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| Antonio Bellucci St Sebastian ca. 1716-18 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari Susanna and the Elders before 1727 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Giuseppe Bottani Departure of Saints Paula and Eustochium for the Holy Land ca. 1745 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Another stubborn commonplace in the literature is that Rococo is anti-religious. Most would consider "Spiritual Rococo" to be a contradiction in terms, yet while Rococo was the style of the laity, as Fumaroli reminds us, it was not the style of atheism. We must grasp this essential difference if we are to understand why Rococo became a major global religious style. . . . Throughout Catholic Europe religion remained central to intellectual life: as Tim Blanning notes, "the eighteenth century has as good a claim to be dubbed 'the age of religion' as 'the age of reason.' The eighteenth century did not witness a mass exodus from churches until (in France only) the 1789 Revolution. In fact religion – notably popular devotions – underwent a renaissance throughout Catholic Europe, with the rise of the cults of the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart of Mary, a proliferation of new pilgrimages, a renewed enthusiasm for exterior manifestations of faith such as Corpus Christi processions and festivals mounted by confraternities, and a belief in an increasing number of present-day miracles."
"The Spiritual Rococo was not a reactionary movement but a subtle rebellion, all the more successful because it was dressed in the language of the leisured classes and "came playfully on little velvet paws," as Sedlmayr and Bauer famously remarked about the Rococo itself. It embraced the anti-establishment stance of the Lumi̬res Рparticularly through its challenge to the severity of the Church Рyet it opposed the philosophers' stoicism with what Philippe Malgouyres calls "consolations," an epicurean emphasis on tenderness, comfort, sentiment, and the quotidian, which is "the point of the spear of a Christian apologetic against the philosophers." Through its championing of society the Spiritual Rococo also became increasingly a theology of the laity: idiosyncratic, non-institutional, and worldly. In what is perhaps the most classic text on eighteenth-century art, Levey's Rococo to Revolution (1966), Rococo is swept aside to make way for the individualism and natural speculation that would inspire revolution."
– from The Spiritual Rococo by Gauvin Alexander Bailey (Routledge, 2017)
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| Sebastiano Ricci Fall of Rebel Angels ca. 1720 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Giambattista Pittoni Sacrifice of Isaac ca. 1715-20 oil on canvas Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice |
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| Gian Paolo Panini Classical Ruins with Woman Preaching ca. 1735 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Gian Paolo Panini Classical Ruins with St Paul Preaching ca. 1735 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Francesco Solimena St John the Baptist 1730 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Francesco Trevisani Dead Christ supported by Angels ca. 1710 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Pompeo Batoni Crucifixion 1762 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Stigmatization of St Francis ca. 1767-69 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Alessandro Magnasco and Antonio Peruzzini Christ and Angels ca. 1705 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| follower of Alessandro Magnasco Nuns at Work before 1750 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Pietro Longhi The Confession ca. 1755 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |