The visual and material culture of religion

Christian Art Exodus 20, 4-5: ‘You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…’.

Pope Gregory the Great’s doctrine on Christian Art 600AD letter to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles: ‘For it is one thing to adore a picture, another through the story of a picture to learn what must be adored. For what writing offers to readers, a picture offers to the ignorant who look at it, since in it the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it they read who do not know letters; whence for gentiles a picture is a substitute for reading’.

598AD letter to Serenus: Pictures are displayed in churches: ‘in order that those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books’. To Serenus: ‘what displeased you was not the sight of the story revealed through the witness of a picture, but that adoration which had inappropriately been exhibited to the pictures’.

Sano di Pietro, Altarpiece of St. Bernardino, (panel) (1445) Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena Neroccio di Bartolomeo de Landi, San Bernardino Preaching, 1470 Museo civico, Siena

San Bernardino in 1427 Sermon in Siena ‘God would certainly be sending the most terrible punishments if it weren’t for the fact that the Virgin Mary had petitioned her son and her son had spoken to his father at Mary his mother’s request. And thanks to this, God’s anger has been placated. I don’t say he pardons us, no, but he softens the punishment. And Jesus Christ receives the grace of his father and hands it to his mother, and his mother sends it on to us’.

Agnolo Gaddi, The Legend of the True Cross: The Beheading of Chosroes, The Angel Appearing to Heraclius, and the Entry of Heraclius into Jerusalem, Cappella Maggiore, Basilica di Santa Croce, Firenze

The reliquary of the true cross of Cardinal Bessarion, Orig commissioned by Princess Irene Paleologus, c.1460 Cardinal Bessarion with the Bessarion Reliquary c , Gentile Bellini, National Gallery

Gentile Bellini, Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco, Venice 1496

Carpaccio, The Apparition of the Ten Thousand Martyrs (c.1515) Venice

Bernardo Daddi, Madonna and Child (1346) Orcagna, Tabernacle (1355) Orsanmichele, Florence

Fra Angelico San Marco Altarpiece, 1443, Florence

Fra Angelico, Crucifixion, 1440s, San Marco

BenozzoGozzoli, Jesus consigning his mother to Saint John San Marco, Cosimo’s private cell, c1442

Benozzo Gozzoli, Adoration of the Magi, San Marco, Cosimo’s private cell, 1442

Devotion in the home Private chapels Altar rights Council of Trent 1562

Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi, (c ) Medici Chapel, Medici Palace Florence

Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child

Giovanni Mansueti, Miraculous Healing of the Daughter of Benvegnudo of S. Polo, c Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice

Vittore Carpaccio, Dream of St Ursula 1495, Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice

Carpaccio, Vision of St Augustine, 102-4, Scuola di San Giorgio Schiavone, Venice

Giovanni Battista Moroni, Portrait of a Gentleman at Prayer, Nat Gal, Washington

Girolamo Savonarola, Sermon on Dying Well (Florence, 1496) (British Museum)

Leandro Bassano, Portrait of a Widow at her Devotions, Private collection