Spanning two centuries and two continents, Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500-1700 addresses the impact of religious tensions on art, design, and architecture in the early
modern world. Beyond famous works of art such as Kraft's Eucharistic Tabernacle, the volume examines less-studied objects, including church plate and vestments, stained glass, graffiti, and
Mexican images of St. Anne, created throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
The collection's contributors present religious artworks from Germany, England, Italy, France, Spain, and Mexico; the media include sculpture, oil painting, fresco, metalwork, dress, and
architecture. Questions of art's destruction, preservation, and censorship are discussed against the ever-present backdrop of religious conflict and varying degrees of tolerance. New
information and original perspectives demonstrate the ways in which art illuminates history, and the close links between the changing values of a society and the images it displays to represent
itself
