It follows logically that the education it instituted and which
was founded on the study of Greek and Latin drew a clear line of
demarcation between the children thus brought up, who were destined to
hold the highest social positions, and the others doomed to inferior
tasks and studies. It will therefore be understood that the Renaissance
influenced the condition of the workers. It swelled the tide which was
carrying society towards class division; it helped to separate still
further the tradesman and the manual worker; and above all it separated
the artist and the craftsman, those twin brothers, who till then had
shared the same life and the same ideals. The artist was no longer the
interpreter of the thought of a whole people, but, working for the
rich and powerful bankers or princes, who required him to reproduce
archaic forms and consequently demanded of him a certain amount of
education, he left the ranks of the people, rose to wealth, to the
ranks of the upper middle classes, and figured at court; he and his
fellows grouped themselves into special brotherhoods such as that of
St. Luke at Rome, and before long formed academies inaccessible to the
vulgar. Compare the life of Raphael with that of Giotto. In these days,
the craftsman remained a working man, lost in the crowd, watching from
afar and from his lowly station his successful comrade, who no longer
recognized the poor relation he had left behind.
Separations of this kind abound in almost every direction. In the
Middle Ages grocers and apothecaries, barbers and surgeons, were
classed together. But in the sixteenth century the apothecary, on his
admission to mastership, had to reply in Latin, and henceforth he no
longer considered the spice merchant his equal. So in France, from the
year 1514, the bond between the two professions was broken.
The historian can easily prove that this separation of art and craft
was often harmful to both; that art, isolated from the warm heart of
the people, became conventional, cold, stiff, and artificial; that
craft, relegated to a lower position, no longer sought for beauty, and
was condemned to express itself in inferior, routine work; but, taking
the guilds alone, this separation certainly weakened the mediaeval
system. Deprived of members whose gifts were their glory, they lost in
power as in prestige.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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