66 Ch. 2 • The Renaissance
Next in number—surprisingly—came the sons of nobles, perhaps reflect
ing the relative decline in noble fortunes during the Renaissance. Then
came the children of merchants and educated professionals such as
notaries, lawyers, and officials. A few painters, like Raphael (1483—1520),
were sons of artists. Only a handful were the sons of peasants.
The contemporary association between craftsmen and painters was
appropriate, because, like the former, artists entered a period of apprentice
ship. Architects and composers lacked such formal training. The painters'
guild of Venice required five years of apprenticeship, followed by two years
of journeyman status, requirements similar to those by which silversmiths,
shoemakers, cabinetmakers, and other craftsmen were trained. Some mas
ters had sizable workshops, where apprentices trained and often lived
together, sometimes working on the same paintings (which is one reason it is
difficult to authenticate some canvases). Because women could neither
become apprentices nor attend universities, there were no prominent female
Renaissance artists until well into the sixteenth century.
Indeed, artists claimed that they deserved more esteem than a craftsman.
Leonardo praised the painter, who sits “at his easel in front of his work,
dressed as he pleases, and moves his light brush with the beautiful colors...
often accompanied by musicians or readers of various beautiful works.” The
artist’s quest for the humanist ideals of beauty and God helps explain the
rise of some artists of the Renaissance period from practitioners of a
“mechanical art,” to the description of Michelangelo offered by a Por
tuguese painter: “In Italy, one does not care for the renown of great princes:
it’s a painter only that they call divine.” Not all painters ascended to such
heights, of course, but in general the status of the artist rose during the Re
naissance. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian (Tiziano Vecellio,
c. 1490—1576) lived as gentlemen, the last knighted by Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. Some artists and writers were crowned with laurels—
thus the designation of “poet laureate”—by their adoring city-states.
Painting and SculptureThe rediscovery of antiquity, nature, and mankind transformed European
painting. Renaissance artists reflected the influence of the neo-Platonists. In
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the neo-Platonists appropri
ated Plato’s belief that eternal ideas—such as beauty, truth, and goodness—
existed beyond the realm of everyday life. Humanists believed that the mind
could transcend human nature and come to understand these eternal ideas.
The artist could reproduce the beauty of the soul through imagination and,
in doing so, reach out to God. To Dante, art was “the grandchild of God.” For
Michelangelo, beauty “lifts to heaven hearts that truly know.”
Artists sought to achieve the representation of beauty in a realistic way
by using the proportions created by God in the universe. It was the