Protestant Reformation/Northern Europe

Protestant Reformation of arts in northern Europe begins in about 1660. Artists are moving away from religious images and reformation is taking place due to political and religious strife. This greatly impacted artists some who even found their careers ended. When the Protestantism came to power widespread iconoclasm began taking place. Sculptures and stained glass windows were destroyed. Religious paintings where whitewashed from churches, things they considered idols. Artist turned to portraiture, secular subjects such as “moralizing depictions of human folly and weaknesses, still life” (p.679) Artists subject matter was now paintings of inanimate objects, landscapes and natural life. Unlike before where you had grand portraits of wealthy patrons and Kings, the view shifted toward peasant life etc.

Works like the Nymph of the spring by artist Lucas Cranach the Elder began being produced. Provocative subject matter, were place in front of vast landscapes. This seemed to be the ideal style during the Reformation “Earthly beauty”. Unlike Catholic art this new style idealizes fantasy and eroticism, peasant life and landscapes verses realism, naturalism, religious scripture and stories. It also strays away from the mannerist style the “Nymph of the spring” has no twisted features, exaggerated postures or body parts. Instead the images are settling and balanced unlike most mannerist art.

Two works of art stood out to me during this time period, Hans Baldung Grien “Death and the Matron and B. Pieter Bruegel the Elder “The Harvesters”. Death and the Matron is a very dark depiction of human psychological emotion. Here you have a woman in a natural state of bliss with who she thinks is her lover, only to find out its death instead. It’s very twisted and bazar unlike anything you would find in Catholic based art. This mixture of life and death partaking in a natural act of procreation, or human pleasure is very strange and distasteful. It makes the viewer ponder about what is really going on in this image. Is she dreaming? Has death come to claim her but in more ways than one? Or is it her lover and he doesn’t realize he’s dead? These are the types of question that come to mind when viewer this image “Death and the Matron”.

The Harvesters is a favorite of mine, a simple depiction of men and women working and resting in a wheat field. There is a large emphasis on the landscape which makes your eye wonder throughout the painting. This is definitely different from the ideal Renaissance style of Art, it drastically differ from the mannerist style. The painting is a realistic depiction and is very much a natural life style at that time. But it still differs from naturalism and realism in the Renaissance due to the lack of detail in the anatomy of the characters in the painting.  Both of these paintings represent the Protestant Reformation of arts in northern Europe.  They lack idolism, naturalism and realistic anatomy instead they represent natural depictions of everyday life, peasants, landscaping exoticism fantasy and struggle.