the artist's figure yesterday and today (I° part) The term "artist" is a relatively recent word, and its first usage can be collected in the XVIII century. Before that, the person who modeled clay was called creator, maker or "factorem". Therefore the word should be considered in relationship with its historicity because now it is used as a definition for a category which in the past wasn't so delineated. The artist's figure wasn't important because his production was viewed as an imitation of the nature. It was only since the Reinassance that the recent meaning has appeared. The "factorem" transforms the reality through the thought and the help of God. It starts a sort of "artistic divinization" which has its roots within the monotheistic religions, such as Catholicism and Judaism and the creation's myth. Interesting are artists' biographies of '400 which to show the vision change within society. In fact, in these reportages, we can see how these artists had an arrogant attitude towards kings and cohorts due to their extraordinary technical ability and also for the interpretation of this role between divine and earthly. Giorgio Vasari in" le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori" in 1550 describes not only the production of each artist but also his childhood underlining how the capacity of creating art is connected to a natural talent. The artist is inspired directly by God and has the characteristic of "genius". Essential for this emancipation is the creation by Vasari of the first drawing's Academy in Florence in 1562. In this way came up the theoric basis for the distinction between artist and craftsman. The first, designed as an inventor of new shapes through mental elaboration; the second, the craftsman, who has been seen, vice-versa, as an object creator (think about furniture) predetermined from an old tradition continuously replicated thanks of a perfect knowledge of techniques rather than intellectual invention. It will be only in the XVIII century, with the enlightenment period and the always much more growing interest in cultural and science which the artist's figure becomes institutionalized.