Reformation and Counter - Reformation

Religious Reformation:
At the beginning of 16th century the Catholic Church had several problems of corruption such as:
· The luxury life of the high hierarchy
· The ignorance of a part of the clergy who didn’t carry out their pastoral work correctly.
· Simony: important ecclesiastic charges were sold to people without aptitudes for being a priest who only search for economic benefits.
· Nepotism: The high hierarchy gave important charges to their relatives.
In that moment, The Pope was building a new St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican and he needed money. So, he published the Indulgences or documents that people could buy to get the pardon for their sins.
It was another big scandal and many people criticized these facts and proposed a change. One of them was Martin Luther who wrote 95 thesis against the indulgences.
Besides these, he expressed other important ideas:
F People are saved by faith
F There is a direct relation between God and Human being. People don’t need intermediaries
F Everybody can read and interpret the Bible in a free way. So, Bible has to be written in vernacular
F There are only two important sacraments: Baptism and Eucharist
F Lutherans don’t worship the virgin and saints
F Lutherans accept neither the pope nor the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The pope excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Church, but Luther’s ideas spread quickly by Germany and the center and north of Europe. Followers of Luther were named Protestants.

The Counter – Reformation
Catholic Church had to make its own reformation.
In 1545, The Council of Trent met and adopted different resolutions:
· To stop Protestants and to spread the Catholicism,
o They created the catechism with the main ideas of the Catholic dogma.
o They open new schools for priests (seminars)
o They reformed old religious orders and created other new like The Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola.
· To improve the conditions of the Church and its priests, they fixed rules for clergy.
The religious changes of 16th century brought important consequences in Europe:
a. It was a period of intolerance both in Catholic and Protestant countries
b. There were long and violent wars in much of Europe
c. There were lists of prohibited books and Inquisition persecuted those who didn’t practice the Catholic religion.

The Renaissance painting

Characteristics
· Renaissance painters discovered the perspective. They used landscapes or buildings as background scenes to get depth in the picture and so, the perspective sensation.
· They also looked for the beauty through the harmony of proportions and, of course, they represented the idealized beauty in human faces and bodies.
· The subjects were religious, but they painted mythological scenes, portraits and nudes too.

Main artists:
o BOTTICELLI: (Quattrocento) He knew how to represent the sense of movement. The draw in the picture was very important for him: The birth of Venus (Florence).
o LEONARDO DA VINCI: (Cinquecento) He was a master of sfumato.
His most important works: Gioconda, The last supper, Virgin of the rocks.
o MICHELANGELO: (Cinquecento). He represents the strength, the movement and the expression: Frescoes of Sistine Chapel.
o RAPHAEL: (Cinquecento) Great perfection in his use of the color, drawing and compositions: The school of Athens.

Vocabulary
Perspective (from Latin perspicere, to see through) in the graphic arts is a representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye.
Sfumato: Technique of smoothing or blurring the outlines of the figures to create a sense of depth and perspective. Painters use shades and colors.

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