Now, there are parameters to Merton’s position that ought to be articulated. I imagine, for instance, that when he mentions the ‘artist’ of the Middle Ages, he has in mind the religious artists whose works can be found today in the collections of many museums in the West, though he does not elaborate his thought in this direction. (I am thinking mainly of Christian iconography, and the paintings of saints and angels, and so on, which many of us are familiar with, as they form in their ubiquity a sort of homogenous backdrop to much of art history).