Ding! The fight is on! In this corner we have Hermansz van Rijn Rembrant, a Protestant painter from the turmoil of the Reformation. In the other corner is Peter Paul Reubens, a Catholic on the side of the Counter-Reformation!

All joking aside, these two painters do represent the difference between Catholic and Protestant painting well. Here is The Apostle Paul by Rembrant.

You can clearly see that this is painted very much like a portrait. All of the Rembrants I saw in the Art History museum were some sort of a portrait. The style is simpler. Rembrant lacks the lavish colors and figures used in Catholic paintings. There is also a certain aspect of daily life to this painting. Paul spent much of his time writing and so he is shown writing. The presence of what looks like a Bible (the paper) also emphasizes Protestant reliance solely on scripture.

On the other hand there is Reubens. Here is an altar he painted, The Triptych of St. Ildefonso.

The vast splendor of the image, which was ton an altar, reveals this to be Catholic. The prevalence of the Virgin Mary, especially the fact that she has a halo, also places this painting firmly in the Catholic camp. And if you needed more to emphasize that Reubens was a Catholic painter, here’s his Penitent St. Magdalene and her Sister Martha. You can again note the very vibrant colors, but what struck me more was the use of a Roman-style pose for Mary Magdalene and her Romanesque regard to clothing. She seems to be pictured in a way almost reminiscent of Venus.

And lastly there is Reubens’ The Head of Medusa. The fact that this painting even exists makes Reubens not a Protestant. In conjunction with the other paintings his Catholicism can be seen. But this painting is of a Greek myth would never have been painted by a Protestant. It was hard enough to get painting as an art recognized by the Protestant Church; a Protestant painter never would have painted something so un-Christian and frivolous.