Edition of the Guild Regulations for Painters up to 1800: Sources on the Social History of the Artist from the Archives of Germany, Austria and Switzerland

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Tacke
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 138178893

This historical critical edition project initiated within the subject of art history is relevant to basic research in the humanities. Such a project aims to publish for the first time the German-language guild and craftsmens regulations for visual artists (painters).Artists in the Holy Roman Empire were, with few exceptions (such as the court artist), craftsmen bound to a guild. That means that the guild attempted to regulate everything pertaining to the artists life: from entry into an apprenticeship to the journeyman period lasting several years, followed by the masters examination, marriage, founding and operating his own studio, the purchase of materials and, finally, the sale of the art work itself.This system of regulations was kept in crafts codes and is to be edited for the first time in this project from the archives of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The edition, organised according to cities, will illustrate the formal side of an artists training in the Holy Roman Empire for a large portion of the German-speaking area in Europe.This edition project of the German Research Foundation, structured in two three-year project phases, with the second phase now being applied for, is oriented ahistorically in its study area. For organisational reasons, no other procedure could be justified for the altogether six-year total duration because, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland alone, altogether 1,796 archives have been written to.The GRF edition project, now in the second and last project phase can, however, be combined with the applicants ERC project artifex, which will, among other projects, edit other supplemental source material. Following the end of both projects, all German-language training regulations for painters from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era will be available in edited form. Thus, for the first time, a collection of sources regulating the training of painters in guilds of the German-speaking area will be accessible for the Holy Roman Empire.With few exceptions, there has been no research in the post-war decades of the second half of the 20th century into the history of the artist as a history of craftsmanship in art history. In contrast to historiography, not only has a research gap in art history been left open, but it was accepted that the titles on >German craftsmanship< from the Nazi era still have to serve as >reference work<. The social history of the artist as a part of the fine arts must catch up to modern guild research, which is characterised by historiography. As a part of historical research, the submitted edition project relates to those studies of the 19th century which had already attempted such an history of artists craftsmanship.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants