The limits of artistic freedom

criticism of art in Italy 1500-1800

The focus of this studie is the dilemma of artistic freedom versus the rules of art. It is a dilemma that mainly arose then artist sought new ways of giving expression to their imaginative power and of impressing the viewer with their creative ability, once they had acquired a reputation sufficient for them to lay claim to the freedom that was needed to realise those ambitions. This development occured during the Renaissance, when artists like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian endowed the artistic calling with a status that would peviously have been considered impossible. But it was precisely these new claims to artistic freedom dat highlighted the need to define its limits. Criteria were formulated in the literature on art to which good art had to conform, according to the authors, some of them very violent. It is these reactions which testify to the field of tension between theory and practce, between what the writers about art expected and what the artists did, which are examined in detail in this book.