Some of the greatest works of art of the past 1,000 years have been inspired by Christianity: music, churches and especially paintings. Subjects have been plundered from the New Testament, especially the Gospels. Artists found all human life there, with the added mystery or questioned truth of the Christian message.

My forthcoming series, Faith in the Frame, will focus on just ten of these paintings (a selection of which are described below), one per programme. There will be three guests on each programme and although, as the title indicates, it is faith that is in the frame, it is the painting that illustrates the faith as much as the faith provoked by the painting.

It has always been true in art that limitations can bring great freedoms. So we find here. Superficially hinged to Christian stories, these faithful pictures are often used by the artists to smuggle through political messages, hedonistic messages, even in one of our choices arguably an antiChristian message.

Casting is all, and we were fortunate. We chose a small number of guests, most of whom appeared on two or three of the programmes. These included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Harries, former bishop at Oxford, who has written about art and religion, and Anthony Sutch, a Franscican monk and broadcaster. There are art critics including Jonathan Jones, Andrew Graham-Dixon and Jackie Wullschlager.

The idea was that by asking them to appear two or three times they might give out a sense of a community of varied views that would be reflected in the audience. Conversations centre on faith, but they are – as you’d expect – also concerned with context, biography and form.

A footnote, or rather a table note. We thought it a good idea to have the paintings reproduced as a table mat set before each of the guests as an aide-mémoire. Some of them, now and then, were transfixed by it. So, when you see them lowering their eyes it is in search of a telling detail. Although, uncannily, it looks as though their heads are bowed in prayer.

THE RESURRECTION, COOKHAM
Stanley Spencer

That Anglican hymn to joy in Cookham Church. This is a massive and uncomplicated expression of religious and physical love. Spencer painted it at about the time of his marriage to Hilda Carline, and Carline and Spencer appear more than once in this work – everyone is resurrected. No one is sent to Hell. All are on their way to the Thames to go in pleasure boats to Heaven.

THE WHITE CRUCIFIXION
Marc Chagall

Chagall painted this in 1938. It is full of his characteristic images, buildings from his home town in Russia and figures fleeing the pogroms. Christ is emphatically Jewish – his nakedness is protected by a Jewish prayer shawl – but the beam of light from Heaven makes him emphatically Christ. Yet around him are scenes of persecution that many Jews believe stem from Christianity itself. And for Chagall, a Jew, to portray the figure of Christ was against his religion.

THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS
Pieter Breughel

What is extraordinary about this painting is that at first glance it could be a Christmas card. It is only by studying it more closely that you see what is happening. Children are being killed. The armoured horsemen in the distance wait while the foot soldiers go about their violent business. This is taken from the story of Herod, who feared that a newborn child might be a King of the Jews and took the extreme measure of murdering all baby boys.

THE WENHASTON DOOM
Anon

This painting was found in St Peters Church in Wenhaston, Suffolk. Its discovery could be called a miracle. It was painted in the 15th century – less than a 100 years later King Edward VI, the Protestant vandal son of the converted Protestant King Henry VIII, ordered that everything that his father had not destroyed he would destroy.

This primitive doom painting was whitewashed over, perhaps an attempt by the villagers to save it. When the church was refurbished in the 19th century the oak planks were left in the churchyard to be removed, but overnight heavy rain washed away the whitewash and this magnificent example of primitive painting was revealed once again.

THE CRUCIFIXION IN THE ISENHEIM ALTARPIECE
Matthias Grünewald

This for me is a harrowing religious masterpiece. For centuries it was scarcely seen. It is part of an altarpiece painted for the order of St Anthony, who tended those poor souls afflicted with leprosy and with allied excruciating and disfiguring diseases. The idea seems to have been that the patients would see that Christ looked like them, and suffered like them, so that would give them hope.

AND THE OTHER FIVE PAINTINGS

The Arezzo Frescoes by Piero della Francesca
One of the most ambitious and magnificent of all religious paintings.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch
The hippy’s most cherished poster in the 1960s and 1970s has also been considered since its execution in the 16th century to be one of the most influential religious paintings of all time. But how ‘religious’ is it? And what do those earthly delights add up to?

The Upper Room by Chris Ofili
This work alludes to The Last Supper, but why are all the figures on the 13 paintings cast as monkeys?

Lux Eterna by Ana Maria Pacheco
Another modern work, by the Brazilian artist who has made a triptych of the Temptations of St Anthony.

The Mystic Nativity by Botticelli
A strange painting from that sublime Rennasicane master Botticelli, a painting heavily influenced by a religious zealot who was burned at the stake in Florence. MB

Faith in the Frame begins on ITV1 on Sunday, Aug 31 2008

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