ABSTRACT
In the history of Western art, the earliest written references that name specific artists have a mythic character. They associate artists
with gods, the former making lifelike figures and the latter creating life itself. God’s role as the supreme artist is illustrated in a thirteenth-century manuscript illumination [52], where he is shown measuring the universe with a compass. This image reflects the biographical convention that art is divinely inspired and that the artist has a divine or noble origin. Patrons of art, as well, could be inspired by divine intervention. In ancient Mesopotamia, for example, King Gudea of Lagash dreamed that the goddess Ninhursag instructed him to build a temple. In Egypt, Imhotep was credited as the originator of monumental stone architecture. His greatest surviving work is King Zoser’s step pyramid at Saq qara, which dates to about 2750 B.C. [53]. Imhotep was later deified-made into a god-and worshiped at Heliopolis, literally the “city of the sun.”
