The cover of this book shows a closely-knit community of artists and craftsmen which was portrayed in 1615 by the Augsburg painter Anton Mozart. It is representative of the general aesthetic practice during the pre-modern period of creating artefacts collaboratively – and suggests that such collaboration was the norm rather than the exception. The notion of creativity hence was vastly different from the highly influential narrative of aesthetic autonomy that emerged later.

The present volume is linked to the interdisciplinary work at the Collaborative Research Center 1391 Different Aesthetics and presents a first systematic approach to the complex cultural-historical phenomenon of multiple authorship.