Department of Art History  |  Sweet Briar College

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INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION 1 Art & Artists in the Ancient World and Middle Ages 2 Art & Artists in the Renaissance 3 Art & Artists in the Academies 4 Art & Artists and Modernism 5 Art & Artists Today

ART & ARTISTS and the Academies    Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

               The first Academy of Art was founded in Florence in Italy in 1562 by Giorgio Vasari who called it the Accademia del Disegno. There students learnt the "arti del disegno", a term coined by Vasari, and included lectures on anatomy and geometry.

               Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca (named after the patron saint of painters, St. Luke), was founded a decade or so later in Rome. More so than the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, the Academia di San Luca served an educational function and was more concerned with art theory.

               The Academia di San Luca later served as the model for the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded in France in 1648. The French Academy very probably adopted the term "arti del disegno" which it translated into "beaux arts", from which is derived the English term "Fine Arts."

               In 1683, the painter Charles LeBrun (1619-1690) was appointed director of the French Academy. Students attended lectures on anatomy, geometry, and perspective, and gradually advanced from making drawings of drawings, to drawings of casts, to drawings of live models (a curriculum which continued into the 19th century).

               Classes were held according to a strict schedule, with life-classes in the morning between 6:00 and 8:00 in the summer, and 3:00 and 5:00 in the winter. Perspective classes were held on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

               Works of art were examined according to established categories which were analysed in order: invention, proportion, colour, expression, and composition. This process was systematized in the early 18th century in Roger de Piles' Balance des Peintres, published in 1708, in which famous painters were "graded" from 0 to 80 according to how well they faired in composition, design (drawing), colour, and expression.

               The French Academy judged drawing to be superior to colour; colour was understood as merely a supplement to drawing. Moreover, drawing was deemed to appeal to the mind, unlike colour which appealed to the inferior senses.

               Prizes were offered, of which the most prestigious was the "Prix-de-Rome" which permitted the winner to go to Rome, where a branch of the French Academy had been established in 1666. The purpose of the sojourn was to study antique art first hand.

               From the outset, the French Academy saw its task as the education of artists in the practice of an idealising art in the classical (or classicizing) tradition. The goal of the artist was achieve perfection -- "le beau idéal" -- which was learned over time by the study of the antique and of artists in that style, especially Raphael, and later Nicolas Poussin.

               The pursuit of perfection in art was underpinned by Plato's concept of Forms (Ideas). Already in 15th-century Florence the notion had emerged that classical artists had achieved perfection in their art by painting or sculpting not the imperfect world perceived through the senses, but Plato's immutable, eternal forms conceived in the mind. In the Renaissance and subsequently in academies in later periods, classical art was identified as the model that artists should study and attempt to emulate if they wished to perfect their art.

               In the academies, especially the French Academy in the 17th century, antique, or classical art, was established as the standard for all future achievement. The academies attempted to define classicism as the norm in art. Classicism as a style, and ideology, thereby became closely associated with the Academy, and the Academy with the State.

               The most influential academies were subject to if not directly supported by the State. Academic, or classicizing, art came to be linked thereby with the power-structure and the power-relations of society. Academic art carries with it a barely concealed structure of values. Associated with classicism are modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and believing which have some kind of relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power. The values of classicism are those which the prevailing power-structure wishes to maintain in society.

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INTRODUCTION (continued):

1. Art & Artists in the Ancient World and Middle Ages

2. Art & Artists in the Renaissance

• The Renaissance and the Rise of the Artist
• The Renaissance and grazia

3. Art & Artists in the Academies (this page)

4. Art & Artists and Modernism

• The Roots of Modernism
• Modernism and Art for Art's Sake
• Modernism and Politics
• Modernism and Postmodernism
• Modernism and the End of Art

5. Art & Artists Today

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