Skill and Knowledge Before Industrial Revolution, Munck

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Corpses, Live Models, and Nature

Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial
Revolution (Case: Antwerp)
BERT DE MUNCK
Recent research on science and art suggests that artists and artisans contributed considerably to what has been called the scientific revolution and
the shift from natural philosophy to natural science. While researchers have
traditionally written intellectual, top-down histories of theoretical inventions or discoveries trickling down to economic actors, recent research
suggests that handicraft and artistic milieus were indispensable for the
transformations associated with the scientific revolution. Scholars are
therefore increasingly investigating the bottom-up processes that have informed these transformations.1 Artisans hands-on knowledge of natural
materials and their expertise in manipulating them helped lay the foundation of modern science, which was, after all, based on observation and
Bert De Munck is senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of Antwerp
and researcher at the Centre for Urban History there. This article was written in the context of IAP-project 6/32, City and Society in the Low Countries, 12001800: Space,
Knowledge, Social Capital. The author thanks Hilde De Ridder-Symoens, Anne-Laure
Van Bruaene, and the participants of the session titled The Location of Value in Early
Modern Economic Practices (Late Middle AgesNineteenth Century) at the Fifteenth
World Economic History Conference in Utrecht, 37 August 2009, for their comments
on an earlier version of this article.
2010 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/10/5102-0003/33256
1. Recent views may be found in Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, Commerce
and the Representation of Nature in Art and Science, in Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen
(New York, 2002), 125; Liliane Hilaire-Prez and Anne-Franoise Garon, eds., Les
chemins de la nouveaut: Innover, inventer au regard de lhistoire (Paris, 2003); Liliane Hilaire-Prez and Catherine Verna, Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle
Ages and the Early Modern Era: New Approaches and Methodological Issues, Technology and Culture 47 (July 2006): 53665; Liliane Hilaire-Prez, Technology as a Public
Culture in the Eighteenth Century: The Artisans Legacy, History of Science 14 (2007):
13554; and Liliane Hilaire-Prez, Les artisans lorigine de lindustrialisation: Les
savoirs opratoires dans la quincaillerie en France et en Angleterre au XVIIIe sicle, Historiens et Gographes 405 (2009): 14149.
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DE MUNCKK|KAssessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution
experiment. Two groups in particular stand out: artists and medical practitioners. Artists analyzed nature in their drawings, attempting to realistically represent the human body, while medical practitioners empirically
examined nature in anatomical theaters.2 Both groups can be seen as important mediators in the development of the new natural philosophy.
This is not to say, however, that the social status of manual skills or embodied knowledge rose as a result. Historians have rightfully qualified the
idea that experimental philosophers merely wanted to dissociate themselves
from the mechanical arts; rather, they argue now that experimental philosophy appropriated values and specific knowledge from the mechanical arts,
because the mechanical arts had increased in status during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.3 The artisans themselves did not necessarily fare any
better as a result, however. According to Pamela Smith, artisanal bodily experience was absorbed into the work of the natural philosopher at the same
time that the artisan himself was excised from it. Both uncertainty about
the epistemological status of knowledge gained through sensory experience
and moral distrust concerning the power of the senses to deceive and seduce
incited the new philosophers to distance themselves from artisans and
tradesmen.4 In the end, new philosophers rather than craftsmen assumed
the place of experts on nature and natural processes. What were the consequences of this for the perception of the skills, knowledge, and learning
processes of artisans? Was practical experience sufficient in itself, for instance, or did reading, writing, and designing become more important?
The best way to learn about the perception of skills and technical
knowledge and the process of acquiring them is to examine assessment
procedures. Remarkably, the procedures for assessing the vocational skills
of artists and artisans remain a blind spot in our knowledge of the preindustrial period.5 As children and young adolescents from artistic and artisanal milieus learned by doing in the context of a family business or from
a master on the shop floor, scholars have viewed this as a self-evident
process, the end term of which was the making of a masterpiece, whether
in the context of a guild or an art academy.6 They have treated master
2. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago, 1983); Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific
Revolution (Chicago, 2004); Harold J. Cook, The Cutting Edge of a Revolution? Medicine and Natural History Near the Shores of the North Sea, in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe,
ed. Judith Veronica Field and Frank A. James (Cambridge, 1993), 4561.
3. Pamela O. Long, Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical
Know-how to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age, Isis 88 (1997): 3.
4. Smith, Body of the Artisan, chap. 6, quote on 186.
5. Notwithstanding the recent attention for la fivre de lvaluation; see the special
issue, by this title, of Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine 55 (2008): 4bis (supplment).
6. Bell Gallery, Brown University Department of Art, Children of Mercury: The Edu-
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trials as straightforward tests of the acquisition of the skills required. However, the growing importance of propositional knowledge (theoretical and
scientific insights into phenomena of the natural world) at the expense of
prescriptive knowledge (techniques and savoir faire) calls into question
whether the practice of testing only hands-on skills and the end result
rather than theoretical insights and the learning process is really so self-evident an assessment.7
Assessment procedures created for artisans in the Antwerp Medical
College, established in the 1620s, and the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine
Arts, founded in 1663, suggest that shifts were imminent during the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.8 These new educational institutions, seeking novel didactic methods adapted to the transfer of an increasingly complex body of knowledge, not only imposed new assessment
procedures, but also spent time discussing new procedureswhich signals,
in turn, that views on the value of skills and knowledge were changing.
Both institutions can be considered a meeting ground for different
social groups with different ideas on the value of skills and knowledge.
Whereas the medical college assembled surgeons and pharmacists on the
one hand and university-trained doctors on the other, the art academy
directed artisans to the drawing lessons of artists.9 In both cases, we can assume that these new institutions answered a changing demand for institutionalized learning (either of a theoretical nature or focused on drawing),
but, as most historians and sociologists of education will admit, schools
also produce perceptions and discourses on the value of skills and knowledge.10 In this article, I will examine these two new institutions from a critcation of Artists in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Providence, R.I., 1984); Bert
De Munck, Technologies of Learning: Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to
the End of the Ancien Rgime (Turnhout, Belgium, 2007); Bert De Munck, Steven L. Kaplan, and Hugo Soly, eds., Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship (London, 2007).
7. Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy
(Princeton, N.J., 2002).
8. Other medical colleges followed in 1650 (Brussels), 1699 (Lige), and 1760
(Bruges); see L. Th. Van Looij, De Antwerpse Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, in Academies of Art between Renaissance and Romanticism, special issue, Leids
Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek vvi (198687). One textbook on academies of art is N. Pevsner,
Academies of Art: Past and Present (New York, 1973). For the southern Netherlands, see
Gustaaf A. M. De Wilde, Geschiedenis onzer Academin van Beeldende Kunsten (Leuven,
Belgium, 1941).
9. For the medical college, see background information and references in Frank
Huisman, Medicine and Health Care in the Netherlands, 15001800, in A History of
Science in the Netherlands: Survey, Themes and Reference, ed. Klaas van Berkel, Albert van
Helden, and Lodewijk Palm (Leiden, Netherlands, 1999), 23978, esp. 245ff. On the
academy of art, see De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chap. 6.5; see also Dominiek
Dendooven, De Brugse Academie in de Achttiende Eeuw (licentiates thesis, VUB
[Brussels], 1994), 1:26275.
10. See, for example (and also for additional references), Steinar Kvale, Examina-
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ical perspective, inspired by recent trends in social theory. Since the 1960s
and 1970s, scholars have tended to be skeptical about the emancipatory effects of schooling, but in the last few decades the structural and post-structural schools of critical theory themselves have become subject to important criticisms. Under the heading of the so-called practice turn,11 Pierre
Bourdieu in particular has been criticized for his failure to fully consider
the complexity of the experiences and practices of both trainers and trainees in the context of educational institutions.12 One of the practices that is
still poorly understood, especially in the early modern context, is assessment. Drawing attention to the practices of teaching, lisabeth Chatel,
among others, has rightfully asked how teaching and evaluating mutually
interact in practice in the educational system.13
In the first section, I examine training on the shop floor as practiced in
most urban industries, which was based on apprentice contracts (largely)
in the context of a guild-based apprenticeship system. From the seventeenth century onward, this system seems to have failed in certain respects,
especially for theoretical learning and the transfer of design and drawing
skills.14 Hence we see the foundation of the art academy, which will be examined in the second section, where we show that the art academy answered the need of a broad range of artisans who tried to cope with changing consumer preferences and the related rise of design capacities. The
result, however, was a radically transformed way of assessing skills. Compared to training on the shop floor, even in the context of craft guilds, the
art academy was more exclusivist, embodying a new way of perceiving skills
and talent. Finally, in the third section, I argue that the foundation of the
art academy was part of a broader shift in which the hands-on skills of artisans were gradually devalued. Discussions about the foundation of the
medical college show that the establishment of this institution was connected with the claim of university-trained academicians regarding the
superiority of their skills vis--vis the hands-on skills of surgeons and
pharmacists. The guild-based artisans reacted by emphasizing the importance of both their practical skills and their training on the shop floor, in a
sense mobilizing the artes mechanicae against the artes liberalesin the
tions Reexamined: Certification of Students or Certification of Knowledge? in Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context, ed. Seth Chaiklin and Jean Lave
(New York, 1996), 21540.
11. Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, eds., The
Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (Abingdon, UK, 2001).
12. lisabeth Chatel, Pragmatiques de lducation au Lyce: Lvaluation de lducation entre la mesure et le jugement en situation, in Institutions et conventions: La
rflexivit de laction conomique, ed. Robert Salais, lisabeth Chatel, and Dorothe Rivaud-Danset (Paris, 1998), 91118.
13. Ibid., 93: comment sarticulent en pratique enseignement et valuation dans le
systme ducatif.
14. See, for example, Anne Puetz, Design Instruction for Artisans in EighteenthCentury Britain, Journal of Design History 12, no. 3 (1999): 217329.
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process, however, claiming to be a type of artist themselves in response to

