Art and Lived Religion explores the dynamic relationship between medieval and early modern religion and art and the people who encountered them. It integrates the lived religion approach with Gillian Rose’s critical visual methodology (CVM) to reveal how religious artworks actively shaped cognition, emotion, and action.

Readers will gain a groundbreaking framework for understanding the multisensory and relational nature of religious experience through case studies spanning Western Christian, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, and Aztec contexts. All essays highlight the “dynamism of forces” between art, religion, and human encounter across diverse temporal, geographic, and cultural settings, emphasizing the interplay of visual, material, social, and embodied dimensions in the creation of experience.

Methodologically and conceptually ideal for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars in art history, religious studies, and interdisciplinary research, this book is tailored to those seeking to explore the experiential dynamics of art and devotion across diverse cultural, temporal, and geographic settings.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Karen E. McCluskey, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney. Her research investigates how art shapes and is shaped by lived experience. Recent publications: New Saints in Late-Mediaeval Venice (2020); “Ability and Disability in the Pictorial Vitae of beata Fina in Fifteenth Century San Gimignano” (2022).

Raisa Maria Toivo, Professor of History at Tampere University, Finland. She works on the history of religious conflicts and witchcraft in early modern Europe and experience as an approach to history. Recent publications include Histories of Experience in the World of Lived Religion (2022).