Christian art
Christianity makes far wider use of images than related religions, in which figurative representations are forbidden, such as Islam and Judaism.
Named for their strong foundational pillars, Stave Churches were another popular display of Christian Viking art.
[4] These churches displayed engravings of Christian and Nordic beliefs, with animal-like depictions appearing on walls and entrances.
German and English influence can be found in some distinct examples of these crosses, with choices to use Doric capital ends, believed to have spread throughout Scandinavia in the 12th and 13th century.
[5] The Orthodox Church of Constantinople, which enjoyed greater stability within the surviving Eastern Empire was key in producing imagery there and glorifying Christianity.
[7] As a stable Western European society emerged during the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church led the way in terms of art, using its resources to commission paintings and sculptures.
The controversy over the use of graven images, the interpretation of the Second Commandment, and the crisis of Byzantine Iconoclasm led to a standardization of religious imagery within the Eastern Orthodoxy.
Similar to the Vikings, wood and carvings are also used in Germanic Christian art in depictions of crosses and relations to the Crucifixion utilized in different areas such as churches and cathedrals.
Because of the nature of traveling painters and artists, these paintings often had Greek lettering and script[10] The fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought an end to the highest quality Byzantine art, produced in the Imperial workshops there.
Orthodox art, known as icons regardless of the medium, has otherwise continued with relatively little change in subject and style up to the present day, with Russia gradually becoming the leading centre of production.
In the West, the Renaissance saw an increase in monumental secular works, although Christian art continued to be commissioned in great quantities by churches, clergy and by the aristocracy.
"[14] On the other hand, Christians from a Reformed background were generally iconoclastic, destroying existing religious imagery and usually only creating more in the form of book illustrations.
[11] Artists were commissioned to produce more secular genres like portraits, landscape paintings and because of the revival of Neoplatonism, subjects from classical mythology.
However many modern artists such as Eric Gill, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Jacob Epstein, Elisabeth Frink and Graham Sutherland have produced well-known works of art for churches.
[17] Since the advent of printing, the sale of reproductions of pious works has been a major element of popular Christian culture.
