Wednesday, October 7, 2009

16th Century Art

Art depiction usually depends on time eras and what is going on during that time. This hold true for art during the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther started this by bashing the Catholic Church and claiming that there is no middle man between you and God. This obviously upset the Church. But it also had another affect, it got people thinking. People started to believe that maybe there was more to life than just the Church and the way things were taught. People started to think for themselves and come up with new ideas in every imaginable form of expression, artwork being a main outlet. Art became much different from what was being commissioned. Usually the church commissioned pieces of art to depict stories or scenes from the Bible. However, newer, much more different pieces were coming about. Paintings and artistic expression were becoming more acceptable in different forms. Paintings depicting a scene from hell due to lavish living in life were done. Also artwork was impacted depending on the happenings of the day. Life was constantly changing as well as people which in turn led to changing of their ideas. Being able to think and talk more freely left people during this time with a sense of freedom. This was shown in several artworks commissioned during this time. On the flip side however, there were still a lot of pieces being done for the church. As the Church was trying to get a strong hold on society during the Reformation, more altarpieces were done. The Ghent Altarpiece for example has a lot of symbolism and other important things that were depicted.

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