Religious and sacred art: Recent psychological perspectives

Abstract

The psychology of art has had an enormous development since the middle of the last century; however, no much work has been done in association with religious and sacred art. This paper aims to provide a brief history of the use of images in the three great monotheistic religions, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.All three religions have been influenced by the commandment (Exodus, 20:4), which prohibits idolatry. Nevertheless, when it comes to the use of images with religious content, the commandment is interpreted differently by the three. If in Judaism and Islam the use of images is not particularly widespread and is bound to precise conditions, in Christianity a strong relationship with the visual arts has developed, at least until the Reformation. After this split, the use of images was only encouraged by the Catholic Church even though, with the Enlightenment, religious and sacred art suffered a decline even in Catholic culture.It was not until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that the Catholic Church returned to support and encourage art in the religious context. It will then be necessary to distinguish between religious art and sacred art because they serve different functions. Precisely because it is a field in which deepening is possible, it could be very interesting for the psychology of art to study the perception of religious and sacred images, for example investigating constructs associated with the perception of vitality and aesthetic judgment.

Is Aesthetic Good? A Study on the Aesthetic and Vitality Judgment of Pictorial Representations of the Dead, Saints and Non-Saints

“…Another significant result is that the religious status and the spirituality of the participants do not correlate with either the judgment of aesthetics and vitality, or the correct recognition of the images. This fact could support the idea that there is always a basic level of reaction to images that is independent of the cultural context [ 12 , 13 ], and therefore the judgments of vitality and aesthetics are linked to the basic bottom-up reactions to images and are not significantly influenced by top-down socio-cultural elements, such as religiosity and spirituality.…”

“…Therefore, it would be interesting to carry out this research in countries where the Catholic religion is more strongly felt, to investigate whether these variables are irrelevant. In addition, it would be interesting to have two groups, one Catholic and one Protestant, for example, to see if there is any change in the perception of religious images, given that these two religious currents have very strong differences in the acceptance and the use of religious images [ 12 ]; in this case, it would be possible to better understand the respective weight of the top-down and bottom-up variables. A possible future extension of this area of research could involve the application of this research design to the study of imagery in Byzantine art, which could be particularly interesting because it involves not only the topics of vitality and holiness, but also the theme of iconoclasm [ 13 , 20 ].…”

“…It is not a question of factuality, but it is about the reactions to the image and its perception. In the Western world, and particularly in the Catholic world, which encouraged visual art for religious purposes [ 12 ], there are various accounts of “vital” artworks, such as statues or paintings that cry or move their eyes [ 13 , 14 ]. In the “Dialogus magnus visionum et miraculorum” by Cesario di Heisterbach, it is possible to find hagiographic stories that also involve art and images.…”