Were people like Da Vinci and Rembrandt considered artist in their day or were they craftsmen or otherwise?

Excellent question—and the answer reveals a lot about how the concept of the “artist” has evolved.

Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci were both seen as craftsmen in their time—but also something more.

1. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): Renaissance Polymath

During the Italian Renaissance, the line between “artist,” “scientist,” and “engineer” was porous. Leonardo was indeed viewed as a craftsman, especially early in his career, trained in the workshop of Verrocchio, where apprentices learned drawing, painting, sculpture, and mechanical design.

However, by the height of his life, Leonardo had transcended the guild system and was seen as a genius, a court artist and thinker who moved among nobles, dukes, and kings. His notebooks, anatomical studies, and inventions were evidence of the Renaissance ideal of the “universal man”—not just a skilled hand, but a philosophical and scientific mind.

So yes, he began as a craftsman but was increasingly celebrated as something more: a visionary, even in his own time.

2. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669): Dutch Golden Age Master

Rembrandt worked in 17th-century Holland, where painting was a professional trade governed by guilds (like the Guild of Saint Luke). He was trained in the apprenticeship model, and his workshop produced many paintings with the help of students and assistants—a structure more akin to a craft industry.

Yet Rembrandt gained fame and prestige in Amsterdam as a portraitist and innovator. His work was collected by the wealthy, and he developed a reputation for psychological depth and technical mastery. Despite later financial troubles, he was widely regarded as one of the most important painters of his era.

Still, the term “artist” as a unique, inspired creator—rather than a skilled artisan—was only beginning to take shape in Rembrandt’s lifetime.

So were they “artists” in the modern sense?

Not quite. The modern idea of the artist as an autonomous, inspired genius didn’t fully emerge until the 18th and 19th centuries, with Romanticism. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, even the greatest painters were often still thought of as highly skilled, elite craftsmen, not mystical or tortured geniuses.