[ART in BRANDING] 1. The Church & Monarchy: Art as Tool of Power

The Church: History's First Global Brand

If we were to broadly interpret the meaning of "brand," perhaps the longest-surviving brand in history would be religion. The unboxing 'rituals' of the newest iPhones and collectible sneakers shared on YouTube, the 'pilgrimages' that fans make to branded destinations, the fanatic followers who 'evangelize' the 'gospel' of Patagonia – many of today's brand experience design concepts have taken after organized religions, as evident in the terminology itself. In Western civilization, the religious organization that became the backbone of society - what we'll call "the Church" (referring to the organization, not the building) - demonstrated an unprecedented mastery of visual communication that would influence institutions for centuries to come.

The Church Inducts Art: Branding the Divine

The Church recognized the power of art early in its history. From ancient times, art served as the Church's "visual language" and was one of its essential communication tools. It was indispensable for communicating with and educating the faithful, ultimately serving the goals of evangelization and maintaining religious society.

For centuries in Western civilization, this brand was the most powerful patron of the arts. Rather than what we now think of as "corporate social responsibility" style sponsorship of the arts, this relationship more closely resembled how modern organizations work with creative agencies to produce marketing communication materials. Through art, the Church transmitted its brand identity and sowed the seeds of faith. Images of saints, biblical scenes, and theological concepts were transformed into paintings and sculptures that functioned as educational tools, playing a crucial role in expanding the brand's community. This approach transcended barriers of language and literacy, working persuasively for all viewers and creating unity.

Building a Universal Visual Language

The Church used symbols and images to enrich its narrative and capture the hearts of the faithful. Paintings and sculptures consistently featured specific figures, scenes, gestures, and symbolic signs. Thanks to this consistent iconography, audiences of the time could recognize the depicted scenes and the brand values they taught. Just as we easily recognize various brand logos today, these symbols were familiar to those who lived through the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Visual consistency is crucial in branding, isn't it? The origins of what we now systematize as "brand design" - including logo design, color specifications, proprietary typefaces, and visual motifs - can be traced back to how religion effectively built a consistent visual language through art over time.

Most artworks that survive today from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, allowing us to understand their values and socio-economic power structures, were commissioned by the Church. From the Church's perspective, art was an extremely effective medium for spreading Christianity's narrative and forming emotional resonance through powerful visual stimulation, especially in an era when text-based communication media were not widespread and illiteracy rates were high. From the art community's perspective, these major commissions enabled artists to improve their skills and conduct continuous experimentation, leading to artistic innovations. While many people today think of an "artist" as a solitary genius working independently from industry influence, this is quite a modern concept. Medieval artists were part of the religious industry. Rather than pursuing personal visions, they created works based on Church narratives, far removed from today's concept of artistic intellectual property. Their paintings and sculptures handled brand communication in this industry's offline spaces (monasteries and cathedrals). Masterpieces using expensive gold leaf or precious ultramarine pigment extracted from lapis lazuli would have been impossible outside this organizational context.

The Evolution of Religious Art Through Time

Like any brand, positioning evolves with time. The Church, history's longest-surviving brand, is no exception. For a long period in Western history, religion and state were deeply intertwined. The Medieval and Renaissance periods marked the peak of the Church's political power in Europe. Commissioning artworks effectively strengthened or displayed the Church's influence in the political sphere. Through art, the Church demonstrated grandeur and abundance. Elaborate and magnificent frescoes, sculptures, and architectural elements represented the Church's wealth, influence, prestige, and spiritual authority, contributing to successful "positioning" as an awe-inspiring brand.

The Renaissance Revolution

Religious art underwent significant changes during the Renaissance under the influence of humanism. While medieval art focused on symbolic divine-centered expressions, Renaissance religious art began depicting human forms and emotions more realistically. Biblical figures were portrayed like actual humans rather than idealized forms, with the introduction of anatomical accuracy and perspective. Religious subjects were often depicted alongside everyday settings or landscapes, seeking harmony between the sacred and secular. These changes reflected Renaissance spirit while maintaining art's role as a medium of religious communication.

The Baroque Grand Finale

The Baroque period, around the 17th century, marked the last era when the Catholic Church could exert considerable influence in the art world. In response to the Reformation, the Catholic Church passionately promoted art as a tool for persuasion and inspiration of faith. Fearing the loss of followers, religious art from this period is magnificent, overwhelming, and emotionally intense. (Personally, I believe this is why Baroque style can seem somewhat desperate at times.) Simultaneously, as European powers expanded their empires by conquering and colonizing territories in Africa, America, and Asia, the Catholic Church brand sought to acquire new customers in these new markets. Images played a crucial role in evangelizing populations in new territories who spoke different languages from European powers. With the help of printed materials distributed by missionaries, Baroque style spread worldwide, persisting in some regions until the 18th century.

