The 16th-century Protestant Reformation shattered the foundations of faith and art. As traditional theology was both besieged and defended, art had to adapt. Of course, a new theology needed new kinds of pictorial ext...The 16th-century Protestant Reformation shattered the foundations of faith and art. As traditional theology was both besieged and defended, art had to adapt. Of course, a new theology needed new kinds of pictorial extrapolations. But truly, the most interesting change was hidden in plain sight. Subjects that may have looked familiar were in fact utterly new, because subversive ideas and contexts uprooted older meanings. The painting Madonna with Parrots （1533）, by Hans Baldung Grien demoted the chaste protectress by transforming her into a flawed, even dangerous, human mother. In the painting, an oddly sultry Virgin shows off her breast, her shoulder, and her chest as a parrot nibbles her neck. The complexities of Baldung＇s painting underpin debates about the status of the Virgin during the Reformation and the freedom of an artist to tamper with sacred subject matter.展开更多
文摘The 16th-century Protestant Reformation shattered the foundations of faith and art. As traditional theology was both besieged and defended, art had to adapt. Of course, a new theology needed new kinds of pictorial extrapolations. But truly, the most interesting change was hidden in plain sight. Subjects that may have looked familiar were in fact utterly new, because subversive ideas and contexts uprooted older meanings. The painting Madonna with Parrots （1533）, by Hans Baldung Grien demoted the chaste protectress by transforming her into a flawed, even dangerous, human mother. In the painting, an oddly sultry Virgin shows off her breast, her shoulder, and her chest as a parrot nibbles her neck. The complexities of Baldung＇s painting underpin debates about the status of the Virgin during the Reformation and the freedom of an artist to tamper with sacred subject matter.
