"Visual artists should dwell like kings and gods: how else are they to build and decorate for kings and gods?" (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years II, 8). - What applies to Goethe himself in a figurative sense, shall be discussed here in respect to the visual artist in Early Modern Europe up to 1800: Exceptional artists - such as Goethe - but also Mantegna, Dürer, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt or the Asam Brothers, have, now and then, lived in stately homes and almost princely dwellings. But does this observation apply to the European artist of the pre-modern era in general? This volume takes a fresh look at the artist's home from varying perspectives. From the perspective of social topography, the first question to be raised is: What factors were the most influential in respect to the choice of the location: The residential era, or neighborhood, the proximity to possible clients, or to prestigious places for sales such as centrally located squares, prominent streets, or significant churches? From the perspective of art history and cultural studies, the architecture and its furnishings, the iconography and iconology of sculptural and pictorial programs of artists' houses will be discussed.
About the Author: Danica Brenner-Orthmann is an associate of the artifex project at the Social History of the Artist Research Center (TAK/SHARC) at Trier University. She received her M.A. in 2010 and is completing her PhD on the social history of Renais-sance painters from Augsburg (University of Trier). She received several travel and conference scholarships. In 2013 was granted a six-month research stay at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and in 2014 a ten-month fellowship at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz. Her research interests concentrate on the social history of artists north of the Alps from the 15th up to the early 17th centuries with a focus on painters organized in guilds. Her upcoming publications include a conference volume on artists' houses (edited with Andreas Tacke and Thomas Schauerte) and individual articles on painters' guilds and the training of painterapprentices. Andreas Tacke holds a Chair in Art History at the University of Trier (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany). - After study of architecture at the Münster Technical College with a degree in architecture (Dipl.-Ing.) and at the Berlin Technical University with a doctorate in architecture (Dr.-Ing.), architectural work temporarily in the US; study of art history, sociology and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Münster and Berlin, including long stays in Italy, primarily in Rome; Master of Art at the Berlin Free University, Ph.D. at the Berlin Technical University. Followed by work financed by the Paul Getty Foundation (US) at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg editing and publishing the inventory catalogue of the baroque painting collection. Afterwards, Assistant Professor at the University of Augsburg and postdoctoral dissertation (Habilitation) on art history (2000) at the Berlin Technical University. Visiting and Ad-junct Professor at the universities of Kassel, Jena, Kiel, Marburg, Heidelberg, Graz and Trier. Offer of a chair 2004 for art history at the University of Trier, acceptance 2005; exhibition curator in Germany and abroad. November 2010, award of the highest European Academic Prize ("ERC Advanced Grant") by the European Research Council of the European Union in the field of "Social Sciences and Humanities". His research has focused on the European and non-European implications of German art and cultural history and the intersection of art and science. - Andreas Tacke is married and father of two children.