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Romanesque
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Note the fairly stylized and lifeless Romanesque Madonna.
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Art and artists
9-12th
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Gothic
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Now compare the equally stylized but far more spiritualized
Gothic one.
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12-16 C
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Baroque
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Now look at the flowery Baroque Madonna with its rich garments
and halo. Here the art conveys a sense of riches in a voluptuous all
too worldly sense
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16-18th
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Neo-classical
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In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the ideal of womanhood
changes from the religious Mary to an attractive secular woman.
At the same time the ideal of motherhood changes from the portrayal
of Mary with her son, the baby Jesus, to a mother welcoming the
return of her son from battle. Such scenes are found on many war
memorials and national monuments in the 19 C.
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C19 C
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A major change in the choice of subjects by artists takes place and
Christian themes, which until the mid-18 C continue to dominate artistic
creations, suddenly become conspicuous by their absence. This change
in terms of “master problems” is discussed by Hans Sedlmayer in Art
in Crisis [1957] and Hans Rookmaaker in Modern Art and the
Death of a Culture [1970]. Our next examples illustrate both the
differences between artistic styles and the way dominant artistic
themes change from religious to purely secular, and often highly nationalistic
art in the neo-Classical era.
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The first three sculptures on the left above clearly depict Mary,
the mother of Jesus. The fourth is G. Schadow’s bust of Marianne
Schlegel made in the early 19 C. This bust has been juxtaposed with
the statues of Mary to illustrate the drastic change in both style
and content of late 18th and 19 C art.Now look carefully
at the final sculpture on the right from a 19th C frieze
depicting a son taking leave of his mother before going off to war
to defend the fatherland.
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Suddenly, as with the sculpture of Marianne Schlegel
above everything is changed and new values are suddenly attributed
to motherhood. Thus the pain Mary must suffer when her son dies for
the sins of humanity is transformed into the pain of a mother whose
son goes off to war for the defense or glory of the fatherland. We
have entered modern times where nationalism takes on a fervor once
reserved for religion.
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