A Peek Into the Masters’ Workshops: How Artists Worked in the Italian Renaissance

If modern artists are often associated with creative brilliance and expressive freedom, this is—unfortunately—very much not the case in the Italian Renaissance. Rather than imaginative talents who pursued the arts at will, Renaissance artists were heavily shaped by the established system of apprenticeship and workshop and had to undergo demanding training.

After reaching maturity, they worked in their own workshops alongside a group of assistants and engaged in careers with clients or under patronage. Often bound by contracts and specified requests, artists actually had very limited influence over the subjects of their artworks—though there were definitely exceptions.

Young Apprentices in Renaissance Workshops

Renaissance artists customarily began their pursuits of the arts at an early age and, through experience in their masters’ workshops, increasingly participated in the art world. Among those entering the profession of visual arts, many of them came from families of painters, sculptors, or architects. The Florentine artist Filippo Lippi, for instance, trained his son Filippino Lippi in his workshop, who later became a successful painter like his father. Some, like Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli, were born into rather prosperous families and received education in various subjects at an early age.  Their enthusiasm for the art of design was discovered later. Still others, like Andrea Mantegna and Domenico Beccafumi, spent their youths pasturing and only brought their talents into the workshops of renowned masters by chance.

As young boys, the apprentices in workshops began by learning basic drawing skills and handling chores for their masters. As they matured, they practiced more sophisticated techniques such as the mixture of colors and the polishing and gilding of metals. Apprenticeships were prolonged and rigorous, typically lasting more than a decade and demanding pupils to devote most of their time and energy to training.

It is no surprise that in these years, they became acquainted with different artistic media, which ranged from canvas and panel paintings to sculptures and metalworks, thus enabling them to produce a wide variety of artworks in their careers. After completing long years of training, apprentices either remained in these workshops or composed masterpieces to establish workshops on their own—an alternative was, of course, to set up workshops in partnership with other artists to lessen financial burdens, as Giorgione and Vincenzo Catena did.

The close relationship between apprentices and masters was an integral part of the functioning of Renaissance workshops. Typically, the workshops were not only places of training but also provided lodgings, in which cases the ties between apprentices and masters became especially well-established. While apprentices usually paid fees to their masters to enter their households, the skilled apprentices were highly valued by and worked as assistants, often receiving earnings as well. For example, in 1518, Leonardo noted how Francesco Melzi and Salaì, two of his favorite pupils, respectively received 800 and 100 ecus for two years while assisting him on a project of King Francis I.

It was in large workshops where artistic specializations, sometimes to the finest degree, took place and the Renaissance masters managed to complete a great number of projects. While the assistants may be responsible for ornamenting an artwork with trivial details, the masters themselves often painted the most prominent parts—the main figures’ bodies and countenances. Under such divisions of labor, workshops had to ensure that artworks were produced with unity in styles.

In fact, artists were required to study the collection of many paintings from their workshops to follow the stylistic models, which were considered their masters’ hallmarks and were very much appreciated in an age when individualism was as yet unpopular. This is precisely why these drawings were kept secretly within the workshops until the taste for individualistic styles prevailed over that of the traditions of great masters.

Though the way the workshops operated was helpful to the masters, it was not necessarily so for the clients, who increasingly sought after the brush of prestigious artists. For instance, desiring a work created by the master himself, Pietro di Luca specified in the contract with Piero della Francesca for Madonna della Misericordia that “no painter may put his hand to the brush other than Piero himself.” Indeed, there were serious ramifications if artworks were not executed in the promised way—in one case, a merchant in 1451 refused to pay for an altarpiece he commissioned because it was not painted by Filippo Lippi himself.

Fastidious Clients, Scrupulous Contracts, and A Few Exceptions

The way Renaissance artists worked was also dependent upon the interactions between artists and clients. This system of orders and contracts, in which a client commissioned an artwork and paid the artist only in the course of the commission, characterized the careers of most artists.

