I'm taking an art history course this semester and we have started with right before the Renaissance. The Prof was talking about how the artwork in the early Renaissance (or a little before) used a Hieratic Scale, and predominately featured was the Virgin Mary. The Prof went on to say that Mary would be prayed to because she was seen as merciful and loving, and obviously a mother figure and Jesus was more like the Judge at the end of life at the gates of Heaven.
I am not a Christian now, but I used to be and the main focus was praying to Jesus, So when did that focus of worship shift over to Jesus instead of the Virgin Mary? Thanks for your time!
You presume a premise which is not in fact in evidence. Christian worship was and is always devoted at Christ particularly and the Trinity more generally.
From the very early days of Christianity, at least as early as Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, queens play a very important spiritual role. Specifically, it is the property of a queen to show mercy. Justice lies with the king. Releasing prisoners, pardoning the guilty - these are a queen's prerogative. This is a trope often seen in the hagiography of female saints in the early middle ages, for many of their miracles revolved around mercy.
Mary is the queen par excellence, and people were devoted to her as an intercessor with Christ, who took the role of the King. Marian miracles very often involve her interceding for people who in no way merit that intercession - thieves, robbers, and the like.
While these threads of devotion have, as I said, existed in Christianity from the very beginning, Marian devotion came to particular prominence in the high middle ages. The Cistercians, a powerful reforming monastic order which got going in the 1090s, were particularly devoted to Mary, and this both spurred and was incorporated into later medieval forms of piety, which took on a distinctly 'feminine' tone. Thus, all the depictions for art historians to drool over.
Catholic devotion to Mary is still quite strong today, but in Protestant sects she's been sidelined along with all the other saints, because Protestants generally do not believe in their intercessory power.