Today we think painting as one of "the arts", a unified field of creative activity that also includes music, sculpture, architecture, dance, poetry, drama and other forms of literature. Yet this concept did not exist before the Renaissance. Before that it did not occur to anybody that there was any closer relationship between painting and music than there was between cooking and music or between carpentry and music.
From antiquity right up to the middle of the 15th century painting was regarded as a mere handicraft. Music and poetry, on the other hand, had status. In ancient Greece, education was divided into music and gymnastics, which we may take to represent the mind and the body. In this context, music - being all activity governed by the muses - included literature. It did not include painting. In the Middle Ages, following on from ancient Rome, education was divided into the Trivium, consisting of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, and the Quadrivium, consisting of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. In this context, music was seen as a branch of mathematics, and a necessary part of a complete liberal education. Painting was not considered.
It was during the fifteenth century that the change in the status of painting came about.
For most of the century, Italian artists worked in a studio with several assistants or apprentices. They belonged to a guild that exerted strict control over where and how they worked. Within a town the guild would operate a closed shop and prevent outsiders from working there. The artists would work mainly on commissions, which were often laid down for them in detail, and were paid on the basis of the time and expenses incurred in carrying them out.
But as the century progressed, the wealth of the Italian towns and their princes increased. With the increase of wealth grew the desire for luxury and display. This increased the demand for art, and in consequence, successful artists were able to charge higher and higher fees. Whereas at the start of the fifteenth century painters were classed as handicraftsmen, by the end of the century they had far outstripped the other crafts financially, and in so doing they also rose higher and higher in social position and public esteem.
As a result of their increasing social and financial muscle, the most successful artists were able to throw off the shackles of the guilds and work more or less where they liked. Some of them took permanent employment at the courts and escaped jurisdiction of the guilds altogether. Such artists were the most successful financially.
In northern countries, artists were slower to become recognised, but even there the guilds could not escape the general trend. Fundamentally, the economic circumstances were the same, so they had to follow suit. While he was in Italy, Dürer complained that he would have to go back to a much more lowly existence when he returned to Germany. Yet by the end of his life, he, too, had escaped to become highly honoured as an independent artist even in his homeland.(n1)
There can be little doubt that it was the new research programme that opened up these opportunities for painters, and it is no coincidence that the rise in status of painters occurred so soon after its inception. To become a successful painter you now needed, not just application and practical skill, but also intelligence and an enquiring mind. Painting could now be considered a science, the science of representation, and it could legitimately claim to be a branch of intellectual endeavour like music and literature. Not all painters had the requisite talent to become successful in the new research programme. Good painters became scarce, and it was this factor that enabled those that succeeded to rise so rapidly in wealth and esteem.
By the beginning of the 16th century, the situation of painters had more than just improved. Not only did good painters thrive: unique individuals like Michelangelo and Titian rose to heights that have never been achieved in any other society, before or since. (n2) They were treated as equal to great lords. Titian himself was made a count and awarded many other honours. Michelangelo went even further. Considering himself superior to mere earthly honours, he scorned the friendship of princes and popes, and even dared to oppose them.
From the point of view of this website, it is an interesting sidelight on the situation that, while contemporaries compared Josquin to Michelangelo, nobody bothered to compare Michelangelo to Josquin. Josquin was universally regarded as the greatest musician that had ever lived, yet Michelangelo was so pre-eminent that even Josquin was regarded as subordinate to him (n3). This, as much as anything, shows the new status of painting, as well as demonstrating the development of that new concept, "the arts", in which painting now had one of the foremost places.
In fact, of all artists it was Michelangelo who, to his contemporaries, best exemplified the archetype of genius. His ability was such that by the age of 30 he was already recognised as one of the foremost artists of his day.
He exemplifies two simultaneous conceptions of the artist, both of which appeared for the first time. Firstly, he was the archetypal artist "possessed" by the muse, who regards his first loyalty as being towards his art rather than to his patron or his family. Secondly, he exemplified the artist as sublime hero, who is worshipped as an individual ("the divine Michelangelo"), a "genius" through whom a higher power was made manifest.
Of course, artists before Michelangelo were individuals and many can be easily recognised from their personal styles. Exceptionally, some of them had even consciously affirmed their identity as individuals - for instance, Giotto signed his paintings. But the pride in his work of a brilliant craftsman is very different from the self-conscious awareness of oneself as a divinely inspired genius. We may think of Giotto as a genius, but it would be anachronistic to suppose he saw himself in that way.
The development of the idea of genius depends on the idea of intellectual property. This idea simply did not exist in the Middle Ages. You could not "steal" somebody else's idea for a painting any more than you could "steal" somebody else's design for a piece of footwear. The various designs were all common property, and no one person had more right to them than anybody else. As late as the early fifteenth century, the prominent Florentine goldsmith Ghiberti (now known chiefly for the doors of San Giovanni Batista, Florence) was happy to lend his drawings to other goldsmiths.
With the Renaissance, that changed. Even before Michelangelo, critics had begun to recognise and value the different styles of different artists. Nevertheless, it was with Michelangelo's generation that artists became able to sell their work on the basis of their personal styles; and it was with this same generation that the underlying conception of a painting became the most valuable thing about it. Later this would result in a situation where the sketch for a work could be as valuable as the final product.
In fact, the concept of intellectual property gave rise to two contradictory interpretations. On the one hand, Michelangelo famously insisted on working on a painting from start to finish without using assistants, for the artistic conception was his and his alone, and only the artist's personal work was of value. (This is his own story, as transmitted by his biographer Condivi, and is contradicted by the known facts. Nevertheless, the very fact that he made the claim demonstrates the importance given to the personal touch of the artist.) On the other hand, since it was the original conception that was valuable, there was no reason why assistants should not carry out the actual realisation of the work. This interpretation was the basis of much of Raphael's work, and enabled later painters such as Rubens to create what was virtually a production line, in which the artist would create the original conception and others would carry it out, leaving the master to add the final touches.
It is tempting to connect the conception of intellectual property with the beginning of capitalism, for it is in the fifteenth century that European banking really started to develop, particularly in Italy. However, this is not really appropriate. An artistic creation is not like later forms of intellectual property, such as inventions or engineering drawings, from which other products can be made for sale. It is not an item of capital that is valuable in producing something else. Its value lies in itself and its relation to its function.
It is rather with the rise of humanism that we should connect the development of artistic intellectual property. What we have here is again the focus on the individual perception, which we have already seen in other contexts and from which the artistic and musical research programmes themselves arose. It is because of the value placed on the individual perception and the individual creation that an artistic conception acquires its value as intellectual property.
Note 1: France was an exception to this general rule. In French culture, painting has always lagged behind literature in prestige. (return)
Note 2: It could be claimed that Rubens, a century later, achieved an equivalent status. However, Rubens' success rested in part on his ability as a diplomat, as well as on that fact that he organised his artistic output as a production line with most of the work being done by other people. He also had the benefit of being born into a family that already had a high social status. The success of Michelangelo and Titian was due solely to their own artistic efforts. (return)
Note 3: Later in the sixteenth century, however, the composer Lassus was raised to the nobility by Emperor Maximilian II. (return)
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