The Changing Status of the Artist

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Senior Lecturer in Art History Emma Barker, Emma Barker, Nick Webb, Kim Woods
Yale University Press, Jan 1, 1999 - Art - 260 pages
This book focuses attention on the theme of the artist and especially the changing status of the artist in the early modern period. In a series of case studies--some devoted to a single artist and others dealing more broadly with artistic practice--the authors explore and question the widely held notion that the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the emergence of the modern idea of the artist.

After an introductory discussion of some of the fundamental assumptions in modern Western culture about the artist as genius, the book investigates artists in Renaissance Italy, the various claims for status that they made, and the claims made on their behalf. The book then expands traditional art history's focus on Italy and examines artists and art production in Germany and the Netherlands during the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In two concluding case studies of Northern European artists of slightly later periods--Vermeer and Watteau--the authors consider factors that influence the status and reputation of artists during their lifetimes and after their death.

This is the second of six volumes in the series Art and Its Histories, created to accompany the Open University undergraduate course of the same title.

 

Contents

Preface
6
BIOGRAPHY AND THE IMAGE OF THE ARTIST
27
NORTHERN EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
103
CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS
187
changing evaluations of Watteau and his
220
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About the author (1999)

Emma Barker is a lecturer in art history, Nick Webb is staff tutor in art history, and Kim Woods is associate lecturer in arts at the Open University.

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