The Economics of Sacred Art

This relationship benefited both the Church and artistic community. For the Church, art proved an extremely effective medium for spreading narratives and forming emotional connections, especially given high illiteracy rates and limited text-based communication. For artists, these major commissions enabled skill development and artistic innovation through continuous experimentation.

Medieval artists functioned as part of the religious industry, creating works based on Church narratives rather than personal visions - quite different from today's concept of the independent artistic genius. Their paintings and sculptures, often incorporating expensive materials like gold leaf and lapis lazuli-derived ultramarine, would have been impossible without this organizational context.

As we've seen, modern brand design and advertising systems share many similarities with how the Church engaged with its contemporary audience through consistent visual art communications. These similarities demonstrate how artistic storytelling has universally served as an effective means of message delivery, audience engagement, and differentiated brand experience building throughout human history.

This visual communication approach, having proven art's effectiveness in building organizational image and narrative delivery, was actively utilized in the age of monarchy that followed religious society.

From Divine Right to Royal Might: Monarchy's Artistic Expression

The Church's brand power was closely tied to political-economic power shifts, leading to gradual changes in the Vatican's role and influence. As church and state functions began to separate, the Church lost its former influence in many Western cultures. As state governments took over taxation rights, the Church's resources also diminished. These changes affected the budget available for brand communication, including art patronage. The reduction in Church art commissions was less a voluntary choice than a result of these changes in power relations and financial capacity. Subsequently, monarchical star brands emerged, beginning to engage art as a medium for image building, power consolidation, and cultural enlightenment. This brought about another transformation in art's role and function.

The Monarchy Claims Art: Branding Authority with Portraiture

Early visual branding of monarchy borrowed significantly from religious visual language. One of the most powerful tools monarchs used for image positioning was portraiture. These portraits did more than simply record the appearance of European rulers - they were crucial instruments in shaping public perception.

Rulers commissioned portraits projecting images of authority, wisdom, and "divine right," often incorporating Christian symbolism to emphasize their "God-given right to rule the state." However, the degree to which a monarch embraced or distanced themselves from religious imagery reveals their intended brand positioning relative to the Church. This is particularly evident in the contrasting approaches of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, father and daughter who ruled England in succession. Their different religious stances manifested clearly in their royal "advertising."

Henry VIII: A Case Study in Visual Branding

Henry VIII's break from Rome was driven by both personal and political motivations - his desire to annul his first marriage and his aim to establish a more modern model of monarchy where state law superseded church law. This transformation made him the archetypal brand of European religious order deviation.

The King employed an advertising agency; Henry VIII's court painter Hans Holbein made a portrait depicting the subject as a commanding ruler without religious symbolism. The King's stance with legs firmly planted, and the lavishly decorated clothing with exaggerated shoulder padding all convey the presence of a monarch. Some scholars, comparing the proportions of Henry VIII's existing armor with the figure in this painting, note that Henry VIII didn't have such long legs. The painter enhanced his height in composing the image, elevating the "monarch" brand considerably. And, considering that Henry VIII was a middle-aged man in poor health due to an injury when the portrait was painted, Holbein's painting could be seen as having done some "post-production editing." Holbein was a "creative director" who well understood his client's communication strategy and objectives. He executed the deliverable with genius-level skill. The portrait captures the zeitgeist of separation from church.

Henry VIII seems to have been a natural celebrity who intuitively understood the power of iconic images and their repetition in brand building. He had other painters copy Holbein's successful formula and spread it throughout his territory. He gave them as gifts to acquaintances, courtiers, and ambassadors from various countries. In today's terms, this would be like brand advertising campaign spreading widely through fashion magazines, brochures, posters, and billboards in major world cities. Thanks to these numerous reproduced advertisements, even though Holbein's original was lost to fire in the late 17th century, this imagery remains as Henry VIII's iconic brand image in public memory. It was personal branding for one individual, but also system branding for "monarchy" as a regime beginning to redefine its relationship with the church.

Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen Brand

While Henry VIII's portraiture marked a decisive break from religious imagery, his daughter Elizabeth I's visual strategy would prove more nuanced. As England's Protestant queen facing Catholic opposition both at home and abroad, Elizabeth needed to project both religious and secular authority. Her portraits masterfully reintegrated Christian symbolism - not to show submission to the Church, but to position herself as both England's supreme ruler and its spiritual mother. This careful balancing act is particularly evident in her coronation portrait, where religious iconography returns, but serves a distinctly different purpose from pre-Reformation royal imagery.

