Correction: GOD gave the world Leonardo and Michaelangelo. They'd still be known as great painters no matter what they painted. The RCC isn't responsible for their talent and is not the only venue available for the expression of their talent.
Not talent, Mom, GENUIS.
I’m not sure what the great painters of the Renaissance would have done without the Church and the great Catholic patrons (my favorite, the somewhat comical Il Moro) who supplied them with money, housing and vast canvases to create the greatest of Western art or - as Jean Brodie might say - MY favorite.
The drive to artistic perfection was driven by the Thomistic belief that to pursue beauty was to pursue God because God Himself is infinitely beautiful. The degree to which any society is Catholic is manifest in the relative beauty of it's art. That is nowhere more apparent than in the drab gray and brown environments of Protestant iconoclasm and the stark facilities where they gather, not to celebrate and worship, but to lecture.