The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. Debate, both historical and present day, suggests that defining the concept of an artist will continue to be difficult. * A person who creates art. * A person who creates art as an occupation. * A person who is skilled at some activity * A learned person or Master of Arts * One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry * A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice - the opposite of a theorist * A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic * One who makes their craft a fine art * One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses The word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, although literally defined means, "skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of beauty. During the Middle Ages the word artist already existed in some countries such as Italy, but the meaning was something resembling craftsman, while the word artesan was still unknown. An artist was someone able to do a work better than others, so the skilled excellency was underlined, rather than the activity field. Looking to registries or acts of those times it is easy to find out how some goods (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures. The first division into major and minor arts dates back to Leon Battista Alberti's works (De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura), focusing the importance of intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills (even if in other forms of art there was a project behind). Michelangelo Buonarroti is generally indicated as the first artist who separated his creative work from the committance requirements. With the Academies in Europe (second half of XVI century) the gap between fine and applied arts was definitely set. Many contemporary definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on culture, resisting aesthetic prescription, in much the same way that the features constituting beauty and the beautiful, cannot be standardized easily without corruption into kitsch. The word "artist" is used as a pejorative in certain circles (connotating, for example, pretentiousness, selfishness, temperamentalness, egotism, and having an inflated sense of one's own self-worth).