stylistic:style_transfer
History of the term

The Greek word " techně ", often translated as "art", implies mastery of any sort of craft. The adjectival Latin form of the word, " technicus ", became the source of the English words technique, technology, and technical.

In Greek culture, each of the nine Muses oversaw a different field of human creation:

No muse was identified with the visual arts of painting and sculpture. In ancient Greece sculptors and painters were held in low regard, somewhere between freemen and slaves, their work regarded as mere manual labour.

The word art derives from the Latin " ars " (stem art-), which, although literally defined means "skill method" or "technique", also conveys a connotation of beauty.

During the Middle Ages the word artist already existed in some countries such as Italy, but the meaning was something resembling craftsman, while the word artisan was still unknown. An artist was someone able to do a work better than others, so the skilled excellency was underlined, rather than the activity field. In this period, some "artisanal" products (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures.

The first division into major and minor arts dates back at least to the works of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472): De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura, which focused on the importance of the intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills (even if in other forms of art there was a project behind).

With the academies in Europe (second half of 16th century) the gap between fine and applied arts was definitely set.

Many contemporary definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on culture, resisting aesthetic prescription; in the same way, the features constituting beauty and the beautiful cannot be standardized easily without moving into kitsch.