Christian art after 313
With the final legalization of Christianity, the existing styles of Christian art continued to develop, and take on a more monumental and iconic character. Before long very large Christian churches began to be constructed, and the majority of the rich elite adapted Christianity, and public and elite Christian art became grander to suit the new spaces and clients.
Although borrowings of motifs such as the Virgin and Child from pagan religious art had been pointed out as far back as the Protestant Reformation, when John Calvin and his followers gleefully used them as a stick with which to beat all Christian art, the belief of André Grabar, Andreas Alföldi, Ernst Kantorowicz and other early 20th-century art historians that Roman Imperial imagery was a much more significant influence "has become universally accepted". A book by Thomas F. Mathews in 1994 attempted to overturn this thesis, very largely denying influence from Imperial iconography in favour of a range of other secular and religious influence, but was roughly handled by academic reviewers.