Protestant Reformation: 16th Century

Martian Luther’s 95’ thesis and the Protestant Reformation during the 16th century in Europe brought in a new artistic tradition that embraced the Protestant agenda and changed it drastically from the southern European tradition to the humanist art that was being produced during the high Renaissance. During this is expressed an alternate vision of Christian practice, and led to the creation and rise of Protestantism, with all its individual branches. In this turn the Catholic Counter Reformation both reacted against and responded to Protestant criticisms of Catholic art to produce a greater style of Catholic art which was shown often. The Protestant religious art is both embraced in Protestant values and assisted in the proliferation of Protestantism. During this time the amount of religious art production in Protestant countries was greatly reduced which I think was a little odd. This led to the diversion of the artistic effort into secular forms of art. For example, landscape paintings, portrait paintings and genre paintings. In Catholic countries religious art remained important for far longer. Another thing was woodcut prints that were small, they were reflecting propaganda. These were for the people that had a hard time learning or reading. Artists could make good money off making prints of these. Woodcuts were the least expensive on the market for art. Anyone could be able to afford them.