In her coronation portrait, Elizabeth I crafts a masterful synthesis of religious and imperial symbolism. The painting combines traditional Christian motifs with potent symbols of earthly power - the orb, crown, and sword - creating a rich visual language that speaks to both sacred and secular authority. This dual symbolism was particularly powerful when we consider Elizabeth's unique position: as a female monarch in a male-dominated age, and as the head of a church that had broken from Rome under her father.

The portrait's composition deliberately evokes parallels with traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary, positioning Elizabeth as England's spiritual mother just as Mary was the mother of Christ. Yet simultaneously, the imperial regalia and her regal bearing assert her temporal authority. This careful layering of meanings created a multilayered brand narrative that effectively established the "Virgin Queen" as a figure of both spiritual and political authority in the minds of her subjects.

Elizabeth's portraiture thus represents a sophisticated evolution in royal image-making. While her father's portraits emphasized secular power through physical presence, Elizabeth's imagery wove together religious and royal symbolism to create a more complex visual language. This strategic use of religious iconography wasn't a return to pre-Reformation practices, but rather a new synthesis that served her specific political and cultural needs as England's Protestant queen.

In this way, Elizabeth I's coronation portrait demonstrates how visual branding could be used not just to project power, but to reconcile seemingly contradictory positions - being both a woman and a ruler, both a Protestant queen and a sacred figure, both her father's heir and her own unique brand of monarch.

Science is Power: Collections as Instruments of Authority

During this period, examples of positioning the "monarch brand" somewhere between "heaven-sent" power and "earth-ruling" authority can be seen not only in paintings but in various crafts and scientific instruments as well.

By the 18th century, almost all European monarchs amassed vast collections to demonstrate brand power, prominently displaying artisanal objects and scientific instruments in important palace spaces and ensuring their visibility during lavish court banquets. This played a complex strategic role in expressing monarchical identity in a political context.

Monarchs claimed divine right to rule by displaying encyclopedic collections demonstrating their ability to understand and control nature's mysteries. These collections, crafted from the world's most precious materials, grew increasingly elaborate as rulers demanded ever more sophisticated works from their craftsmen. This dynamic environment promoted advancement not only in art but in science as well, as artisans pushed the boundaries of both beauty and technical innovation.

Celestial globe with clockwork, 1579. Austrian. Created by Gerhard Emmoser, a court artisan who served three emperors. The emperor Rudolf II displayed the scientific apparatus in his Kunstkammer. Provenance: Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II of Austria (by 1607/11–1648) ; Christina, Queen of Sweden (from 1651) ; Avocat Fortier, Conseiller du Roi (1770) ; M. Delacronière, Conseiller en la cour des aides de Paris (1781) ; M. Daugny (until 1858; his sale, Hôtel des Commissaires-Priséurs (Charles Pillet), Paris, March 8, 1858, no. 62); Charles Mannheim (in 1898) ; J. Pierpont Morgan , New York and London (until 1913) ; J. P. Morgan Jr. , New York (by descent, 1913–17; to MMA)

Monarchs used scientific and industrial tools to demonstrate and strengthen their legitimacy as rulers. They often commissioned craftsmen to create timepieces or celestial globes using silver and other precious materials.

Why silver? Gold and silver had been the basis of international currency since ancient times. From the 16th to 18th centuries, as gold became scarcer, silver's importance grew, and no precious metal seemed to more directly express monarchical power than silver during this period. Silver from Hungary, Saxony, the Alps, and as far as Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru dominated the European economy. Monarchs employed court engineers and scientists to improve mining techniques and increase yields. Elaborate display items or silver furniture sets were brand communications showing the size of territory and power of wealth.

And why clocks specifically? Because the world and universe were seen as an intricate clock made by God ("God is a master clockmaker"). By commissioning astronomical clocks, monarchs adopted the identity of creators of "micro-universes," using this to build a brand as rulers with divine right. By displaying such crafts made with rare materials sourced from around the world, they emphasized their power as being "practically heaven-sent" and created a brand as "enlightened rulers" well-versed in worldly matters and science.

When looking at these period objects, it's interesting to examine their ownership history (called "provenance" in the art world). The journey of artistic objects through time tells its own story of power transitions. Consider the celestial globe on the right, whose provenance traces from Emperor Rudolf II of Austria to J.P. Morgan, the epitome of American capitalism, before finally entering the Metropolitan Museum of Art - a perfect segue to our next article's exploration of how industrial age patrons became the new arbiters of artistic power.

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This article is part of the ART IN BRANDING series by Seol Park examining the relationship between visual arts and institutional/brand identity throughout history. Our next article will explore how the Industrial Revolution transformed art patronage.