Artifex

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Artifex ( Latin for 'who understands something professionally') was the name given tothe craftsman of the visual artsin the Middle Ages and the Renaissance . Giorgio Vasari dedicated his collection of biographies to the artefici del disegno , the well-known Florentine masters of his day. The word artista ('artist') did not exist in the Renaissance.

The artifex had some with the means available funds in the general pursuit of the beautiful and useful. The position of the artifices was modest and not associated with any special dignity. At first they were nothing more than producers of everyday objects and grouped together in guilds with fixed statutes. The isolated artist who works for himself in the loneliness of his studio - this figure did not exist.

The artifex did not have to go to school, but it did have to complete a studio ('study') as an apprentice and gradually earn his master's degree. You learned from an established master. Hence the myriad of formulas that clarify this principle: " fu discepolo di Pierro (della Francesca) piero da Castel del Pieve " ("was a student of ..."). All the artifices began in this way, Giotto di Bondone with Cimabue , Benozzo Gozzoli with Fra Angelico , Leonardo da Vinci with Andrea del Verrocchio , Agnolo Bronzino with Jacopo da Pontormo . There were numerous workshops ( botteghe ). Benedetto Dei counted forty botteghe di maestri di prospettiva ('workshops of the masters of perspective') in Florence alone .

In several sub-projects, the Trier Laboratory for Artistic Social History has examined individual aspects of the artifex from an art and cultural studies perspective and has published numerous project results in book form.

See also: artes mechanicae

literature

  • Eugenio Garin (ed.): The man of the Renaissance. Magnus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1990, ISBN 978-3-88400-803-4 .
  • Anton Legner: The artifex. Artist in the Middle Ages. Greven Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7743-0420-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c André Chastel : The artist. In: The man of the Renaissance. Magnus Verlag, 1990, pp. 251-253.