these threats to their autonomy.
The first section of this article is based on recent literature, including
some of my own work on apprenticeship in Antwerp, which is based, in
turn, on a sample of 272 apprentice contracts, some 20 judicial proceedings
on breach of contract, and a broad range of requests, ordinances, and
statutes from guilds.15 The second and third sections are based on normative sources (ordinances, rules, and so on) and judicial proceedings related
to the foundation and functioning of these new institutions.16 Intense negotiations between guild boards and guild-based masters on the one hand
and the proponents of the medical college and the art academy on the other
generated a wealth of arguments regarding the need for (or redundancy of)
these new institutions. Moreover, as the artisans, artists, and academicians
within the institutions continued to debate the learning practices and assessment procedures up to the end of the eighteenth century, the resulting
normative sources and judicial proceedings offer insight into how these
practices and procedures evolved. Significantly, the debates in question
often concerned the organization of teaching sessions and evaluation procedures directly, so that the sources provide immediate insight into the
positions and attitudes of the different groups involved. Of course, these
sources tell us nothing about the artisans activities and skills as such;
rather, they show how teaching and assessment were organized in different
institutional contexts, and, above all, how this was perceived and justified.17
Apprenticeship and Embodied Knowledge
On-the-job training in the ancien rgime has often been framed by historians in the context of an immobile society of orders. Instruction and
training were seen as being part of a broader educational system aimed at
15. On the selection and representativeness of these sources, see De Munck, Technologies of Learning (n. 6 above), 2535.
16. Some of these sources have been published in, for example, Corneille Broeckx,
Histoire du Collegium Medicum Antverpiense (Antwerp, 1858); Frans J. P. Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der academie van Antwerpen (Antwerp, 1867); Louis Galesloot, Document relatifs la formation et la publication de lordonnance de Marie-Thrse du 20
mars13 novembre 1775 qui affranchit les peintres, les sculpteurs et les architectes, aux
Pays-Bas, de lobligation de se faire inscrire dans les corps de mtiers (Antwerp, 1867).
Others have been traced in earlier research on these individual institutions: Bert
De Munck, Medische praktijken: Conflicten rond competentie in de Antwerpse medische sector, 17de en 18de eeuw, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 27, no. 4 (2001):
45984; De Munck, Le produit du talent ou la production de talent? La formation des
artistes lAcadmie des beaux-arts Anvers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sicles, Paedagogica
Historica 37, no. 3 (2001): 569607. In addition, some judicial proceedings related to the
Guild of Saint Luke were also used.
17. See, for example, Steven L. Kaplan and Philippe Minard, eds., La France, malade
du corporatisme? XVIIIeXXe sicles (Paris, 2004).
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reproducing a corporate social order. Apprentices not only learned on the

shop floor, they went to live in another household; the master was not only
an employer, but also a substitute father who disciplined them and guided
their socialization in the urban social fabric.18 The corresponding training
method required apprentices to imitate their masters, not only on the shop
floor, but in daily life as well.19 Training was therefore geared less (or at least
not solely) toward the transfer of technical knowledge, and more to preparing adolescents to take their place in society, as either journeymen or masters.
How learning worked in practice is still open to debate.20 Some scholars
have argued that learning took place despite, rather than because of, the
masterapprentice relationship. Sven Steffens described learning on the
shop floor as stealing with the eyes, as masters jealously guarded their technical knowledge (sometimes called secrets), which apprentices could only
acquire by furtively observing how masters and journeymen did the job.21
Analyzing apprentice contracts and judicial proceedings on breach of contract reveals another reality, however: apprentice contracts were private,
businesslike arrangements between a master and an apprentice (or rather,
the apprentices parents or guardians) in which the transfer of a certain
amount of technical knowledge was jointly agreed on.22 Remarkably, the
contracts hardly ever mention the technical knowledge concerned. Apprentices were to learn a specific craft or profession, and the contract simply stipulated how long the apprenticeship period was to last. This lack of a detailed
description of the skills involved, however, does not rule out the fact that an
apprentice contract, even when it was oral or simply written down on paper,
aimed at the transfer of a specific number of skills. In the context of a very
segmented labor market in which guilds carefully guarded what type of
product each group was allowed to manufacture, the parties in an apprentice contract knew perfectly well whether or not the young person was qual18. See the references in Maarten Prak, Moral Order in the World of Work: Social
Control and the Guilds in Europe, in Social Control in Europe, vol. 1: 15001800, ed. H.
Roodenburg and P. Spierenburg (Columbus, Ohio, 2004), 1:17699.
19. See Karl Wilhelm Stratmann, Die Krise der Berufserziehung im 18. Jahrhundert
als Ursprungsveld pdagogischen Denkens (Ratingen, Germany, 1967); P. L. Price,
Learning Through Imitation: Some Examples, in Children of Mercury (n. 6 above),
4958.
20. Patrick Wallis, Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England, Journal of
Economic History 68, no. 3 (2008): 83261. See also Raoul De Kerf and Bert De Munck,
How Learning Worked: Early Modern Apprenticeship and the Commercialization of
Technical Knowledge among the Gold and Silversmiths in Antwerp, paper presented in
the session titled Apprenticeship, Human Capital and the Social Order in the Pre-industrial World of the Fifteenth World Economic History Conference in Utrecht, 27
August 2009.
21. Sven Steffens, Le mtier vol: Transmission des savoir-faire et socialisation dans
les mtiers qualifis au XIXe sicle (Belgique-Allemagne), Revue du Nord 15 (2001):
12135.
22. De Munck, Technologies of Learning (n. 6 above), chap. 1.
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ified. Moreover, learning was very much synonymous with doing the job.
According to Stephan Epstein, all forms of knowledge have an experiential
component, but especially in an early modern context, implicit, nonpropositional knowledge was essential. As a result, learning was largely informal,
while time and effort were the basic feature of any agreement on training.23 Apprentices needed practice, but whether the master or a journeyman
was actively involved in instruction seems to have been unimportant.24
This view is confirmed by data from the judicial dossiers. Discussion
centered principally on the kind of work the apprentice was allowed to perform. Apprentices or their parents not only lamented the household chores
expected from the youth, they also complained about the limited range of
work the apprentice was to carry out, including the kind of products he or
she was expected to produce.25 In other cases, they protested the lack of
work altogether.26 The quality and productivity of the learning process appear to have largely depended on the type of work the apprentice was permitted to carry out. Practicing on extra or waste material was exceptional.
When Franoise Van Ranst, who was an apprentice seamstress at a linen
shop, complained that she was not learning much because there was too little to do, practicing on old rags was not considered a realistic option; it was
even perceived as undignified.27 Nor were strict didactic principles applied;
instead, learning appears to have occurred spontaneously, by integrating
the apprentice into the production process. The only method involved
was the gradual character of learning, as trainees went from simple preparatory tasks to complex and refined ones. Of course, that is not to say that
learning on the shop floor was a backward way of being trained; on the
contrary, it appears to have been perfectly in tune with early modern production processes. As raw materials were generally expensive, rapid inclusion of apprentices in the production process prevented those materials
from being wasted by apprentices making goods that could not be sold.
Moreover, based on apprentice contracts, the assets of masters and apprentices could be matched perfectly. The apprenticeship term was simply adjusted to the financial means of the apprentices parents, on the one hand,
and to the range of skills the master could offer, on the otherlong apprenticeship terms as a rule being cheaper because of the pupils compensating for the skills acquired with gratis labor.28
23. Stephan R. Epstein, Craft Guilds in the Pre-Modern Economy: A Discussion,
Economic History Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 15574, quotes on 166; De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chap. 1.3.
24. De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chap. 1; Wallis, 847.
25. City Archives of Antwerp (hereafter CAA), Judicial Proceedings Supplement
(hereafter PS) 2,209, Aenspraecke ende conclusie, Franoise Van Ranst, 14 February
1680, art. 810, and Duplicque voor Jan Franchois Vermeulen, 27 January 1681, art. 68.
26. See the additional references in De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chaps. 1.21.3.
27. CAA, PS 2,209, Replicque voor Franoise Van Ranst, art. 12.
28. De Munck, Technologies of Learning (n. 6 above), chap. 1.1.
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As to the institutional context of the craft guilds, it is not entirely clear

