Beyond this one would have to register that, in Kristeller’s words, «such dominating concepts of modern aesthetics as taste, sentiment,genius, originality, and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the eighteenth century» ( Origins of Aesthetics, cit., p. The way in which he classified the «arts» ( technai ), including under this heading artisanal crafts or skills and even mathematical disciplines, precluded in any case the identification of a sufficiently homogeneous group corresponding to the modern system of «fine arts». Ancient authors like Plato himself did not recognize this affinity, because they were not able or willing to talk of beauty in a recognizedly distinct aesthetic sense of the word and did not establish a privileged link between beauty (thus understood) and the arts. Kristeller’s influential article on «The Modern System of the Arts» 2 ) that only in modern times there has arisen the recognition that between the «fine arts» ( beaux arts ), which are represented, at least primarily, by painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, there is an affinity such that they can be said to constitute a «system» and that this fact has to do with their being a source of aesthetic pleasure through the beauty realized in the works they produce. 2 Appeared in Journal of the History of Ideas 12, 1951, pp. 496-527, and 13, 1952, pp. 17-46 see als (.)Ģ It is often admitted (following, in the main, P.O.
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