The relationship of the professional artist to the class that ruled or aspired to rule was complicated, various and should not b
e simplified. The artist's training however – and it was training which made the artist a professional – taught the artist a set of conventional skills. That is to say, the artist became skilled in using a set of conventions of composition, drawing, perspective, chiaroscuro, anatomy, poses, symbolism. And these conventions corresponded so closely to the social experience – or anyway to the social manners – of the class the artist was serving, that they were not even seen as conventions but were thought of as the only way of recording and preserving eternal truths. Yet to the other social classes such professional painting appeared to be so remote from their own experience, that they saw it as a mere social convention, a mere accoutrement of the class that ruled over them: which is why in moments of revolt, painting and sculpture were often destroyed.
