This book explores changing attitudes towards the status of the artist, primarily through the study of Northern European and Italian art and of writings on the role of the artist from the sixteenth century. It explores and questions the standard art-historical concept that the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the emergence of the modern idea of the artist.
The first part of the book is concered with artists in Renaissance Italy as the parardigm of the changing status of the artist. The case studies in this part examine the various claims for status that were made by and on behalf of Italian artists during this period.
The second part examines the status of the artist in Germany and the Netherlands during the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It ranges from a detailed analysis a single celebrated work of art, Dürer's Melencolia , to a discussion of large-scale commerical production of religious sculpture. The broad aim of this part is to establish how much (or how little) Italian norms came to apply in the very different context of Northern Europe.
The final part considers the factors that can determine the status and reputation of artists both during their lifetime and after their death with two case studies about Northern European artists working in slightly later periods, Vermeer and Watteau.
Find out more about Art and its Histories (A216)
