The Kingdom Of Heaven To This World Special Way

The thesis seeks to explore the artistic characteristics of Buddism and Christian murals and to dicuss their humanity tradition respectively. In the thesis, the Chinese Tang Dynasty and the Renaissance period of Italy are chosen as the object of study as both represent the flourishing periods of religious art in the East and the West. The church murals of the Renaissance period in Italy is considered as the greatest religious artistic form which is the combination of Christianity with humanity; the murals in Buddhist temples of the Tang Dynasty is regared as best artistic work which is the integration of Confucianism and Buddhism and takes on the features of feudalistic politics. Thus the thesis proposes a particular perspective to conduct comparative reseach between Buddhism and Christianity.Starting from the different cultural contexts that China and Italy (or Europe) belong to correspondingly, the thesis elaborates the expressive differences of the two painting languages in terms of history, culture, religion and philosophy and gives detailed analysis of the two religious artistic forms: one being aloof, purely spiritual, unutilitarian and supporting supremacy of divine right; the other being materialistic, worldly, utilitarian and adovacating monarchical power. There is one common feature concerning the development of religion in the Chinese Tang Dynasty and the Italian Renaissance period, that is, secularization, which means the fusion of religious culture, national history and philosophy. This thesis interprets how artistic form reflects culture in terms of of religion and discussess the murals of the East and the West under the influence of different history, culture and people, which is also the innovation of this thesisThe thesis demonstrates the similarities and differences of the Tang temple murals and those in the Italian Renaissance church from perspectives of expression, modelling and coloring of the figures.By drawing on the thoughts and ideology of Chinese classical culture like Confucianism and Taoism in Tang Dynasty, Buddhism came out to bear the characteristics of Chinese-style religion which advocated retribution, Chinese traditional ethics, loyalty and integrity.The art of the Renaissance period strived to express truthful and realistic beauty. It shortened the distance between god and man with the deep tast of life, stressed the fraternity of god, and downplayed the authority of god. The real man and life were woven into religious story and meanwhile religious divinity came down to real life.Art is just like religion. It is both the fruit and the evaluation of a specific culture in which it grows up. The art of the Renaissance is based on the idealistic beauty of the reality while the murals of the Tang Dynasty pursue the reflection of divinity in the reality. The two artistic styles express the thoughts of the given age with equally devout religious stories.