ABSTRACT
The transition from craft maker to artist developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aim of acquiring a better economic status, and it favored the creation of a great range of apologetic texts. The use of aphorisms, such as Ut Pictura Poesis, was a key element in this process. The pleasure shown by artists when dealing with artistic topics, meditations or praises is an example to illustrate that their usage of the aforementioned texts was not only an aesthetic resource. Sometimes, specific knowledge about theory is demonstrated, and the fact that artists can only apprehend it if they are interested both in the piece of art and in the aesthetic ideas comes true. The aim of our contribution is to analyze these aesthetic ideas when expressed by two masters of literature: Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare.
