Los conflictos sobre competencias entre académicos y no académicos en las postrimerías del siglo XVIII: el recurso del escultor Juan Pedro Guisart contra el tallista José Navarro David

Abstract

The rivalry among the artists trained in the Royal Academies of Arts under the masters instructed in the workshops reveals one of the most disputed questions of the late seventeenth century in Spain. Being constrained to coexist in a period when the academics made use of the privileges of their titles and the guilds struggled to keep their reduced power, a slow and difficult acceptance of the novelty took place as a result of the imposal of official rules which clearly established the differences between the people who practised a liberal art from those with a mechanical task. The litigation of the merited academical sculptor of San Carlos of Valencia Guisart against the Murcian wood carvers headed by Navarro David appeared in this context. The dispute concluded with a favourable verdict for the wood carvers by the Academy of San Fernando, the content of which was explained in a large memorial by Isidoro Bosarte, the secretary of this institution.