-assurance that divine revelation gave humanity all necessary truth was weakened. With the dilution of religious beliefs, the focus of art shifted from religious subjects to other aspects of life. Although the ideas behind paintings and literature turned more to political subjects than religious, this change in direction away from religion marked a definite phase or stage in the development of art throughout history. While the scientific revolution and the enlightenment were the most decisive breaks in the history of western thought, the development of the baroque style of art was equally important and magnificent. By the late nineteenth century, critics had come to consider the baroque period a great achievement, and society today is still captivated by the baroque art found in the great cathedrals throughout Europe.
The period of art that is presently labeled The Modern World is centered around the increased questioning of religion that took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Men and women had begun looking at sacred texts not as scripture, but writings by humans trying to understand their gods. This created great uncertainty not only in religion, but also in the way artists portrayed their ideas. Modern World Art, which was centered primarily in France, was characterized by such periods as Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Fauvism and Cubism. The movement known as Dada, as well as Surrealism, the art of the unconscious, evolved during and directly after World War I. Famous artists of this period include Bonheur, Manet, Gauguin, and Picasso.
Modern World Art is most often defined by styles that reject traditionally accepted forms and emphasize individual experimentation and sensibility. Therefore, the period known as Modern World Art came about as a direct response to the rebellion and uncertainty felt toward religion and war between 1800 and 1945.