Flowers Impressionist, Palette Knife, Oil on Canvas Art painting
The idea of an object being a `work of art` emerges, together with the concept of the Artist, in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy.
During the Renaissance, the word Art emerges as a collective term encompassing Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, a grouping given currency by the Italian artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari
in the 16th century. Subsequently, this grouping was expanded to include Music and Poetry which became known in the 18th century as the `Fine Arts`. These five Arts have formed an irreducible nucleus
from which have been generally excluded the `decorative arts` and `crafts`, such as as pottery, weaving, metalworking, and furniture making, all of which have utility as an end.But how did Art become distinguished from the decorative arts and crafts? How and why is an artist different from a craftsperson?
In the Ancient World and Middle Ages the word we would translate as `art` today was applied to any activity governed by rules. Painting and sculpture were included among a number of human activities,
such as shoemaking and weaving, which today we would call crafts.
art-1500