what they added to this type of learning. Over the last few decades, the perception of guilds has changed dramatically. While scholars traditionally
viewed guilds as rent-seeking and inefficient cartels, economic historians
using concepts from the so-called new institutional economics and game
theorynow tend to interpret guilds as conducive to economic growth,
efficiency, and technological progress.29 According to Epstein, guilds had
contract-enforcing effects as a result of the masters being vested with the
legal prerogatives of fathers, entry fees (serving as bonds), and end-term rewards such as privileged entry to the labor market or access to the guilds
labor-market monopsony, which ensured that apprentices would serve out
their contracts.30 In theory, guilds could keep apprentices on the shop floor
longer simply by prescribing a minimum term for them to serve, which
they did frequently. Long apprenticeship terms would prevent early departure and result in either a broader range of skills learned or a superior
refinement of the skills applied. However, the length of the terms was only
partially related to the difficulty of the craft: longer terms might have been
the result of masters regulating the labor market, which seems to have been
the case in some German cities as the early modern era progressed.31 This
may have resulted in better training at the same time, but in Antwerp, the
obligatory apprenticeship terms appear to have been fairly shorttypically
two years, while four or more was exceptionaland often were even
shorter than what was commonly agreed upon in contracts.32 One reason
for this may have been increasing specialization, which intensified in the
sixteenth century. Still, as far as the quality of training goes, it remains to
be seen whether a fixed term of apprenticeship was beneficial at all.
Were masterpieces, then, introduced to improve the quality of training? The manner in which these trial pieces tested skills may be entirely
consistent with the hands-on nature of the learning-by-doing process. Yet
here the question is: To what extent did the trial piece actually serve to assess skills? Guild statutes often stipulated that prospective masters who
failed to make the trial piece properly had to apprentice for an additional
29. For a recent superb work with extensive references, see Stephan R. Epstein and
Maarten Prak, eds., Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 14001800 (New
York, 2008).
30. Stephan R. Epstein, Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in
Pre-Industrial Europe, Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (1998): 684713, esp. 691
92.
31. Reinhold Reith, Zur beruflichen Sozialisation im Handwerk vom 18. bis ins
frhe 20. Jahrhundert: Umrisse einer Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Lehrlinge, Vierteljahrschrift fr Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 76, no. 1 (1989): 127.
32. De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chap. 2.1, esp. 6263. Also see Harald Deceulaer and Marc Jacobs, Qualities and ConventionsGuilds in 18th-Century Brabant
and Flanders: An Extended Economic Perspective, in Guilds, Economy and Society, ed.
Stephan R. Epstein et al. (Seville, 1998), 91107.
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year,33 but only rarely did they apply this rule in practice, especially during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;34 instead, guilds ruled that prospective masters had to make their masterpiece themselves.35 Moreover, the
deficient prospective masters who appear in the guilds account books
(which is possible because expenses related to making the masterpieces
were registered) appear to have failed because they took too long to complete their masterpieces, which suggests that they had more important
things to do and hence had probably not spent as much time on the masters shop floor as required.36
Therefore it seems that masterpieces did not so much testify to what
extent skills had been mastered, but served to check whether a would-be
master had learned at all. The trial was part of a system that served to distinguish masters from faux-matresnamely, all types of unfree entrepreneurs who wanted to have guild-based products manufactured by using
employees (instead of subcontracting to or buying the items from masters),
without possessing the necessary skills themselves.37 It did not, or at least
not directly, serve to improve quality; after all, journeymen, who comprised
about half of the workforce, were not tested at all in most guilds. The
majority of the Antwerp guilds did not even expect that journeymen would
have completed an apprenticeship term;38 most learned via an apprentice
contract, without further assessment procedures.
As a result, these kinds of masterpieces and fixed terms to serve should
be understood from the perspective of master status: rather than as entry
into the labor market, masterpieces signified entry into the guilds labormarket monopsony, which was legitimized by masters superior skills. Far
more interesting than pondering on success ratios, then, is to examine how
33. See, for example, CAA, Guilds and Crafts (hereafter GC) 4,335, 31 March 1543,
fo. 3840v, art. 3 (cabinetmakers); GC 4,077, 11 August 1435 (3 October 1640), fo. 17
(barbersurgeons).
34. In Brussels, for instance, trial pieces of surgeons were said to be meaningless, as
everyone succeeded; see Claude Bruneel, Du barbier lartiste: Les tentatives de rforme
du mtier des chirurgiens Bruxellois, Annales de la Socit belge de lHistoire des Hpitaux et de la Sant Publique 2324 (1985): 532, esp. 10.
35. For example, CAA, GC 4,112bis, 192197, 13 September 1774, art. 7.
36. CAA, GC 4,344, accounts 176671, 177683, and 179193.
37. For this argument, see Bert De Munck, La qualit du corporatisme: Stratgies
conomiques et symboliques des corporations anversoises du XVe sicle leur abolition, Revue dhistoire moderne et contemporaine 54, no. 1 (2007): 11644; see also De
Munck, Skills, Trust and Changing Consumer Preferences: The Decline of Antwerps
Craft Guilds from the Perspective of the Product Market, ca. 1500ca. 1800, International Review of Social History 53, no. 2 (2008): 197233.
38. Exceptions to this rule are those guilds in which large numbers of journeymen
were able to enforce a right of preference, preventing masters from recruiting unfree
journeymen (at lower wages). Ibid., 211, and Bert De Munck, One Counter and Your
Own Account: Redefining Illicit Labor in Early Modern Antwerp, Urban History 37, no.
1 (2010): 2644.
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skills were valued in masterpieces. What sorts of skills were considered important? How were they represented? Remarkably, while trial pieces were
almost exclusively intended to test masters skills, their managing skills
were not assessed; pricing, planning, and bookkeeping did not appear
among the demonstrations required. Only once, in all the industries
involved during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, were masters required
to set prices;39 in all other cases, they simply had to make an item that was
typical for the industry in question. However varied the masterpieces may
have been, the task, as a rule, was to make a common product: a shoe or
boot for shoemakers, a table or sideboard for cabinetmakers, crossbeams to
support a roof or staircase for carpenters, and so on. Nor were masters required to demonstrate any understanding of the production process: guild
officials appear to have been uninterested in whether the artisan in question knew the reason why what had been completed worked or not. In Joel
Mokyrs terms, only prescriptive knowledge was tested, not propositional
knowledge. Thus in terms of the representation of skills, guilds and guildbased artisans seem to have valued only hands-on skills and prescriptive
knowledge, which were considered important up to the end of the eighteenth century.40
Still, two elements may have changed in the early modern period. First,
as a result of changing labor relations and consumer preferences, artisanal
skills may have tended to converge and cross over: on the one hand, growing clusters of production and extensive subcontracting necessitated synthetic thought and transversal knowledge for at least some of the artisans
(i.e., those who organized production networks);41 and on the other, product innovation and the notion of shared production among guildsbecause of, for example, the involvement of different raw materials in a single
productresulted in the emergence of combined skills and technological
interrelatedness.42 However, although some artisans consequently took
part in the development of so-called propositional knowledge,43 a substan39. CAA, GC 4,341, 31 March 1543, art. 7.
40. See references in De Munck, Technologies of Learning (n. 6 above), chap. 2.2. See
also Mokyr (n. 7 above).
41. See, for example, Helen Clifford, The Kings Arms and Feathers: A Case Study
Exploring the Networks of Manufacture Operating in the London Goldsmiths Trade in
the Eighteenth Century, in Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and the
Transfer of Skill, 15001800, ed. David Mitchell (Stroud, GLS, UK, 1995), 8495; Giorgio
Riello, Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long
Eighteenth Century, Enterprise and Society 9, no. 2 (2008): 24380; and Hilaire-Prez,
Les artisans lorigine de lindustrialisation (n. 1 above).
42. See, for example, Maxine Berg, From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in the Eighteenth Century, Economic History Review 60 (2002): 130, and
Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005), esp.
chap 3. See also n. 73 below.
43. See the additional references in Hilaire-Prez, Technology as a Public Culture
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tial proportion still did not. Those working as specialized subcontractors

