Guild of Saint Luke - Antwerp and Bruges

Antwerp and Bruges

Although it did not become a major artistic center until the sixteenth century, Antwerp was one of, if not the first, city to found a guild of Saint Luke. It is first mentioned in 1382, and was given special privileges by the city in 1442. The registers from the guild exist, cataloging when artists became masters, who the dean for each year was, what their specialities were, and the names of any students. In Bruges, however, which was the dominant city for artistic production in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century, the earliest known list of guild members dates to 1453, although the guild was certainly older than this. There all artists had to belong to the guild in order to practice in their own names or to sell their works, and the guild was very strict about which artistic activities could be practiced–distinctly forbidding an artisan to work in an area where another guild's members, such as tapestry weaving, were represented. The Bruges guild, in a typically idiosyncratic medieval arrangement, also included the saddlemakers, probably because most members were painting illuminated manuscripts on vellum, and were therefore grouped as a sort of leatherworker. Perhaps because of this link, for a period they had a rule that all miniatures needed a tiny mark to identify the artist, which was registered with the Guild. Only under special privileges, such as court artist, could an artist effectively practice their craft without holding membership in the guild. Peter Paul Rubens had a similar situation in the seventeenth century, when he obtained special permission from the Archdukes Albert and Isabella to be both court artist in Brussels and an active member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp. Membership also allowed members to sell works at the guild-owned showroom. Antwerp, for example, opened a market stall for selling paintings in front of the cathedral in 1460, and Bruges followed in 1482.