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Much art touches faith without being made for worship. From the 1450s, engravers such as Master E.S. produced small religious prints that people pinned up at home or tucked into books, and Francisco de Zurbarán's Agnus Dei (c. 1635–40) presents a bound lamb that reads both as still life and as a sign of Christ's sacrifice. Rembrandt van Rijn returned repeatedly to biblical stories in etchings that treat patriarchs and apostles as ordinary, troubled people.

Modern artists have used religious imagery to speak about their own times. Paul Gauguin's Vision after the Sermon (1888) shows Breton women imagining Jacob wrestling the angel, and Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion (1938) wraps Christ in a Jewish prayer shawl amid scenes of pogroms. Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross (1958–66) reduce the Passion to black and white bands on raw canvas. Such works may question, adapt or honour belief, sometimes all at once.