Corpses, Live Models, and Nature: Assessing Skills and Knowledge before the Industrial Revolution (Case: Antwerp)

This article addresses changing assessment procedures for (guild-based) artisans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Discussions in and on two new educational institutions (the art academy and the medical college) in the seventeenth century (and beyond) reveal that manual skills and embodied knowledge were gradually devalued. The egalitarian guild-ethos was substituted with a more individualistic approach based on "ingenium," which was related to both designing (drawing and invention) and theory. Paradoxically, while observation, experience and experiment grew important among an intellectual elite, the hands-on skills of artisans became perceived as being devoid of talent and genius.