This article consists of three parts. The first two parts have been devoted to two breakthroughs, in other words, to changes the paradigm of thinking about art, which constitutes the framework for transformations determining contemporary reality of art. The first one is the moment when “the era of art” started after “the era of the image” lasting until the modern times. Renaissance humanism led to the transformation of images being objects of religious worship into works of art. In the second part some of the problems of mutual relations between art and religion in more recent times, called by Arthur Danto the era “after the end of art”, have been indicated. The“strange” situation in which the art arising from religious inspiration is now might be considered the culmination of eighteenthcentury crisis Grand Theory of Art and at the same time the result of the process of secularization understood as the gradual disappearance of religious beliefs and practices in the modern world – sincere religious art has no place in the art world. At the end of the paper some of the theses which are in opposition to the trend of exclusion of religion from the public space, and thus from the world of art, have been discussed.