The remarkably short-lived period known as the German Renaissance, a synthesis of the realistic and expressive German with the more idealized, humanistic Italian tradition, ends in 1530, when the Reformation effects an almost complete halt in the production of religious imagery.

Painters in Protestant regions thereby lose the patronage of the church, formerly their best source of income.

Many artists can now support themselves only through book illustration and portrait painting, and this work is, for several of them, insufficient.