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From the Worship of God to the Worship of Beauty? The Reception of Italian Catholic Religious Paintings in the Private Chapels of English Country Houses, c .1660‐ c .1768
Author(s) -
CHURCHSOULARD ANNABELLE
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2010.00278.x
Subject(s) - worship , painting , reinterpretation , beauty , greatness , art , religiosity , taste , aesthetics , ideology , religious studies , visual arts , literature , theology , law , philosophy , politics , political science , psychology , neuroscience
This study discusses the shifting reception of Italian Catholic religious paintings in the private chapels of English country houses. It first investigates how the practice of art collecting and patronage informs the strategies deployed by the English aristocracy to expunge from these pictures all Catholic overtones. It moves on to assess the impact of this ideological reinterpretation on works of art, whose original religious message was thus gradually displaced. The article concludes that these paintings came, effectively, to extol a religiosity of splendour, representative of a desire to glorify both the host's good taste and God's greatness.