MINIATURIST, Italian
(active c. 1402)

Female artist

1402
Manuscript
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

In the Middle Ages no distinction was made between artists and craftsmen. Painters, sculptors, stained glass artists, jewellers, metal-workers and goldsmiths were all men, only occasionally women, with particular skills who executed work commissioned from them, usually specified in considerable detail.

The picture from an Italian manuscript shows a female artist who paints the Virgin and Child while a male assistant mixes her paints.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.