A while ago, when studying comparative aesthetics, I came a cross a theory, that renaissance (in terms of ideas expressed) actualy started in china and shockwaved from there to the west (first India, then Near East, then Europe) and east (Japan) in a decade or two.
This oil painting technique discovery seems to support it.

I found Mary Anne Staniszewski’s book, Believing is Seeing: creating the culture of art an interesting book. She puts forth in very visual terms that art as we think of the term did not really exist until about the late eighteenth century; that before that period artistic endeavours were part of religious worship and a sort of craftsmanship primarily with other purposes in mind than being viewed as an art object.

Staniszewski’s point of view is valid in one way, but it’s hard to get out from behind our cultural lens. Michaelangelo’s Pieta is an inspiring example of motherhood, with or without religious belief in its specific story.

I remember in university art history classes, a few of the students attacking a lot of paintings due to the presence of the ‘male gaze’ and nude women, and then dismissing the rest of the meaning of say, Bottecelli’s Venus in it’s entirety.

For myself as a Bright or atheist, I’m never tempted to throw out the narrative, mood or beauty with the religious bathwater. The religious art of the past is a tribute to the striving feelings of our predecessors, which makes the tragedy at Bamiyan al the more terrible.

(Sorry for the long response!)

I have friends and acqauaintences who are paneontological artists, and I’ve done a number of posts on that subject and other aspects of scientific, botanical and medical illustration. I’ve even done a bit of scientific illustration myself for paleontological geological and biological subjects, so I’m definitely appreciative of that aspect of artistic inspiration.

But you’re right in that I’m looking to the past in making that statement. I base my assessment on the magnitude and intensity (to couch it in scientific terms, even though it’s a value judgement) of religious art throughout history.

I do agree that it has been better in the past at inspiring art, however. Otherwise, I agree with all of your statements about rationality and science. Thank you for a well-written article, not awash in the cultural relativism found in so many places in the arts.

The origin of oil painting has become even more fascinating this month.