Valkanov, Dessislav2026-08-022026-08-022026-08-022534-8442https://doi.uni-plovdiv.bg/handle/store/1060The 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.otherreligious faithcollapse of utopiasReformationgracemetaphysical constraintsecularizationaesthetics of absenceDutch artArticle