Chapter 2 focuses on the nature of visual decorum both before and after the Council of Trent (1545–63). The shifting parameters of what was deemed appropriate for public display in devotional sites partly explains why certain images were censored, particularly with relation to nudity, yet it was also the case that some artistic creations tested the boundaries of acceptability as never before.

Chapter 6 takes as its subject the relatively sudden proliferation of narrative images of the virtuous deeds and dramatic martyrdom of the saints that became popular themes for altarpieces in the second half of the sixteenth century. These transformations to the altarpiece were the result of earlier artistic developments, but they were also shaped by the context of the Reformations.

Chapter 5 concentrates on images of the body of Christ, covering a rich terrain of painted and illustrated images and ever more lavishly embellished tabernacles. Here we will see how iconographies that were established prior to the Reformations were visited afresh by the leading artists of the day.

The introduction sets out the central arguments of this study, provides a chapter overview, and surveys the different methodologies and approaches taken by scholars with regard to the question of the visual arts and their relationship to the Reformations.

Chapter 7 examines representations of the afterlife: the heavens and purgatory. Venetian artists created some of the most spectacular visions of paradise of the century, works that pulse with vibrancy and life, deploying a series of artistic devices to insist on the veracity of the supernatural. Venice was also home to one of the earliest and most comprehensive purgatorial cycles in Italy, a theme that became an ever more popular one as the seventeenth century progressed.

The conclusions commence with the warnings against idolatry contained in the ancient inscriptions of the basilica of San Marco, words that appear to have taken on a new resonance in light of the image debates of the Cinquecento. Some observations on the prevailing mindset with regard to majestically constructed and adorned churches are then made, contrasting the wide acceptance for such projects amongst late sixteenth-century Catholics to the Protestant distaste for the ‘idolatrous’ statues and images to be found throughout Venice. This book closes by reasserting one its central themes: the ability of contemporary artists in the city to invent novel visual solutions that encouraged certain beliefs at a fertile moment in the history of art.

Chapter 3 is about early modern institutional artistic censorship in Venice. The methods available for controlling devotional art in the city are described and conclusions are drawn on their efficacy, demonstrating that censorship proved to be far more haphazard than programmatic.

Chapter 4 looks at the Patriarch Lorenzo Priuli’s inspections of the parishes of Venice in the 1590s. The documentary evidence shows that this visitation actively encouraged the commissioning of ever more devotional artworks for the city’s churches. It also gave resolute institutional backing to the parish confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament. A variety of sources show that Priuli’s orders were frequently carried out swiftly by these Scuole, leading to radical transformations to the churches of Venice.

Chapter 1 concentrates on the extent to which the relative fluidity of belief that was tolerated prior to the late 1540s in Italy was manifested visually. It analyses cases of artists who embraced theological ideas that would later be deemed doctrinally unacceptable by the Catholic Church, highlighting the complexities of reading heterodox meanings into their output.