The Bible has been an important source of inspiration for several of history’s most famous artists. From the masters of the Renaissance to today’s modernists, the Bible and its stories have had a deep impact on visual art.
Biblical visual art dates back to the 14th century. It was not until the Renaissance that the stories and figures of the Old and New Testaments became part of European intellectual history. As opposed to the icons and wall paintings of the Middle Ages, which had purely liturgical purposes, Renaissance art was characterized by contemporary humanism. Some famous examples are Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and the Madonna of Loreto, which emphasize the Virgin Mary’s role as a mother, and Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, in which Genesis is presented in Hellenistic garb.
The Bible would become an important source of inspiration for European artists in the coming time, especially in the Protestant countries. In Romanticism, Realism, and Expressionism, it became more common to depict biblical stories in a secular and national light, often influenced by the social and political climate of the time; in John Everett Millais’ Christ in the House of His Parents we see Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a working-class family, in Otto Dix and Ernst Nolde’s paintings there are clear contrasts between biblical stories and events during the First World War.
We have collected examples of biblical motifs from 50 of the world’s most prominent visual artists through the ages.