Required to meet their clients’ often specified demands, the artists could not determine the subjects of paintings and, even, the way they were painted. The contract between Domenico Ghirlandaio and the Prior of the Ospedale degli Innocenti for the Adoration of the Magi, typical enough to reflect the format of other contemporary contracts, declares that Domenico “is to color and paint the said panel all with his own hand in the manner shown in a drawing on paper with those figures and in that manner shown in it, in every particular according to what I, Fra, Bernardo, think best.”

It also specifies the kinds of pigments Domenico was to use, that is “powdered gold” and “ultramarine of the value about four florins the ounce,” which were the most treasured colors of the day. Before beginning to work on commissions, artists, like Domenico, were often requested to complete drafts of drawings showing the basic compositions of artworks, which artists must adhere to once the drafts were approved by their clients.

Indeed, artists had limited space to elaborate on their own, and, if they made such attempts, often found themselves in great trouble. For example, when Paolo Uccello finished the fresco of Sir John Hawkwood for the Opera del Duomo of Florence in 1436, his work was rejected “because it is not painted as it should be,” which perhaps lay in the fact that the Florentines perceived Hawkwood’s posture as inappropriate for a hero. After the first version was destroyed, Uccello soon completed another fresco, which was finally accepted.

While other artists may have entered similar disputes, some actually escaped the same displeasing fate. Michelangelo was in a bitter quarrel with Pope Julius II on the subject of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who suggested decorating the ceiling with geometric motifs and the image of the twelve apostles. The artist, ambitious to carry out a truly magnificent plan, nevertheless insisted on painting scenes from the Old Testament and won at last. It is not difficult to discern that when an artist of such a character secretly left Rome in 1506, he was probably irritated by the Pope’s request to see his works before they were finished and was troubled that the Pope would intervene in their contents.

But as artists’ reputations rose, they naturally obtained greater freedom. When Michelangelo received the commission for the Risen Christ in 1514, he was told by the Roman patrician Metello Vari to sculpt a figure “in whatever attitude seems good to the said Michelangelo.” This was an exceptional tale, of course, for an artist who was one of a kind.

Court Artists: A Special Patronage

Still, not all artists worked under temporary contracts with clients, and some were taken into the households of patrons, often princes or rich merchants, and paid permanently. Mantegna accepted the offer to work for Gonzaga Marquises of Mantua on condition that he was given a monthly salary, a place of lodging for his family, and a bountiful supply of food. In the course of over forty years until his death, he received large commissions for frescos but also engaged himself in examining antique metalworks and designing bowls, tasks not uncommon for a court artist but considered by some to be trifling matters for an art master.

When Leonardo entered the service of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, he earned regular payments and was offered a residence near Milan for himself and his assistants. Listed as “Leonardo da Vinci engineer and painter” by the duke, he decorated the rooms of Ludovico’s castle with murals, designed stages for weddings, organized court festivities, studied military machines, and cast a clay model of the bronze equestrian monument dedicated to Francesco Sforza.

After being recruited by Cesare Borgia in 1502, Leonardo was even more preoccupied with engineering, creating the Map of Imola and counseling on fortifications. While it was true that Renaissance artists were generally proficient at creating a wide range of works, the kind of versatility seen in Leonardo was undeniably extraordinary, not to mention the patronage he received that made his creative experimentations possible.

The working life of Renaissance artists was a clear reflection of the Italian artistic institutions. Whether through studying in workshops in their teenage years, working as assistants in adulthood, or conducting business with clients and patrons as celebrated masters, artists were acting per a custom that governed how the art world functioned in all aspects.

This does not imply, however, that under the same system, all Italian artists pursued their careers in the same way, only that they shared certain similarities. There were exceptions, though the number of them was restricted indeed. While most artists treated their clients’ demands in an obsequious manner, a few, like Leonardo and Michelangelo, acquired so much esteem that they were allowed to paint whatever subject they wished—despite the fact that these artists, too, tried hard to secure commissions and ingratiated their clients in the early phase of their careers.

Author’s bio:

Yi Xin grew up in Beijing and is currently a junior at Beijing Huijia Private School. As an art history student, he is enthralled by Classics, architecture, and philosophy. He’s also an earnest admirer of the Renaissance Republic of Florence and its beautiful coat of arms.