must thus have experienced a degree of deskilling. In addition, the hierarchical relationship between invenit (inventing) and fecit (making) appears to have changed. Up to the sixteenth century at least, artisans of all
sorts were not only supposed to make a product, but design it as well.
Whereas in 1523 each tinsmith had to make his own mold to cast his pot
in when making his masterpiece, the mold was to be borrowed from the
guild by 1705.44 Other guilds explicitly stated that masterpieces were to be
made according to a model or drawing available in the guild hall.45 Consequently, masters appear to have lost control over designing products,
which may explain why artisans were eager to learn to draw, and to that
end, from the end of the seventeenth century onward, they turned to the
art academy.46 Some apprentices did draw on the shop floor, but on the
whole, this seems to have been the exception.47
The Art Academy and the Emergence of Nurture
and Nature
The Antwerp Acadmie Royale des Arts de la Peinture et Sculpture was

founded in 1663, following the efforts of painter David Teniers the Younger. He modeled it after the art academy in Paris, which contemporaries believed accounted for the success of French art.48 Whether this was the case
is beyond the scope of this article, as are the training methods in this new
institution. For the artists, the most important element seems to have been
the availability of models (sculptures, books, and so on), which previously
were in limited circulation, being the private property of individual
artists.49 Additionally, in contrast to (at least part of) the individual artists,
the academy could afford live models. Drawing from a live modelsomething students would undertake after acquiring the basic skills of draw(n. 1 above); see also Natacha Coquery, Liliane Hilaire-Prez, Line Sallmann, and Catherine Verna, eds., Artisans, industrie: Nouvelles rvolutions du Moyen ge lre industrielle (Lyon, 2004).
44. CAA, GC 4,264, 12 November 1523; GC 4,264, 25 June 1705.
45. See, for example, CAA, GC 4,334, 14 June 1497, fo. 1v, art. 2; GC 4,335, fo. 1r;
GC 4,334, fo. 8r8v; GC 4,335, 6 August 1515; GC 4,337, 9 April 1686, fo. 3434v (cabinetmakers).
46. OCMW archives, Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Koninklijke Academie voor
Schone Kunsten), Inventory Rolland, 293(16); and 317(30), Naemlijsten.
47. See, for example, CAA, Notaries Archives 667, 30 July 1715.
48. CAA, Collegiael Actenboek, 1663, fo. 5.
49. On openness versus secrecy, see Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2001); Carlo Belfanti, Guilds, Patents, and the Circulation of Technical Knowledge: Northern Italy during the Early Modern Age, Technology and Culture 45 (July
2004): 56989; and Hilaire-Prez, Technology as a Public Culture (n. 1 above).
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ingwas of growing importance in the early modern era.50 From about the
turn of the eighteenth century onward, courses in perspective (or architecture) and geometry complemented the live drawing lessons. Youths from
the wood and building industries who either wanted to learn how to read
plans or be able to draw the plans themselves attended these courses.51 Silversmiths also attended classes on drawing from live models as well as from
plaster sculptures; they probably wanted to learn how to make their own
designs.52 Although in both instances the fundamental principle was imitation, the method of learning differed markedly from that on the shop floor:
to start with, the master in the art academy was actively involved in the
learning process, which was not necessarily the case otherwise; moreover,
learning may have taken place in a more systematic way. At least from the
sixteenth century onward, the Italians developed a step-by-step method for
learning to draw the human body.53
Less apparent though no less important were the differences related to
assessment and selection procedures for apprentices. When learning took
place on the shop floor, an apprentice succeeded when he served out either
his contract or his term (as prescribed by the guild). From both perspectives, the idea was that any apprentice who had practiced enough was able
to do the jobas a consequence, talent was not an issue.54 Everyone who
started the training was expected to succeed, provided they endured the
discipline and socialization aspects on the shop floor and/or under the roof
of the master. Masterpieces, which were prescribed mostly from the fifteenth and sixteenth century onward, did not add any substantial element
to this. What masterpieces tested, at best, was whether a prospective master
could do the job, without any discrimination among those who were successful. The assessment procedure in the acadmie des beaux-arts differed
from this in two respects: first, as the skills of trainees were assessed in annual conteststhey were given assignments and the results were judged by
a jurynot only were the end results tested, but the processes as well; further, whereas in guilds apprentices either succeeded or not, the directors of
the art academy developed a ranking system. After evaluating the drawings,
50. Gabriele Bleeke-Byrne, The Education of the Painter in the Workshop, in Children of Mercury (n. 6 above), 2840.
51. On geometry, architecture, and perspective, we only have lists with names from
the last quarter of the eighteenth century; for drawing from plaster or a live model, lists
are extant from the end of the seventeenth century on.
52. See De Munck, Technologies of Learning (n. 6 above), 25253, tables 3.33.4; see
also Neil De Marchi and Hans Van Miegroet, Pricing Invention: Original, Copy, and
the Valuation of Art in Early Modern Netherlandish Markets, in Economics of the Arts:
Selected Essays, ed. V. Ginsburgh and P. M. Menger (Amsterdam, 1996), 2770.
53. Bleeke-Byrne, 2840.
54. Of course, apprentices could be declined because of physical inabilitiesamong
which poor eyesight figured prominently; see De Munck, Technologies of Learning, chap.
4.4.
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the jury awarded places, so that the product of every contest was a hierarchical list of names, from the primus to the last. The losers were not excluded, but the winners were glorified at the losers expense. Significantly,
these contests were important public events: the laureate received a medal
and was paraded around the city on a wagon with music and flags; some
were even invited to a meal in the city hall.55
To a certain extent, the ceremonial aspect was similar to what took
place in the guilds, where finishing a masterpiece was also accompanied by
a meal or feast, which might have been a public, or at least a semi-public,
event as well. This was not coincidental: as quality is not inherent in
products and as criteria to assess and measure it always differ across time,
place, and social group, both guild-based artisans and artists had to objectify quality; they had to define what it was before representing their own as
superior.56 For Antwerp guilds, quality was located primarily in the raw
materials used and hence in the masters trustworthiness of not using inferior ones. Trademarks consistently signified the quality of wood, leather, or
metal used, and whenever new types of materials were involved, different
trademarks were applied. Ordinances and statutes were not concerned with
the lack of skills, but with possible fraud by masters deceptively applying
trademarks.57 This is why notions of skill and talent were not used to distinguish among guild members; if guilds referred to skills, they did so on a
collective level. Entering a guild was to become a member of a fraternity in
which all brothers, in theory, were equals.58 The art academy, on the other
hand, located value in the artists personal merit and facilities; as a consequence, the academys members discriminated among artists, rather than,
as the guilds did, between insiders and outsiders. The art academy even
deliberately broadened the distinction among artists inside the institution.
While they excluded former winners from the contests (thus allowing the
maximum number of artists to receive the symbolic capital associated with
being awarded first prize), the next years places in the classroom were allocated according to the rank in the contest, so that the best artist could work
under the best conditions.59 As a consequence, the function of this evalua55. See, for example, CAA, GC, 4,578bis, 1771 (Bruges); J. B. Van Der Straelen, Jaerboek der vermaerde en kunstryke Gilde van Sint Lucas (Anvers, 1885), 24243.
56. See Franois Eymard-Duvernay, Conventions de qualit et formes de coordination, Revue conomique 40 (1989): 32959; Eymard-Duvernay, Coordination des
changes par lentreprise et qualit des biens, in Analyse conomique des conventions, ed.
Andr Orlan (Paris, 1994), 33158; Pierre-Yves Gomez, Qualit et conomie des conventions (Paris, 1994); and La qualit, Sociologie du Travail 44 (2002).
57. De Munck, Skills, Trust and Changing Consumer Preferences (n. 37 above),
and Technologies of Learning, chaps. 6.36.4.
58. Perhaps more important than the masterpiece was the oath sworn when becoming a master.
59. Van Der Straelen, 250, 260 (cf. Ordonnantie voor de Conincklycke Academie binnen Antwerpen, art. 17).
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tion system was not only to produce skills or to select on the basis of merit,
but to create distinction, in this case not between qualified and unqualified
masters, but within the skilled workforce itself.60
Not coincidentally therefore, the rules, norms, and discourses of the art
academy reveal a certain tension between nurture and nature: namely, what
