On The Formation of Canons: The Dynamics of Narratives in Art History

Abstract

The article illustrates the formation over time of the late 20th century canons of two schools that dominated all other European schools in their time: Italian Renaissance and Flemish Realism. Since most artists were discussed some 400 years ago, by Vasari in the second edition of his Vite and by van Mander in his Schilder-boeck, narratives by art historians can be followed over a long period of time. To explore the dynamic process of canon formation, we collected data on the presence and the greatness of a large number of artists in narrative works written by important art scholars at time intervals of roughly 75 years, so that the 400 years elapsed between 1600 and 2000 are spanned as best as possible. At least half of the artists in the two canons were already there 400 years ago. There are several cases of wrong attributions or of new technical discoveries that prevented some names to be canonical any sooner. There are also artists who art historians learned to appreciate or to understand better, and who entered at much later times. Finally, the number of names that entered or were moved up in the canon because their works acquired new properties in the light of works by artists that followed them is not very large. This appears to be in contradiction with the frequent suggestion that canons are continuously moving and that no artist can survive forever.