Commented critical edition of guild regulations for glass painters in German up to 1800: Sources on the social history of the artist from Central European archives (Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Switzerland)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Tacke
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2016 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284276223

The project of this historical critical edition as a part of art history is basic to fundamental research in the humanities. It intends to publish for the first time the guild and crafts regulations for glass painters in German: The artists in the ancien regime (in the Holy Roman Empire) were, with few exceptions such as court artists, bound to craftsmens guilds. That means, from the beginning of an apprenticeship followed by the many years of wandering as a journeyman to the concluding masters examination, then marriage to founding and conducting a studio of his own, to purchasing work materials and, finally, selling the art works themselves, everything was regulated by the guild. These rules were established in crafts regulations and are to be edited here for the first time for the craft of the glass painter from the archives of Central European countries. The corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA), with currently twelve European countries participating, focuses primarily on the preserved or historically documented pictorial media of glass painting, so that the archive material to be edited in our project was consulted only sporadically. The edition would help close a significant gap in international research on glass painting. The application for the planned research expands three completed but unpublished edition projects (BKM, DFG, ERC) which comprise in total about 7,000 manuscript pages of guild and crafts regulations for visual artists (painters) of the ancien regime. There was no project application for glass painters, who (as it became apparent only in years past) obtained partially related but independent regulations or regulation clauses. These regulations are now to be processed and completed in their own individual project, although within a briefer time period. The brief period of the project duration results from the fact that, of those employees acquainted with the work, two were taken on and the fact that we can continue to use an already operating data base (FuD). Furthermore, the inventory of sources for glass painters has been recorded in the last years to such a degree that processing can begin immediately. Some of the digital sources from the archives are already available, or the exact data are available on the stock of sources, so that they could be ordered promptly. The synergy effects also arise, however, from the contents, as we now have broad experience in recording and contextualising the crafts sources from quite different cultural areas. The standards concerning form but primarily content of collecting and understanding the sources have proven sufficient, so that the requested project could be completed successfully with a curtailed (instead of the normal three-year) running time. Thus, for the first time for the ancien regime, a collection of sources can be drawn on which regulated the training of glass painters in guilds or the organisation of glass painter workshops in the German-speaking area.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants