So, just to make it clear… you define good art by “whether the artist is any good at art”.

Illuminating…

——

For anyone who’s interested in a slightly more nuanced take on how people in the Middle Ages perceived of “art” — and how different that notion was to how we perceive it today — Forgery, Replica, Fiction by Christopher Wood [1] is a really interesting read.

Here’s the last sentence of the Goodreads summary, which describes the major transition in thinking:

“… Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.”

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-...