can be learned, on the one hand, and what may be called talent on the
other. In contrast to the guild system, prospective trainees in the art academy were subject to a selection procedure before being admitted. According to an ordinance of 6 November 1690, prospective trainees had to provide a certificate from their master stating that they were capable of
drawing from a live model, which suggests that apprentices needed to learn
some basics first, either on the shop floor or elsewhere. While this could be
seen as corresponding to the idea of acquiring skills via practice, trial-anderror, and experience, in the same ordinance it was also stated that the art
academys directors could dismiss anyone who proved to be incapable of
carrying out the skill.61 Moreover, in the mid-eighteenth century, it was not
the masters but the directors of the academy who decided which apprentices were capable of following its prescribed courses. Their decisions were
based upon the inspection of students drawings, which revealed how
much they had advanced. 62 While this may again be viewed as evidence of
the importance of practice, during discussions on the subordination of
artists to guild rules in 1756, proponents of a strict distinction between
guild and academy requested that access to the academy be made conditional upon the presentation of a work of their own invention; the aim
was to exclude . . . those whose lack of talent makes them unworthy of this
distinction. 63 It is not entirely clear whether access to the academy was intended to mean access to the courses or instead entre as a type of member of the corps of academiciansthe latter implying that a new type of
masterpiece had been createdbut at least in part the criterion was talent.
At the same time, talent appears to have been to a large extent a cultural
construct; the criteria by which talent was assessed depended on taste and
cultural standards. In the words of the academys advocates, its aim was to
form their [the pupils] taste, to let them sense the nuances of beauty and
perfection, to ignite in those who are born with genius the first flames of
60. See Antoine Picon (De lingnieur-artiste au technologue: Procdures de slection et notation des lves lcole des Ponts et Chausses, 17471851, Paedagogica Historica 30, no. 1 [1994]: 41152, esp. 421ff), who links the necessity of a severe selection
with a shift toward merit and talent.
61. Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der academie van Antwerpen (n. 16 above), 30,
112.
62. December 4, 1750 (art. 4), published in Van Der Straelen (n. 55 above), 248
(emphasis added).
63. See Galesloot (n. 16 above), 16, 18, 22: un ouvrage de leur invention; . . . dexclure . . . ceux que leur peu de talent rendroient indignes de cette distinction (emphasis
added).
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the fire that lifts painters above themselves.64 In discussions on the abolition of the guild at the end of the 1760s, the Guild of Saint Luke implicitly
reproached the art academy with snobbery; claiming that the presence of
groups of lesser crafts and geniuses was important from the perspective
of the common good, the guilds deans distinguished between common
(gemeyne) masters and excellent (uytmuntende) masters. Whereas they allegedly worried about both categories themselves, the academy was blamed
for being preoccupied exclusively with the latter. In the end, guild officials
rhetorically asked the key question: Who will be the chosen ones, who will
choose them, and who will pick from the youths and distinguish who is
promising for the future? 65
Clearly, although artists and artisans met in the art academy, behind the
foundation of this institution lies a growing divergence between these two
groups.66 While until the end of the sixteenth century, the Guild of the Four
Crowned united sculptors and masons and the Guild of Saint Luke unified
crafts as diverse as panel-makers and painters, the art academy distinguished between artisans and artists. The creation of the academy was part
of a long-term transformation in which artists saw themselves as distinct
from those who practiced the mechanical arts. An interesting conflict in
this respect occurred between the Guild of the Four Crowned (comprising
those who worked with stone, such as masons) on the one hand, and the
stonecutters (sculptors) on the other: around 1600, the latter aspired to end
their association with the masons, whose skills they considered inferior.
The sculptors deliberately distinguished between lofficio mechanico and
their own conste, or art.67 They suggested that their skills included theoretical knowledge, thereby aligning themselves with the liberal arts. Assigning importance to the classical examples and Latin, these artists emulated
the men of letters. 68 Significantly, they associated this with the importance of talent. The sculptors claimed that in contrast to masonry apprentices, who could support themselves by their work from the first day of
64. Ibid., 14: leur former le got, leur faire sentir les nuances du beau et du parfait, exciter dans ceux qui sont ns avec du gnie les premires tincelles de ce feu qui
lve les peintres au-dessus deux-mmes.
65. Cited in Van Der Straelen, 19497.
66. Zirka Zaremba Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp, 15501700 (Princeton, N.J.,
1987), 1119; see also J. Woods Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven, Conn., 1998), and H.
Miedema, Kunstschilders, gilde en academie: Over het probleem van de emancipatie
van de kunstschilders in de Noordelijke Nederlanden van de 16de en 17de eeuw, Oud
Holland 101, no. 1 (1987): 131.
67. J. Rylant and M. Casteels, De metsers van Antwerpen tegen Paludanus, Floris,
de Noles en andere beeldhouwers, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 31 (1940): 185203; C.
Duvivier, Contestation entre la confrrie des maons et les sculpteurs dAnvers (1606),
Revue dHistoire et Archologie 3 (1861): 9194.
68. See E. Levy, Ideal and Reality of the Learned Artist: The Schooling of Italian and
Netherlandish Artists, in Children of Mercury (n. 6 above), 2027.
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their training, apprentices in sculpture did not know for four or five years
whether they would be able to continue in the profession. 69 The idea behind this reasoning is not only that it took longer to learn the art of cutting
stones than it did to learn masonry, but that it only became apparent after
several years whether someone had the necessary talent.
What renowned artists had in common is difficult to define, but in the
end, quality seems to have been equated with ingenium (genius).70 While
the tension between high- and low-level artists grew, the ingegno e arte (talent and skill) of a few artists came to stand out;71 ingenium, in turn, was
related to both inventiveness and drawing skills. As art historians have
shown, after the Renaissance, artistic production experienced a shift toward
a greater emphasis on drawing.72 During the seventeenth century, artists
judged drawing to be superior to color, because it appealed to the mind,
whereas color appealed only to the inferior senses. These transformations
were not limited to the art sector; in other sectors as well, designing and
novelty grew more important.73 Matthew Craske has framed the development of design in the context of general cultural transformations, ranging from the growing variety of retail demand to theological sensitivities
concerning the legitimacy of pleasure.74 Moreover, as the collectivist construction of quality via the guilds waned, the location of value may have
shifted to the individual producer or retailer. Research is still in its infancy
here, but there are indications that the skills and reputations of masters
or retailers as individuals grew more important for the creation of trust in
the quality of specific products;75 in other words, the new emphasis on
69. Rylant and Casteels, 188; Filipczak, 16.
70. It is beyond the scope of this article, but it would be worthwhile to examine how
a new artistic style and the concomitant new standards affected entrance to the academy
of specific social groups, as well as their advancement along the successive contests.
71. Elizabeth Honig, The Beholder as Work of Art: A Study in the Location of Value
in Seventeenth-Century Flemish Painting, in Image and Self-Image in Netherlandish Art,
15501750, ed. Reindert Falkenburg, Jan de Jong, Herman Roodenburg, and Frits
Scholten (Zwolle, Netherlands, 1995), 25393. Not coincidentally, the price of artwork
at the same time became dependent on the reputation of the artist; see Filipczak, 4045,
and Marten J. Bok, Pricing the Unpriced: How Dutch 17th-Century Painters Determined the Selling Price of Their Work, in Markets for Art, 14001800, ed. Michael North
and David Ormrod (Seville, 1998), 10110.
72. See, for example, Stuart Currie, ed., Drawing 14001600: Invention and Innovation (Aldershot, UK, 1998).
73. See John Styles, Manufacturing, Consumption, and Design in 18th-Century
England, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London, 1993), 52754; John Styles, Product Innovation in Early Modern London, Past
and Present 168 (2000): 12470; Berg, From Imitation to Invention (n. 42 above).
74. Matthew Craske, Plan and Control: Design and the Competitive Spirit in Early
and Mid-Eighteenth-Century England, Journal of Design History 12, no. 3 (1999): 187
216.
75. Bert De Munck, La reproduction dune crise: Lapprentissage des menuisiers et
des charpentiers Anvers (XVIeXVIIIe sicle), in Formation professionnelle et ap-
347
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drawing and the assessment procedures related to it in the art academy

