Contending with the unfold of the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church, after the Council of Trent (1545–63), adopted a propagandist program during which art was to serve as a means of stimulating the public’s religion within the church. Whereas a naturalistic remedy rendered the religious image extra accessible to the average churchgoer, dramatic and illusory results have been used to stimulate devotion and convey the splendour of the divine. The second tendency was the consolidation of absolute monarchies—Baroque palaces have been constructed on a monumental scale to display the ability of the centralized state, a phenomenon finest displayed at…