Summary:
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The status of the visual arts among the other liberal arts has a long, complex and varied history. It began with a seemingly simple class distinction, as painters (unlike poets) of Antiquity and through the early Renaissance, were manual craftsmen, belittled in their ‘mechanical craft,’ divided by an intellectual and class gap. Beginning in early Renaissance, theorists as well as practitioners of the visual arts improved the socio-economic status of artists; painters began to be regarded as intellectuals. In modern times, beginning with Romanticism and followed by a plethora of other movements, the status of the artist continued to be debated; ultimately culminating in a new synthesis of science, poetry, art, and philosophy.</p>
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