Renaissance Artists in the Service of the People

Abstract

That Artists played an active part in the civic affairs and the political crises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries comes as a startling revelation to many of us, so occupied with the pressing needs of peoples and governments today. Because none of the thousands of public pictures has come down to us, we have paid little attention to the written accounts and the few sketches and engravings made at the time. We have studied the close relationship of artists to the churches and to the courts of dukes and princes; but we have ignored the many services performed by artists for city councils, craft guilds, and merchants' organizations. Especially in France, Flanders, and England, many artists found more employment in preparing propaganda pictures for the government or the large civic clubs than they did in painting for the church or the aristocracy. Instead of adorning the walls of church or palace, they arranged large tableaux on the public streets for the entire populace. Instead of painting oil portra...