<P> Most fifteenth - century pictures from this period were religious pictures . This is self - evident, in one sense, but "religious pictures" refers to more than just a certain range of subject matter; it means that the pictures existed to meet institutional ends . The Church commissioned artwork for three main reasons: The first was indoctrination, clear images were able to relay meaning to an uneducated person . The second was ease of recall, depictions of saints and other religious figures allow for a point of mental contact . The third is to incite awe in the heart of the viewer, John of Genoa believed that this was easier to do with image than with words . Considering these three tenants, it can be assumed that gold was used to inspire awe in the mind and heart of the beholder, where later during the Protestant Reformation the ability to render gold through the use of plain pigments displayed an artist's skill in a way that the application of gold leaf to a panel does not </P> <P> The Protestant Reformation was a holocaust of art in many parts of Europe . Although Lutheranism was prepared to live with much existing Catholic art so long as it did not become a focus of devotion, the more radical views of Calvin, Zwingli and others saw public religious images of any sort as idolatry, and art was systematically destroyed in areas where their followers held sway . This destructive process continued until the mid-17th century, as religious wars brought periods of iconoclast Protestant control over much of the continent . In England and Scotland destruction of religious art, most intense during the English Commonwealth, was especially heavy . Some stone sculpture, illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows (expensive to replace) survived, but of the thousands of high quality works of painted and wood - carved art produced in medieval Britain, virtually none remain . </P> <P> In Rome, the sack of 1527 by the Catholic Emperor Charles V and his largely Protestant mercenary troops was enormously destructive both of art and artists, many of whose biographical records end abruptly . Other artists managed to escape to different parts of Italy, often finding difficulty in picking up the thread of their careers . Italian artists, with the odd exception like Girolamo da Treviso, seem to have had little attraction to Protestantism . In Germany, however, the leading figures such as Albrecht Dürer and his pupils, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Danube school, and Hans Holbein the Younger all followed the Reformers . The development of German religious painting had come to an abrupt halt by about 1540, although many prints and book illustrations, especially of Old Testament subjects, continued to be produced . </P> <P> Italian painting after 1520, with the notable exception of the art of Venice, developed into Mannerism, a highly sophisticated style, striving for effect, that concerned many churchman as lacking appeal for the mass of the population . Church pressure to restrain religious imagery affected art from the 1530s and resulted in the decrees of the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 including short and rather inexplicit passages concerning religious images, which were to have great impact on the development of Catholic art . Previous Catholic Church councils had rarely felt the need to pronounce on these matters, unlike Orthodox ones which have often ruled on specific types of images . </P>

The roman catholic church encouraged religious images and icons