My young daughter asked me “who was the 1st artist”? After I told her about the various ‘cave paintings’ found throughout what is now called Europe, and the artists and artisans of ancient cultures such Egypt, she changed her question, slightly. She now wants to know who is the first artist we can positively identify as a specific, named person.
I have no clue. Can you help?
This is a total WAG, so I’m willing to be corrected. My guess is it would be one of the ancient Greeks, such as Myron, who did The Discus Thrower, or Phidias, who worked on the Parthenon, both in the 5th Century BCE. Continuing with the WAG, I’d venture to say that in other (pre- and non-democratic) cultures, the artist is probably seen as just hired help, and no more worthy of remembrance than, say, a tanner or carpenter or the practitioner of any other skilled trade or craft.
In my quick browsing of H.W. Janson’s “History of Art”, the earliest work I can find in this book that is attributed to a named person is a painted drinking cup or ‘kylix’, painted by a Greek artist named “EXEKIAS”, circa 540 B.C.
I think this is an interesting question. I will look for yet earlier works.
Yeah, now I’m going through E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art, and came up with Polymedes of Argos’s sculpture The Brothers Cleobis and Biton, ca. 615-590 BCE. Just a bit earlier, but still Greek…
Do you accept architects? Imhotep, the architect of the pyramid of Djoser, was around 2680s-60s BCE.