Chapter 2: Introduction

At the end of the Medieval Period, the dawn of Modern Times, we witness a rise of what has traditionally been called normal people: people that were neither nobility not clergy, but came to power on their own accord.

As a result of the big plague pandemic, more work needed to be done by less men, resulting in great developments in technology which in turn yielded greater agricultural harvests. This led to a whole new class of people with a lot of money and, by extension, more power.

Given the society and tradition that these people lived in, they had some trouble legitimizing their new found role. To do so, they resorted to the methods and techniques that the powers-that-be had always employed – and by doing so eventually created a whole new category of things: artworks.

First, watch the BBC documentary The Medici: the makers of modern art. After that, watch a small documentary about the de-deification of the arts, that we created. Finally, go to the exercises.