Power & Wealth in European and Colonial Christian Art Timeline

This is inherently overly generalized but it will give you a rough sense of the issues.

100-300 CE

Power was held by those who were willing to assert their Christian beliefs in the face of persecution and in bishops, especially those who were powerful preachers or writers. Wealthy Christians were able to afford the sarcophagi and signets. Most Christians could afford lamps with Christian imagery. 

300-around the 1300s CE

Power was held by the Church and either the State or the local Lord, often in an uneasy tension. Church leaders were Popes, Patriarchs, and Bishops who occasionally maintained their own armies. Kings and Lords over particular areas needed the Church to keep the people obedient. Donating wealth was the way the King or Lord could honor God and do penance for his sins. Thus the Popes, Patriarchs, and Bishops also became wealthy. And if Bishops were not married, their wealth stayed in the Church rather than being passed down to their heirs. Artworks mostly depicted religious themes and aristocrats paying homage to God.

1300s-1500s CE

The rise of the merchant class in Europe shifted power and wealth away from the aristocracy with land, which was collapsing anyway because peasants to work the land were in shorter supply after the Black Death. The aristocracy was warring with each other. The Church/State alliances were thus less powerful and corruption was infecting the Church. The merchants were as willing to contribute to the Church as a way to honor God and as penance as the aristocrats were but they offered more wealth than power. They didn’t like the Church’s hold of so much power and many were thus willing to side with Protestant Reformers in the 1500s. 

1500s -1700s CE

The Protestant Reformation dramatically cut into the power of the Roman Catholic Church, which thereby became beholden to Kings & Lords to fight for it in the wars with Protestants. Kings and other aristocrats, tired of Church officials setting the rules, felt the power shift toward them and away from religious authorities in general. The Enlightenment further shifted power in that it sparked a rise in the power of human reason over the power of God, exercised by the Church. With less power, the Church also had less wealth. The merchant class was happy to have some religious art but it wanted art depicting other themes as well (and was willing to pay for it!) so artists broaden their scope beyond the religious. 

1600s-early 1900s CE

The churches and many of the Aristocrats looked to the colonies for wealth and power in the form of number of converts. Spanish and French missionaries wanted to win souls for the Roman Catholic Church partly as a blow to the Protestants. Gold and other riches coming in from the colonies were sustaining but both the aristocracies and the Church (Roman Catholic and Protestant) were declining in power. The American and French revolutions marked the beginning of a wave of democracy based on reason and shared power. The Catholic Church shifted funds away from art production and into the creation of new churches and schools in the New World. The art market in Europe is now removed from tight Church control, not so much so in the European colonies. 

1900 CE-present

The rise of consumerism, materialism, secularism, and moral relativism has resulted in all religious institutions being less powerful. Few religious organizations have the wealth needed to fund massive-scaled art or building projects anymore. Art is not only removed from religion but often openly challenges it.