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Article: The Conception and Status of the Artist
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
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THE CONCEPTION AND STATUS OF THE ARTIST
In the Middle Ages all learnable skills
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including what we today call "art"
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were classified either as liberal (intellectual) or mechanical (manual). The seven liberal arts were divided into the trivium (three approaches) and the quadrivium (four approaches). The trivium comprised grammar, the study of language; rhetoric, the art of persuasion; and dialectics, the pursuit of philosophy, while the quadrivium included the mathematical disciplines
of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The much less prestigious seven mechanical arts (today known as vocational pursuits) consisted of weaving, making armor, navigation, ...