Why It Took Vermeer 191 Years To Get Famous

A lot of this comes down to how the art market functioned in the workshop and guild system. In the early modern period (by this I mean roughly the 15th-17th centuries, from the Renaissance through the Baroque) there were certain market conditions that impacted who would become well known as an artist. Before artists could “go viral” like today, there were a few ways to get famous as an artist: You could run a big workshop and produce a large volume of work Artists in the early modern period were usually trained in the workshops of master artists. These workshops were administered by the city’s guild system: for instance, Florentine painting workshops were administered by the Arte dei Medici e Speziali (guild of Physicians and Pharmacists.) An artist trained in the workshop could then become ‘licensed’ by the guild to become a master artist and open his own workshop. <a href="https://medium.com/@marginaliant/why-it-took-vermeer-191-years-to-get-famous-a52bf4fc4ad6">Click Here</a>