When artists led the Church out of crisis

How Catholic Art Saved the Faith
By Elizabeth Lev
Sophia Institute Press, 320pp, £15/$19

At the end of last year I visited the Mantegna and Bellini exhibition at the National Gallery in London with agnostic friends. Cultured but not Christian, they admired it all, especially a small painting of a wistful Madonna and Child by Mantegna. It made me think how they were looking at superb examples of Christian art, but from the outside – while I was looking at Mantegna’s tender expression of devotion to the Mother of God, whose “Fiat” at the Annunciation ushered in momentous and life-changing events for the human race.