Unique challenges arise when a commission requires using historical photographs as references for sacred artwork. In this post, we explore how George and Polly navigated these obstacles to create a portrait of Louis and Zélie Martin that allows the saints’ heavenly glory to shine through their earthly likenesses ..read more

In her inaugural contribution to our Making of a Painting series, Polly recounts the conceptual work, compositional stages, and artistic process involved in the creation of a recently commissioned set of paintings, along with the factors that made this a particularly rewarding example of a fruitful collaboration between artist and patron ..read more

In this first of our Anatomy of a Painting series, we analyze the compositional devices and artistic techniques underlying Francesco Solimena's painting of the Assumption. Along the way, we gain insight into the venerable master's creative genius and learn lessons of on-going relevance regarding the ingredients of effective sacred art ..read more

With our framework established and explained in previous posts, we are ready to put it to work to understand how two broad streams of Christian tradition have represented religious themes over the centuries. We find that Eastern and Western approaches to sacred art often achieve similar ends using divergent means ..read more

Redeeming the state of Western Christian art and preparing for a new flowering of sacred painting requires a return to the basics. In this series of posts, we will explore how effective artistic creations navigate the distinctions among content, style, and other properties in order to achieve their proper ends. This first post lays the groundwork by defining some key terms ..read more

In this final post of our introductory series, we bring together what we’ve learned so far to define four genres of representational Christian art. By studying each category’s distinctive purpose, characteristics, and appropriate context, we uncover a set of general principles that can guide a renewed flourishing of sacred art ..read more

In our previous post, we established a framework for analyzing works of art according to their style, subject matter, and mode. These distinctions are easier to understand when applied to concrete examples from art history. Here we find Western European and American paintings from the past millennium that exemplify different types of visual expression ..read more