Art

Early Symbiosis of Art and Religion

Right from the beginnings of art history, religion is present in the way humans perceived and represented their experiences in the world. Evidence from some of the earliest forms of art, as found in European cave paintings that date back to the Late Stone Age or the Upper Paleolithic Age (50,000–10,000 BCE), indicates that art and religious activity were bound to one another in a powerful way from early in the history of humankind. These paintings, which are devoted especially to the naturalistic depiction of animals, are found deep within several cave complexes located in southern France and northern Spain, the most famous of which is known as Lascaux, in Dordogne, France. The remote location of the paintings within the caves and the realistic quality of the animals depicted, combined with the fact that the painted scenes all relate to hunting, suggest that the space of the cave was magical or ritualistic in nature. Researchers have speculated that artist-hunters used the paintings in a sacred, ritualistic way, envisioning the painted animal as a powerful symbol of the real, hunted animal as it existed in the natural world.

Architecture and Sacred Space

Throughout history and in many cultures around the world, art and architecture have provided the means through which different social groups have constructed sacred spaces for their religious practices. In ancient Egypt, for example, the Egyptians used imperishable stone to construct the massive pyramids and statues that would define the sacred spaces devoted to their immortal gods. This building activity peaked during the time of Egypt's Old Kingdom in the third millennium BCE, at which point Egyptian civilization was at one of its highest points of achievement. It was during this period that famous structures such as the three pyramids of Gizeh were built, providing an immortalized sacred space in which the bodies and spirits of the Egyptian god-kings could be preserved. Equally impressive is the Great Sphinx, a massive figure with the head of a human and body of a lion, carved from rock to act as guardian to the Pyramid of Khafre.

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