Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. 1, Changing times: -- Protestants and Catholics in dialogue on images -- The dilemma of naturalism -- Interpreting and narrating the sacred image -- Michelangelo's Last judgment and the failure of the sacred image at midcentury -- The decree and the didactic solution; -- pt. 2, The affective response to Trent: -- Titian : his trip to Rome and after -- Jacopo Tintoretto : sacred narrative and theater -- Federico Barocci : from here to ecstasy -- El Greco : Italy transported to Spain -- Caravaggio : secularizing the sacred, sanctifying the secular -- Conclusion -- Appendix. Decree of the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent.

Underlying the religious art of the Renaissance is a tension between the needs of the Church and the impulse to create great works. This beautifully illustrated book presents sacred images from the 15th and 16th centuries, leading up to two pivotal events in 1563. The Council of Trent, which signified the beginning of the Counter-Reformation, defined requirements that curtailed the freedom of painters and patrons in creating art for churches, while the founding of the Accademia del Desegno in Florence symbolically acknowledged that artists had achieved the status of creators not craftsmen. The author takes a fresh look at some of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance not typically associated with sacred imagery and shows how they navigated their way through the paradox of 'limited freedom' to forge a new kind of religious art. -- from Book Jacket.