Religious art?
Spiritual art?
The place of art in religion is ambiguous and contested.
I believe this is true in most religions, but in this article I'm confining myself to Christianity (about which I can speak with some degree of confidence).
Let's start by saying that religious art and spiritual art are not the same thing, although occasionally a painting might be both. Religious art seeks to support, augment or promote the claims of a religion. It might aim to teach or inform people about the religion. It might seek to inspire people to greater fervour or commitment. It might aim to evoke a sense of wonder or praise directed at God.
In Christianity art has a chequered history. It has often been viewed with suspicion and even hostility. In Europe there have been waves of iconoclasm (the destruction of images) most recently in the UK following the Reformation of Henry VIII.
To this day, although one can find pictures in Protestant/Evangelical Churches they tend to be there only to illustrate or decorate a text.
Where art has been welcomed and celebrated, it's easy to find examples of paintings which teach.
Here are two very specific examples.
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The Jesse Tree on the left became a popular motif in European stained glass and manuscripts. Drawn from Biblical sources, notably Matthew 1, it taught worshippers the generations of Jesus.
The Light of the World by Holman Hunt (1851) caused such a sensation that it went on tour around the British Isles with people queueing and paying to see it. It shows Christ knocking at the door of the heart. The painting is full of symbolism, which Holman Hunt explained in a later essay. For example, there is no door handle on this side; the door can only be opened from the inside - and so on.
In a pre-literate society (and certainly before the Bible appeared in English) any painting of a Biblical scene informed people.
Within the more narrative religious art (paintings based on a Biblical event or on the lives of the saints), the artists often nuanced the teaching aspect beyond a simple 'picture of what happened'.
Take this altarpiece.
This is the central panel of what is usually called the Portinari Altarpiece. It was painted in 1475 by the Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes, and commissioned by Thomas Portinari. Originally it sat above an altar in Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. You can now find it in the Uffizi Gallery.
The subject is the Adoration of the Shepherds but notice two oddities. This is not a stable; the scene takes place amid some classical ruins (to the left). And the infant Jesus lays not in a manger but on some wheat straw; to emphasise the point there is a sheaf of wheat in the foreground. By 1475, the classical ruins were an established symbol of the old world order ending at the Birth of Christ. The might and pomp of Greece/Rome are brought to nothing by the arrival of this child.
And the wheat straw? Very simply, wheat makes bread, and in the Mass (on the altar which this panel adorns) bread becomes the means by which we receive Christ into our very beings. So, two theological points about the mission of Christ conveyed by a painting.
A word of caution though about religious art.
Don't be surprised if religious people and organisations want to control the meaning of religious paintings and sculpture. By and large, the religious mindset wants meaning to be tied down and regulated.
Which is perhaps why spiritual art makes some of them anxious ...
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