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‘Why should we be always looking back?’‘Christian art’ in nineteenth‐century historiography in Britain
Author(s) -
Ermstrom Adele M.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00164
Subject(s) - historiography , christian art , period (music) , context (archaeology) , the arts , literal and figurative language , art , faith , art history , history of art , literature , history , george (robot) , christianity , aesthetics , visual arts , philosophy , architecture , theology , archaeology , linguistics
For George Eliot in Middlemarch availability of literature on Christian art separated the world of the 1870s from that of fifty years before. ‘Christian art’ indeed emerged punctually in the mid‐1830s as a category unconnected with any existing stylistic or period designation, but as coterminous with Christian faith. This essay examines its context in religious crisis and Utopian thought as ‘Christian art’ was translated from architectural revival to historiography of the figurative arts by English writers taking various approaches to the challenge. Among these the most systematic revivalist was Lord Lindsay in his Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847). The most critical was Anna Jameson, who in ‘The House of Titian’ (1845) questioned in fundamentally historical terms the possibility, and desirability, of recreating the art of the past.