were part of a broader process wherein the value of drawing skills in particular was increasingly recognized as important. Given that disegno (design) was the visible manifestation of ingegno (genius),76 this process must
have involved the perception of the individual as a whole person.
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The Medical College and the Value of Mechanical Arts
To a certain extent, the foundation of the art academy may have been
an answer to flaws in the system of learning on the shop floor, which generally did not include drawing. However, the debates between artists and
artisans on the value of skills and knowledge suggest that there was more
to it than this. The art academy did not simply adapt to new tastes and new
cultural repertoires. It also produced a certain discourse on taste, quality,
and, eventually, skills; the directors not only transmitted knowledge and
expertise, they defined what kinds of these were needed to be a good artist.
In the eighteenth century, the members of the academy, represented in
around 1770 by Cornelis Lens, favored a sober, classicist style; in contrast,
their most important opponent, Willem Herreyns, promoted the baroque,
colorful, Rubenesque style of what was later to be called the Flemish
School.77 Even within the art academy, the question of style led to discussions on didactic methods. Lens criticized the short time in which the same
pose was held; while every pose apparently lasted three days (for two hours
per day), he requested that they be extended to four days.78 His criticism
was related to style: the two extra hours were not needed for a more perfect
imitation of nature, but only so that trainees could embellish their figures
by adding beauty from the antiques, which the model is missing.79 The
issue, then, was neither bodily stance nor the perfect imitation of nature,
but acquaintance with a learned culture.
Something similar was at stake when the Antwerp Medical College was
prentissage (XVIIIeXXe sicles), ed. G. Bod and Ph. Marchand, special issue, Revue du
Nord (2003): 3151; De Munck, Construction and Reproduction: The Training and Skills
of Antwerp Cabinetmakers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, in Learning on the Shop Floor
(n. 6 above), 85110; Ilja Van Damme, Verleiden en verkopen: Antwerpse kleinhandelaars en
hun klanten in tijden van crisis (ca. 1648ca. 1748) (Antwerp, 2007), esp. chaps. 56.
76. See Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy
(Los Angeles, 2001), chap. 4, esp. 13536. According to Filipczak (n. 66 above), 4045,
artists at the upper end of the scale were paid for their inventiveness.
77. Van Looij (n. 8 above), 313; Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der academie van
Antwerpen (n. 16 above), 5657; Frans J. P. Van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schildersschool (Antwerp, 1883), 121762.
78. Galesloot (n. 16 above), 1319; CAA, GA, 4,578bis, 22 November and 7 December 1770.
79. See Galesloot, 1415: dembellir leurs figures en y ajoutant des beauts, tires de
lantique, qui manquoient au modle.
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founded (officially) in 1620 by medical doctorsthat is, by academics who

had obtained university degrees. From the very beginning, they tried to use
the institution to control and discipline the citys barbers, surgeons, and
pharmacists (and perhaps also midwives), all being artisans who had
learned their skills on the shop floor.80 Basing their arguments on classic
authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen, the college promulgated the
idea that the art of medicine was the preserve of university-trained doctors alone, or of surgeons admitted to the college after examination.81
Starting from that time, practitioners not certified by the college were not
entitled to practice the art of healing; both surgeons and pharmacists
were soon required to attend theoretical lessons for up to six years before
they were allowed to practice their professions.82 Unsurprisingly, this had
important consequences for assessment procedures as well. Certification
depended on mastering theories; for surgeons, a theoretical examination
became a standard requirement, whereas formerly, the guild had required
only a practical testa masterpieceand two years of training in the
shop.83 Pharmacists also had to pass a theoretical and oral exam in addition
to their three-year apprenticeship (a masterpiece was not required).84 Information on the actual college examination is scarce, but it appears to have
been exclusively concerned with the colleges canon of authorized knowledge. In the lessons, the prelector read the subject matter aloud, and the
students wrote down verbatim what was communicated.85
The artisans vehemently protested these new assessment procedures,
arguing that academic and theoretical knowledge was no more valuable
than their own practical knowledge. Both the formal assessment procedures and the content itself came under debate. In 1641, the guild deans
and elders requested that they be able to question trainees.86 At first sight,
80. P. H. Brans, De Collegia Medica in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, Pharmaceutisch
tijdschrift voor Belgi 33 (1956): 12124; L. J. Vandewiele, Vergelijkende studie over de
Collegia Medica in Belgi, Pharmaceutisch tijdschrift voor Belgi 33 (1956): 14569; P. H.
Brans, Les collges mdicaux dans les Pays-Bas Mridionaux, Janus: Revue internationale de lhistoire des sciences, de la mdecine, de la pharmacie et de la technique 46
(1957): 30ff; Bruneel (n. 34 above).
81. See Articulen oft conditien van het collegie der medecynen, in Broeckx (n. 16
above), 3840, and Wetten ende regulen van het Collegie der medicynen . . ., 12 April 1659,
art. 4, in ibid., 8186. See also the edicts of the central government of 18 April 1617 and
12 September 1623. Previously, certifying appears to have been the preserve of the local
authorities aided by the sworn doctors of the city (Report of 13 September 1624, in
ibid., 4546; see also the order of 24 April 1571, in GC 4,515, fo. 1).
82. CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 19 (1641).
83. The trial consisted of four different bleedings, to be performed with scalpels that
the prospective master himself had made first; see CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 20.
84. CAA, GC 4,515, fo. 2, 6 June 1659 (also in GC 4,513).
85. CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 36.
86. CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 19, 1641; see also GC 4,515, fos. 45, 10 June 1661, and GC
4,513, 7 December 1672.
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these deans seem to have adopted the strategies of their opponents, but in
the mid-eighteenth century, they still favored practical skills. The deans
then obtained the right to conceive and ask all questions related to practice,
while they were still dubious of the use of theoretical knowledge as such, as
they criticized the speculative character of questions related to theory.87
Referring to their time-honored masterpiece (which the prelector of the
college appears to have attended as well), the deans argued that this trial
consists of a practice proper to the art of surgery, and it has nothing in
common with the science of the masters of medicine.88 Still, this is not to
say that these artisans simply defended the value of their hands-on skills:
the guild deans distinguished between art and science, rather than between
handicraft and art, claiming that they were a type of artist themselves.89
From a traditional perspective, they aspired to rise in the ranking of mechanical arts, arts, and liberal artsin that order.90
This claim was related to the struggle over who was entitled to design a
product for the medical sector. The principal aim of university-trained
doctors was to reserve the prescription of cures and medicines to academics alone, and to leave only the manual work for the artisans. The latter
were only to administer the cures and manufacture the medicines the doctors had prescribed. Surgeons could only decide on cures for severe illnesses in the presence of doctors,91 and apothecaries, who were previously
subject only to the mercers guild, could only sell medicines approved by a
special committee of two doctors and some fellow apothecaries and local
officials. Apothecaries even had to swear oaths that they would prepare
their medicines in the way the medical college prescribed (in the manner
of Valerius Cordus).92 In the eighteenth century, apothecaries were actually prosecuted because they had practiced the art of medicine (de conste der medecijnen), rather than simply making the remedies that doctors
had prescribed.93
In the end, therefore, the discussions on and within the medical college
were similar to those concerning the art academy.94 The apothecaries com87. CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 125ff, Grieven . . ., arts. 2123, 20 May 1756.
88. Ibid., art. 35.
89. In 1674, some pharmacists wanted to abandon the mercers and form a new
organization together with the doctors. The name of the patron they chose is highly
revealing: it was Saint Luke, under whose banner artists had distinguished themselves
from artisans; see Broeckx (n. 16 above), 138. In general, Saint Luke was also the patron
saint of medical colleges; see Vandewiele (n. 80 above), 150.
90. See J. S. Brubacher, A History of the Problems of Education (New York, 1969), 84.
91. Wetten ende regulen (n. 81 above), art. 4.
92. CAA, GC 4,515, fo. 2, 6 June 1659 (printed version in GC 4,513).
93. CAA, GC 4,513, 7 July 1713, 15 November 1713, Ampliatie . . ., art. 8; additional
references appear in Broeckx.
94. Toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the guilds of the barbers and
surgeons were subject to the same criticism as the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. In Brussels, for instance, attempts were made to turn surgery into a liberal art and to abolish the
guild; see Bruneel (n. 34 above).
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pared doctors to someone who would order a tower built . . . without

