Epithets of late medieval artists at the service of the royal and local power

Abstract

This article studies the adjectives of the artists who worked at the service of the king and the local elites in the Catalan-speaking countries during the 14th and 15th centuries. It examines specifically two of them: apt and subtle. Textual records that have been published by other specialists enable us to understand these adjectives in their own documentary context. This paper also compares their meaning with other examples from the late medieval literature in the Crown of Aragon. We carry out an approach to their meaning as words that referred to the artistic skill and as words that were chosen with a concrete purpose. Therefore, they had repercussions in the historical engagement between the artist and the patron among who Peter the Ceremonious stood out. The definitions that we expose complement those which are spe­cified in the historical dictionaries and they highlight the specific consideration of the artistic abilities.