When religious art was frowned upon

WE OFTEN VISIT the Tate Britain art gallery on London’s Millbank, usually to see special temporary exhibitions. Rarely, if ever, do we spend time looking at the Tate’s permanent collection. However, today, the 6th of July 2023, we met some friends who wanted to see the recently re-hung paintings in the permanent collection. The paintings are arranged in rooms in chronological order. Each artwork has an interestingly informative label, which describes the social conditions of the era in which it was created and other points about it.

The first room of the series of galleries is dedicated to works created just before, during, and after the (Protestant) Reformation in 16th century England. I found it to be most interesting.  The radical rejection of Roman Catholic religious practices involved, amongst many other things, a profound disapproval of the artistic portrayal of religious subjects. A consequence of this was that artists switched from painting religious scenes to portraiture. Just as people love being portrayed in photographs today, those who could afford it in the 16th century were pleased to have themselves immortalised in well-executed paintings. What I had never realised before was that the Reformation unwittingly gave birth to the long tradition of British portrait painting. Maybe, most people know this already, but it was news to me.

The gallery dedicated to the Reformation era has many fine portraits, by artists both known and unknown. However, one of the paintings hanging amongst the portraits is a religious scene, “An Allegory of Man”, by an unknown artist. Painted in about 1596, it would have been a highly controversial subject given the Protestant aesthetics prevailing at that time.

Although the temporary exhibitions at the Tate Britain are usually well worth viewing, the permanent collection deserves many a visit, as we discovered today.