The document discusses the history of art education from medieval guilds to the development of art academies. It describes how: 1) During the medieval period, guilds controlled artistic production and provided apprenticeships that involved several years of training under a master craftsman. 2) In the Renaissance, the social status of artists rose and the intellectual nature of art was emphasized. Academies were established to provide art education, with the first being the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in the 1590s. 3) The French Royal Academy, founded in 1648, codified rules of art and held the influential Salon exhibitions, exerting great control over what was considered appropriate in style and subject

1. Class 12.1
From Art Academies
to the Open Market
A r t 1 0 0
U n d e r s t a n d i n g V i s u a l C u l t u r e

2. medieval guild system
Guilds were trade associations for specific crafts and were
often associated with a patron saint. (Painters belonged to
the Guild of St Luke. )
Around 1200, guilds controlled the production of
• leather and textiles (e.g. cloth merchants, dyers, stretchers,
fullers, weavers, tailors, tanners, and cobblers)
• buildings (e.g. masons, tilers, plasterers, carpenters, and
blacksmiths).

3. development of the
guild system
• Guilds became increasingly diverse and specialized; in
Nuremberg by 1400 there were 141 separate crafts
registered with the city council.
• Policing the boundaries between who was allowed to
contract and perform which jobs also became important
as guilds worked hard to protect the livelihood of their
members.
• Craft guilds handled quality control and standardized
wage levels through their elected officers.

4. art education in the guilds
The guild was also responsible for training new members:
• apprentice
• journeyman
• master
This progression took place in the workshop alongside other
apprentices, and under the watchful eye of the master.

5. Nanni di Banco, The Sculptor's Workshop, c. 1416 in the "guild
niches"
at the Orsanmichele, Florence.

6. apprenticeship: indenture
A beginner, aged about twelve, would be bound to a master
craftsman for two to seven years, living in his house. He was
subject to the master's rules of conduct.

7. indenture
Lease indenture between John Kaye of Denby Grange and lessee John
North of Bankend for land in Almondbury, Yorkshire, England 1639.

9. apprenticeship: first phase
He would begin with menial tasks, such as grinding,
straining, and mixing pigments, before being entrusted with
work requiring skill.

10. menial
tasks
Artist unknown,
"Thamar Painting,
with Apprentice" ca.
1403
Bibliothèque
nationale de France
The apprentice
grinds pigment at a
nearby station.

11. producing a "masterpiece"
After a few years he could submit his "masterpiece" to the
guild and, if successful, set up his own workshop as a master
craftsman.

12. in England
Traditionally it was the Paynters who decorated, gilded and
coloured objects of wood, metal and stone and Steyners who
applied colour to woven fabrics.
The two trades united as one company in 1502.
In the eighteenth century the Company became more
involved in fine art and no fewer than fifteen Presidents of
the Royal Academy were Painter-Stainers, the first being Sir
Joshua Reynolds in 1784.

13. what changed?
The Renaissance brought changes in the artist’s social
position allied to the notion that painting, sculpture, and
architecture were not mechanical but liberal arts.
They were considered to differ from such arts as pottery,
weaving, and stained glass in that their practice demanded
intellectual understanding of such matters as anatomy,
perspective, and Classical culture.
Around 1490 Lorenzo de’ Medici appointed the sculptor
Bertoldo di Giovanni to instruct any outstanding apprentice in
Florence. His teaching is presumed to have included the
study of the ancient and contemporary sculpture in the
Medici collection.

14. Accademia di San Luca
(1590s)
• The first to have education as its primary aim was the
Accademia di S Luca founded in Rome in the 1590s under
Federico Zuccaro.
• Its curriculum, taught by visiting tutors, consisted of
copying from drawings or engravings, drawing from
plaster casts and male models, and lectures on subjects
of aesthetic concern. Prizes were awarded.
• It became a model for future academies in other Italian
towns and later elsewhere in Europe.

15. Académie Royale de Peinture
et de Sculpture (1648)
The French Royal Academy was founded in Paris in 1648 by
a group of artists including Charles Le Brun who wished to
break away from the craft-based corporation of S. Luc and
establish the status of painting and sculpture as intellectual
rather than manual pursuits.

16. Académie Royale de Peinture
et de Sculpture (1648)
• Until its dissolution in 1793 (during the French
Revolution), the Académie Royale was responsible for
• codifying the rules of art and imposing strict intellectual
hierarchies
• holding a biennial Salon in the Louvre in Paris that was open
to the public
• awarding the Prix de Rome, a competition for young artists
with a cash prize to study in Rome.

17. Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin, View of the Salon of 1767

18. Jacques-Louis DAVID, Academie (Patroclus), 1780

19. the power of the academy
The Academie was very powerful in its day, exerting a
stranglehold over appropriate subject matter and style. It
would take centuries before this power would be contested.

20. École Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-
Arts (1795)
The École des Beaux-Arts was established in 1795 as a
continuation of the Royal Academy under another name.
It controlled the path to traditional success with its awards
and state commissions.
In the middle of the 19th century, some artists began to
challenge its authority and organize their own exhibitions.

21. Salon des Refusés (1863)
• In 1863, many artists complained that their work had been
turned down by the official Salon jury. Napoleon III
ordered this special event to show their work. It drew huge
crowds, but they came mainly to ridicule the work on
display, and Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe was subjected
to particular abuse.
• It undermined the official Salon and reduced its singular
importance. It also created a precedent for the
Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and future, unofficial
Salons, like the Salon des Indépendants (1884), which
emerged in the later years of the century.

22. The Salon des Refusés could not be held at the Louvre (the official
location of the Salon), but was instead installed in the Palace of
Industry, an exhibition hall that had been built for the 1855 World's

23. James MacNeil WHISTLER
Symphony in White
1861-2
exhibited at the Salon des Refusés

24. Èdouard MANET
Luncheon on the Grass
1863
exhibited at the Salon des Refusés

26. How different was Manet's
painting from the celebrated
"Pastoral Concert" of 1509
(now attributed to Titian) that
hung in the Louvre? Why was
Titian's painting acceptable,
and Manet's outrageous?
There are some key differences alongside
the many similarities. Why does Manet's
nude seem so different from those in the
predecessor picture? Why does his "picnic"
seem so much more unlikely?

27. We compared these two
pictures formally as practice
for the paper assignment.