The question addressed in this text concerns the attitude of the environment towards the artist. It is not the artist's biography that will serve as our source, but rather the judgment of contemporaries and posterity, which will inform the broader understanding of artist biographies; at its center lies the legend of the artist. We believe we can demonstrate that certain fundamental concepts of the visual artist can be traced throughout all biographies, which, by their nature, can be understood as stemming from a unified root, reaching back to the beginnings of historiography. Despite all variations and transformations, these concepts seem to have never completely lost their significance, even into the most recent past.