Looking at religious art and thinking religion destroyed/hampered art is a hot take honestly.

If anything the opposite argument would be that without relgion art has devolved has more merit than this.

As I understand it, being an artist was a trade. If there were no customers asking for pagan art, there would have been no pagan art.

Customers were not allowed to ask for pagan art, on penalty of death for large portions of the time we are talking about.

Owning art that was too lifelike was also a death sentence.

Anything that detracted from the grandour of the church was evidence of satanism. So, if you got a painting that looks better then what's on display in church, you were gonna get executed eventually.

Yes, hence there being a lot of obviously pagan art at the Vatican.