THE IMPACT OF RENAISSANCE PROTESTANT ICONOCLASM ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN ART

Abstract

The article examines the phenomenon of Protestant iconoclasm in the context of Northern Renaissance culture during the Reformation and analyzes its multifaceted influence on the subsequent development of the theory and practice of visual art. The purpose of the article is to provide a cultural analysis of the impact of the Protestant iconoclastic movement of the Renaissance on the development of European art. Methodology. The methodological framework of the study is based on a hermeneutic approach, which made it possible to interpret the phenomenon of Protestant iconoclasm within the broad historical and cultural context of the Renaissance. The research also employs the historical-logical method, a systemic approach, methods of cultural comparative analysis, and iconographic analysis. Scientific novelty. For the first time, Protestant iconoclasm is examined from a cultural studies perspective as a complex and multifaceted cultural phenomenon. Its diverse influences on the development of European visual art are identified and systematized. Conclusions. The theory and practice of Protestant iconoclasm had a profound impact on the development of artistic culture, contributing to the formation of the theoretical foundations of a modern European understanding of art primarily as a secular and self-sufficient sphere, which significantly accelerated the process of its desacralization. The structure and functional purpose of the visual arts underwent substantial transformations. Having lost its sacred function, religious visual art in Protestant countries gradually declined both quantitatively and qualitatively. At the same time, the emergence and rapid development of genre painting and landscape painting anticipated the future dominance of secular easel painting. This process involved not only the formation of a new modern European iconography but also the emergence of a new model of artistic creativity characterized by a clear subject–object distinction, the individualization and subjectivization of the creative process, and, subsequently, an aniconic tendency that became distinctly manifest later within the framework of modernism.