[Broken_Hippo]

If you're an artist you are more interested in beauty than money (and I don't mean necessarily physical appearance)

This simply isn't true. Am an artist, and I care a lot about having food and a roof over my head.

And in general, artists of yesteryear were either already rich - rich enough so they had the leisure time to make art and the money to afford the supplies - or you were painting because a person with more riches than you have paid you to paint (and you probably weren't poor to begin with).

Folks weren't really painting monarchs out of love for the monarch, they did it because monarchs and other rich folks paid, sometimes handsomely. And you were paid to paint them in the best light possible while still knowing it was them: The Habsburgs had portraits that were likely much prettier than their actual likenesses - comparable to photoshop and other touch-ups today.

And just to drive this in: Painters of yesteryear often had ready-made backgrounds and bodies waiting for a head/likeness and other details. Nothing says "I care more about beauty than money" like prefab portrait blanks, I guess.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

Yep. I think a better comparison in our modern world would be the film studio. Painting was something you were taught in a rigid controlled environment and the materials and knowledge how to use them wasn't something you had the freedom to just easily use on a whim however you like. You were taught an entire language and way of thinking by your master, most likely from a young age.

Our modern reality makes it truly hard to imagine how these people thought because we are so used to photographs and images being cheaply reproducible and widely available on screens. A painting used to be something that was located somewhere and you had to travel to get to see it. If you owned a painting, you had this unique privilege of being able to show it to people in your own context. Works of art were incredibly powerful status objects, capable of sending the right messages about your pedigree, about your wealth and power.

What you describe with the prefabs I think gradually came along later, as painting became a more common trade and even the middle-classes started being able to afford to have them made as objects of status.

[ausudhz]

> Am an artist

You're one, you're not "all artists"

> And in general, artists of yesteryear were either already rich

Very much a false statement, I can make a never ending list of artists that were born, lived and died as poor man. Van Gogh is one of them (just to make an example)

> or you were painting because a person with more riches than you have paid you to paint

there were plenty of painters that didn't focus on doing portrait of rich people or, for that matter, they weren't painting humans at all.

I don't understand your point, probably you never actually enjoyed art or entered a museum to make this empty arguments.

Or maybe, more likely, you're like many HN commentators that like to write a long empty message for the sake of arguing because you like doing that rather than understanding the comment.

unless you've data that demonstrate what you just said, is simply not true. Just because you have a few anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything.