{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021529324424647365, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.860869565217391, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Painters' Guilds in the Cities of Venice and Padua

In an attempt to reconstruct the history of the painters' guilds in the cities of Venice and Padua, I have collected every fragment of information available, including documents and their critical interpretation. Our understanding of the material, the sequence of events, and the times that connect them remains dependent on chance, whereby documents have been either preserved or destroyed. In our desire to give meaning to what is fragmentary, we are faced with many questions about the stretches of time during which none of this evidence survived. The end product reflects this element of chance inherent in the material, and inevitably the discourse is, at times, sustained by suppositions. A thorough analysis of the documents and their nineteenth-century interpretations precedes my reorchestration of the material. I have focused on the imagery of Saint Luke (the painters' patron saint), and of the guild artist within art historical context. I am impressed not so much by the acts of mutual help that brought artists and artisans together as by their desire, in the late Middle Ages, to bind themselves within a corporative structure. In so doing, they have also left us a wealth of information that is relevant not only to the field of art but also to sociology, law, and history.