being able to build the tower himself, as he has not learned masonry, nor is
he acquainted with the raw material involved 95in other words, deliberately linking the capacity to design to hands-on skills and practical experience. It may, therefore, be worthwhile to connect these debates to changing
consumer preferences and the changing relations between consumers on
the one hand and producers and retailers on the other. Fragmentary data
suggest that the so-called consumer (r)evolution was accompanied by a
growing distinction between invenit and fecit. Up until the sixteenth century, designing was done by the masters themselves, using examples of
Renaissance designs or of other pieces of furniture, silver, and paintings.96
Books and prints circulated in and among shops, and immigrants not only
brought skills, but acquaintance with models and new product forms as
well.97 Gradually, however, in order to conceive new products, specialized
craftsmen or artists were used; on the instructions of merchants, mercers,
or customers, they designed new pieces of furniture, silverware, and textiles, which were subsequently produced by a range of specialized handicraft workers.98
To fully understand the debates going on in the medical and art academies, then, we should focus on the economic transformations of the middle class. In addition to the new philosophers of the academies appropriating elements of the artisans practices, some artisans, in turn, may have
appropriated elements from the learned culture.99 Long before the estab95. Requeste vande Apotekers, 1673, published in Broeckx (n. 16 above), 144.
96. See, for example, CAA, PS 6,061, Replicque conventionael ende Antwoorde,
Levinus Van Craeijwinckel, arts. 9, 22; see also Piet Lombaerde, ed., Hans Vredeman de
Vries and the Artes Mechanicae Revisited (Turnhout, Belgium, 2005) (among others, see
especially the contribution of Ria Fabri). Of course, further research is needed here,
preferably from a comparative perspective. Tapestry weavers, for instance, used cartons
as a rule.
97. See, for example, Reiner S. Elkar, Schreinen in Franken: Handwerk zwischen
Zunft, Kunst und Fabrik, in Mbel aus Franken: Oberflchen und Hintergrnde, ed. I.
Bauer (Munich, 1991), 30. See also Helen Clifford, Concepts of Invention, Identity, and
Imitation in the London and Provincial Metal-Working Trades, Journal of Design History 12 (1999): 24156; Styles, Manufacturing, Consumption, and Design (n. 73 above)
and Product Innovation (n. 73 above); and Berg, From Imitation to Invention (n. 42
above).
98. See, for example, Ria Fabri, De 17de-eeuwse Antwerpse kunstkast: Typologische en
historische aspecten (Brussels, 1991); Piet Baudouin, Verkenning van de Antwerpse
edelsmeedkunst in de zeventiende eeuw, in Antwerpen in de XVIIe eeuw (s.l., 1989), 388
91, 395; Piet Baudouin, Pierre Colman, and Dorsan Goethals, Edelsmeedkunst in Belgi:
Profaan zilver XVIdeXVIIdeXVIIIde eeuw (Tielt, Belgium, 1988), 20; and Frans Baudouin, ed., Tekeningen uit de 17de en 18de eeuw: De verzameling Van Herck (Brussels, n.d.).
99. For the professionalization of surgery, see Toby Gelfant, Professionalizing
Modern Medicine: Paris Surgeons and Medical Science and Institution in the 18th Century
(London, 1984), chap. 4, and Willem Frijhoff, Non satis dignitatis. . . . Over de maatschappelijke rol van geneeskunde tijdens de Republiek, Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 96
(1983): 379406.
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lishment of the medical college, the nature of the corporate apprenticeship

