The spiritual turmoil of the sixteenth century had a profound impact on religious life throughout Italy. Art and architecture were directly implicated in the seismic historical events of the age, as the Catholic Church countered Protestant iconoclasm through the embrace of sacred images as decreed by the Council of Trent in 1563. In this volume, Marie-Louise Lillywhite considers the impact of religious reform on the devotional art and architecture of sixteenth-century Venice. Interrogating early modern censorship, artistic liberty, notions of decorum tied to depictions of the body, and the role of sacred images in the shaping of local identity, she shows how Venice, a crossroads city exposed to a rich gamut of religious and artistic currents, serves as a fascinating case study through which to explore these themes. Her study reconstructs the conditions that enabled artistic invention to prevail and how artists became interpreters of spiritual values.

‘I have been waiting for an art historian to write this book. It is a well-considered, balanced, and evidence-based examination of the relationships between religious images and the Counter-Reformation in Venice.'

Louisa Matthew - Union College