The limits of artistic freedom

The focus of this study is the dilemma of artistic freedom versus the rules of art. It is a dilemma that arose particularly when artists sought new ways of giving expression to their imaginative power and of impressing the viewer with their creative ability, once the had acquired a reputation sufficient for them to lay claim to the freedom that was needed to realise those ambitions. This development occurred during the Renaissance, when such artists like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian endowed the artistic calling with a status that would previously have been considered impossible. But it was precisely these new claims to artistic freedom that highlighted the need to define its limits. Criteria were formulated in the literature on art to which good art had to conform, according to the authors, and it was made implicitly or explicitly clear where the limits of artistic freedom lay. When artists went ´too far´ they provoked reactions from these authors, some of them very violent. It is these reactions which testify to the field of tension between theory and practice, between what the writer about art expected and what the artists did, which are examined in detail in this book.