system and the masterpiece had been debated within the guild. For instance, both barbers and surgeons discussed whether their respective
apprenticeship terms should last either two or three years. The surgeons
favored three for themselves, arguing that the barbers craft could be
learned in two years, as it was comprised of shaving and bloodletting only,
whereas surgery was considered to depend on medicine, which is to be
studied and practiced long, thus requiring three years.100 In 1641, some
master surgeons not only tried to lengthen study at the college to four or
even six years for every prospective master,101 they also requested that the
lessons be organized year-round and that they involve more corpses. Similarly, in Brussels, apprenticed surgeons quarreled with university students
over entitlement to corpses.102 All these artisans agreed on the importance
of anatomy, referring to it as the utmost and principal science of the craft
and the fundament of the art of surgery.103
The most important distinction, then, may have been between masters
on the one hand, referring to the collectivist and egalitarian ethos of their
brotherhood, and on the other, artisans and artists, who desired a more individualistic approach that took into account both nurture and nature.104
For an elite group of artisans, abstract, theoretical knowledge and invention grew more important, as did talent and personal style (i.e., ingenium).
Hence the hypothesis I propose is that the Renaissance term ingenium covers what happened in both the art academy and the medical college: for one
group of surgeons, theory and practice gradually merged, just as it did in
drawingnamely, disegno, a term that encompasses both drawing and
invention or planning.105 Designing was an intellectual activity as much as
100. CAA, GC 4,077, fos. 1718. Some even considered three years insufficient.
101. Surgeons who had practiced their profession for less than twenty years would
be obliged to attend the colleges courses for two years; those who had practiced for less
than ten years had to attend for four, and new masters for six. See CAA, GC 4,077, fos.
19, 21, 2627 (1641).
102. Bruneel (n. 34 above), 2021.
103. CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 21ff, 21 February 1641.
104. As such, it may be interesting to trace the origins, diffusion, or at least the coexistence of the assessment procedures contested by the artisans; prize and ranking
mechanisms, for example, also existed in Jesuit schools. See M.-M. Compre, Du collge
au lyce (15001850): Gnalogie de lenseignement secondaire franais (Paris, 1985), 83,
and A. D. Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Amsterdam, 1986), 74.
The oral exam and recitation of a theory or canon by heart, along with the public character of the examination, can be traced back to the medieval universities.
105. As a result of the growing discrepancy between the barbers craft on the one
hand and surgery on the other, a new status was created, the half mastership (half
ambacht). Surgeons entering into that status were not allowed to perform shaving,
bloodletting, dentistry, and cupping; they did not have to undergo a practical exam, but
may have been required to orally answer some questions. See CAA, GC 4,077, fo. 17v;
Noodighe oprechtinghe van t collegie der medecyne . . . (dr. Sophie), in Broeckx (n. 16
above), 17. Elsewhere, the split-off of surgeons from the barbers resulted in more com-
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a practical skill, but above all it was related to ingegno, which was a virtue
that could not be learned. Although ingegno could be further developed
and exploited if one possessed it, it was something an individual was either
born with or not.106
Others clung to their tradition of hands-on practices and refused to appropriate elements from the learned culture, which they considered alien to
their own. In this case, neither talent nor emulation was an issue. Hence the
discussions analyzed in this article should best be associated with the emergence of strategies from a learned Renaissance and humanist culture distinguishing itself from the traditional guild-based economic middle class.
While artists construed disegno as an intellectual activity, humanists tended
to abstract and codify practical knowledge, thus imposing text-based, theoretical versions of expertisealbeit without dismissing practical knowledge as obsoletefrom the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onward.107 As
a consequence, it may be worthwhile in future research to examine similar
processes and debates in organizations such as chambers of rhetoric in
which the artisan elite became acquainted with humanist traditions, while
at the same time attaching importance to both art and practice. In their
theater and poetry competitions, for example, the idea that contests produced symbolic capital may thus have gained ground, artisanal hands-on
practices and a learned culture of texts and words intimately merging.108
Conclusion
Research on skills and the perception of skills has traditionally emphasized the Industrial Revolution as a watershed, with both new technologies
and the growing division of labor resulting from the changing organization
of production and new managerial practices leading to de-skilling.109
Consequently, artisans represented their hands-on skills as superior.110
plex and theoretical exams for the former; see Th. Boesmans, De examens in de chirurgijnsgilden (Utrecht, 1942), chap. 5.
106. Syson and Thornton (n. 76 above), 135.
107. See, for example, Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early
Modern Era (New York, 1970); Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth
Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, 1972); and Rudolph Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (New York, 1988).
108. Anne-Laure Van Bruane, A wonderfull tryumphe, for the wynnyng of a
pryse: Guilds, Ritual, Theater, and the Urban Network in the Southern Low Countries,
Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006): 374405; Arjan Van Dixhoorn, Writing Poetry as Intellectual Training: Chambers of Rhetoric and the Development of Vernacular Intellectual Life in the Low Countries between 1480 and 1600, in Education and Learning in the
Netherlands, 14001600: Essays in Honour of Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed. Koen Goudriaan, Jaap van Moolenbroek, and Ad Tervoort (Leiden, 2004), 20122.
109. See Stephen Wood, Degradation of Work: Skill, Deskilling, and the Braverman
Debate (New York, 1981).
110. William H. Sewell Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor
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The value and representation of skills, however, changed well before the
Industrial Revolution, which can be deduced from discussions on the assessment procedures in different institutional settings.
In the guild system, virtually every prospective apprentice who wanted
to start training could do so. Apprentices in guilds had to pay a registration
fee, which was generally fairly low, in contrast to the master fee. It was
harder for apprentices to pay their masters, but empirical research has
shown that they worked to pay for their training. The longer the apprenticeship period, the less expensive the contract. Hence, theoretically, most
apprentices could learn the trade they wanted, provided they were prepared
to work long enough without any pay (only for board and lodging). Moreover, so-called masterpieces cannot be considered as distinguishing between qualified or unqualified work or as a necessary prerequisite to entering the labor market. At least in principle, therefore, every individual could
begin and succeed, provided the socialization that took place under the
roof of the master also was successful. Those who wanted to become masters themselves not only had to pay an additional, higher fee, they also had
to make a masterpiece. But these masterpieces did not really discriminate
between highly skilled persons and others, serving only to test whether
prospective masters had learned at all.
The assessment procedures in the art academy were very different.
Permission to enter the art academy could only be obtained by submitting
a drawing, which had to be assessed (at least during the eighteenth century)
by the professors or directors of the institutionconsequently, not every
prospective student was admitted. Nor did all admitted students emerge
from these assessment procedures as equals, as was the case in craft guilds.
In its annual contests, the art academy ranked its students, relying on principles of merit and talent to discriminate among prospective artists. This
hierarchical stance was not unintentional; rather, it was central to the academys functioning. Because the winner of the annual contest automatically
was granted the best place to draw during the next years course, he could
again progress more rapidly than others. As a result of these assessment
procedures, social advancement, in least in theory, became more difficult.
There is as yet no firm empirical research on this, but an interesting working hypothesis could be whether it became easier or more difficult to enter
other social groups via vocational training: Did the growing importance of
drawing and talent create opportunities for those eager to learn, or did the
association of style and taste with specific social groups prevent (or hinder)
upward social mobility for those born outside the trendsetting classes?
Whatever the answer, talent and principles of merit were much more imfrom the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980); John Rule, The Property of Skill in the
Age of Manufacture, in The Historical Meanings of Work, ed. Patrick Joyce (Cambridge,
1987), 99118.
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portant in the art academy than within the guild context. Remarkably, both
talent and merit emerged simultaneously, without the one substituting for
the other.
The rationality behind this becomes clear when juxtaposing the debates
on and within the medical college with those on and within the art academy. Ostensibly, the struggle of guild-based artisans in the medical sector
seemed very different. From the foundation of the Antwerp Medical College in the second decade of the seventeenth century to well into the eighteenth, the legitimacy of theoretical knowledge and concomitant assessment proceduresnotably, an oral exam testing knowledge of the canon
continued to be contested by artisan surgeons and apothecaries. Instead of
theoretical knowledge, they emphasized the importance of hands-on skills
and practical experiencein short, prescriptive and embodied knowledge.
However, the tension between surgeons and doctors trained in the college
had much in common with that between artisans and artists. Both the art
academy and the medical college illustrate the growing dichotomy between
the making of products and the designing or inventing of them. Whereas
artisans in a broad range of industries needed drawing skills to develop
their own designs to survive in the context of a diversifying material culture, the surgeons and apothecaries also contested their loss of autonomy
in the prescription (invention) of medical cures. Perhaps their protesting
confirms the importance of practical and empirical knowledge, but it also
signals a kind of symbolic violence on the part of elite groups. Moreover,
in both cases, a learned culture of intellectuals and artists discredited prescriptive knowledge, and possibly a wider popular culture of common
workers as well.111 There was, of course, a growing attention to nature, exemplified in the live models of the artists and the cadavers studied by the
medical practitioners, but in the assessment procedures of the new institutions examined here, the hands-on practices of artisans were discredited.
In sum, the emphasis shifted, not only to nature as a material thing, but
to nature in the form of talentingenium in the Latin of Renaissance
artists and humanist scholars. Ingenium encompasses both drawing and
invention and is related to both theory and propositional knowledge. The
term is full of paradoxes, of course. While it was linked to merit, ingenium
was, above all, what could not be learned; and while it was an individual
asset, it was also connected to the manners and style of a certain social
group. In academic discourse today it is largely considered a myth and discounted, but for the early modern artisans opposing modern assessment
procedures it was a harsh reality, ingenium being what was henceforth considered alien to them. While most (at least guild-based masters) had been
111. Compare with Hans-Ulrich Thamer, On the Use and Abuse of Handicraft:
Journeymen Culture and Enlightened Public Opinion in 18th- and 19th-Century Germany, in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth
Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (New York, 1984), 275300.
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self-confident artisans before, they were bound to become, at least from the
seventeenth century onward, mere workers devoid of any talents.
This process was probably related to a shift in the early modern material culture that favored novelty and fashion, but more research is, of
course, needed here. Moreover, from an economic perspective, further research may link the changing perception of skills to changing labor relations: namely, the growing dichotomy between producing on the one hand
and designing and managing on the other.112 From a cultural perspective,
changing assessment procedures linked to vocational training can be associated with transformations in the urban social fabric, which may in turn
have been part of a changing perception of the self.113 In the long run, the
most important distinction may have been between a traditional, collective
culture of guilds as brotherhoods on the one hand and an individualist culture of humanistic elites on the other.114
112. An interesting perspective might be the one developed by Hlne Vrin (La
rduction en art et la science pratique au XVIe sicle, in Institutions et conventions [n. 12
above], 11945), who identifies a shift toward la science pratique (practical science) in
the second half of the sixteenth century, when the routines of artisans (le sensible-particulier) were replaced by the abstraction and systematization of engineers and architects. This was accompanied by a process in which the engineer, the architect, and the
entrepreneur evolved from artisans cooperating in an atelier to supervisors and managers. In contrast to the apprentices, the journeymen, and the traditional masters, they
conceived products and production processes rather than manufacturing products. See
also Vrin, Gnalogie de la rduction en art: Aux sources de la rationalit moderne,
in Les nouvelles raisons du savoir: Vers une prospective de la connaissance, ed. Thierry
Gaudin and Armand Hatchuel (La Tour dAigues, France, 2002), 2941, and Pascal Dubourg Glatigny and Hlne Vrin, eds., Rduire en art: La technologie de la Renaissance
aux Lumires (Paris, 2008).
113. Among others, see Michael Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 15911791 (Oxford, 1997).
114. See, for example, Bert De Munck, Fiscalizing Solidarity (from Below): Poor
Relief in Antwerp Guilds between Community Building and Public Service, in Serving
the Community: Public Facilities in Early Modern Towns of the Low Countries, ed. Manon
van der Heijden and Griet Vermeesch (Amsterdam, 2009), 16893, and Bert De Munck,
From Brotherhood Community to Civil Society? Apprentices between Guild, Household, and the Freedom of Contract in Early Modern Antwerp, Social History 35, no. 1
(2010): 120.
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Corpses, Live Models, and Nature

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process, however, claiming to be a type of artist themselves in response to

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reproducing a corporate social order. Apprentices not only learned on the

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As to the institutional context of the craft guilds, it is not entirely clear

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tial proportion still did not. Those working as specialized subcontractors

The Antwerp Acadmie Royale des Arts de la Peinture et Sculpture was

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drawing and the assessment procedures related to it in the art academy

The Medical College and the Value of Mechanical Arts

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founded (officially) in 1620 by medical doctorsthat is, by academics who

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pared doctors to someone who would order a tower built . . . without

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lishment of the medical college, the nature of the corporate apprenticeship

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