By its very nature, religious art aims to forge a sort of link between the human spectator and the sacred. Specific images in works of art can provide a concrete and readable representation of external concepts that would otherwise be too broad and complex to express literally. This allows religious stories, dogmas and rituals to be conveyed in a way that, once identified in the image, gives the viewer the desired connection to religion. Religious art standardizes these images so that they apply across the entire canon of work, and thus a work using similar icons can be understood as having comparable characteristics.