Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Art and The Protestant Reformation

The Renaissance had been so successful for the last few centuries through the Medici in Italy and throughout France. It brought the aspect of humanism through art and sculpture and through literature. People were learning more and communicating more through language and art because of the Renaissance. The unheaval that Martin Luther brought on the European Catholic Church made a impressionable blow to the Renaissance movement with art and technology. Martin Luther charged the church because of the selling of indulgences so that people could buy their way into heaven. Pope Leo had spent all the Churches treasury and needed to raise funds for St. Peters Basilica, so he led people to believe that they could buy their way into heaven. Art began to digress back into more of a religious pictorial because of the split between the Church. Now there was the Protestants, which sub-units would be Calvinists, Lutherans, and Anglicans, and the other was the Catholics. Because of the printing press, the words of Martin Luther spread fast through Germany. His longtime friend, Lucus Cranach the Elder, created The Cruxifiction of the Converted Centurion, alluding to the fact that one could only make salvation on faith alone, which was the message of the Reformation.

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