Reformation of the image: religious utopia and aesthetics in 17th century art
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Date
2026-08-02
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Plovdiv University Press
Abstract
The article is a philosophical reflection on European art of the 16th–17th centuries in the
context of a broader, recurring pattern in the development of human utopias. Its object of analysis is
the failure of the utopia of faith in the last great movement within Christianity: the protestant
Reformation. The great surge of enthusiasm for returning to the Word and moral renewal was followed
by disappointment, disintegration, and a loss of spiritual force. The efforts to realize the religious ideal
exposed hidden metaphysical constraints. Human weakness transformed the promise of infinite divine
grace, accessible through a new type of worship, preaching, and action, into a torrent of words,
disputes, and conflicts, without the expected transformation of life. This collapse is reflected in art,
which gradually withdrew from the divine into the sphere of the material, individual experience, and
everyday life, marked by the absence of the great ideas of faith and spirit.
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Keywords
religious faith, collapse of utopias, Reformation, grace, metaphysical constraint, secularization, aesthetics of absence, Dutch art