Send Religious Art back to the Churches!

Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi gallery in Florence, told the press on 27 May that he thought many religious works of art currently in Italy’s museums and stores should be returned to the churches from which they came. He went on to suggest that one of the most famous early medieval works in his gallery, the Rucellai Madonna by Duccio, painted around 1275, should go back to its original home, the Florentine church of Santa Maria Novella, from which it was removed in 1948.

… [T]he Rucellai Madonna’s absence from Santa Maria Novella takes away an essential part of its history and meaning.

“Devotional art was not born as a work of art but for a religious purpose, usually in a religious setting”, he told The Art Newspaper. He went on to say that, returned to the building for which it was created, it would be seen in the right historical and artistic space and the viewer would potentially be led to recognise its spiritual origins.

SOURCE: The Art Newspaper (Thanks for the reference to The American Conservative)

Strange: writers, critics and philosophers of various schools have been making the same points for years. Indeed, it is a sure sign of a society’s decadence when its art – preeminently religious art – is removed from life and enclosed in museums. Of course, according to The Art Newspaper, representatives of the Catholic Church had doubts about Schmidt’s idea….