Visual Culture and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922–1949

Abstract

In the newly independent Irish Free State, a triumphalist Catholicism was embodied visually in mass-produced imagery and revivalist architecture. The Academy of Christian Art was set up in 1929 to regenerate Catholic art and architecture, but it failed to address the challenge of Modernism. A debate between eclectic and modern form was most acute in architecture, where the Hiberno-Romanesque and the neo-Classical were favoured by lay and cleric alike. Stained glass was the one form where Modernism was influential. The culmination of populist Catholicism and its visual representation was the Eucharistic Congress of 1932 with its temporary public altars and massive spectacle: a manifestation of Irish national identity.