A Contra-Reforma, o ornamento na arte e a arquitetura religiosa

Although reiterating the relevance and the sanctity of the images, taken as a means of devotion and way of inciting pity, the final decrees of the Council of Trent promote a revision of ecclesiastical art and set new standards marked by a radicalization of the notion of decorum and a strict severity. With regard to narrative painting, prescriptions attend in abundant literature produced by churchmen and reformers, determined to change the painted themes, ban nudity and bring back decency to religious art. But the debates of almost two decades of work of the Tridentine Council for the Reformation of the Catholic Church also echoes in sacred architecture and the Sixteenth-Century treatises already indicates the assimilation of Counter-Reformist principles, combined, however, to the precepts of Vitruvius and Alberti.