The 16th-century Protestant Reformation drastically reshaped European art, leading to a widespread rejection and destruction of traditional Catholic imagery across Northern Europe. While Martin Luther's followers, the Lutherans, permitted a limited range of religious art in churches—including new altarpieces and crucifixes until around 1555—other Reformed branches, notably the Calvinists, staunchly opposed religious images as idolatry, sparking iconoclastic movements from as early as 1521. This resulted in a significant reduction in religious art production in Protestant regions, pushing artists to diversify into secular genres such as portraiture, landscape, and still life. Meanwhile, the Catholic Counter-Reformation responded by developing its own distinct and often more stringent artistic style, directly countering Protestant criticisms of religious art. This period thus marked a dramatic North-South artistic divide in Europe, fundamentally altering the course of Western art.