Chapter 42 - Artist Life

Summary

The medieval artist worked under conditions essentially different from the modern. The modern is individualistic, and sometimes achieves a reputation by pushing caprice to its utmost limits. Medieval art, on the contrary, was strictly collectivist. The men who worked at the great cathedrals were under a discipline comparable to that of an army; indeed they were often actual conscripts. Quite apart from what might be done in the so-called Dark Ages, when the whole neighbourhood was at the mercy of each predatory lord, the kings of the later Middle Ages claimed and exercised the right of impressing masons, carpenters, and other artisans for whatever great work they had in hand. A warlike countess in eleventh-century Normandy brought in a celebrated mason to build her a stronger castle than he had built for any of her rivals, and then killed him to make sure of not being outdone in her turn. Chaucer, again, when Clerk of the King's Works, had to impress masons, just as other officers were impressing soldiers, to serve the king; and even the Chapels of Eton and King's College, Cambridge, were partly built by forced labour. In other ways also these great building schemes were carried on under an approximation to military conditions. The learner passed through an exacting mill in later, if not in earlier, times.