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Giorgio Vasari, Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, 1567-1572, wash, pencil, grey-brown ink on dark yellow paper, Madrid, Museo del Prado.
This is a preparatory drawing for Vasari´s fresco of St. Luke Painting the Virgin in the Cappella di San Luca in S. Annunziata, Florence. Saint Luke was the patron saint of painters, and this is one of many works to represent him painting a divine apparition of the Virgin and Child. By the time Vasari produced this, he had announced his intention to revive the old Compagnia di San Luca or artists´ guild, founded in 1349, and to hold meetings in the chapel. His project came to fruition with the foundation of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno in 1563, under the patronage of Duke Cosimo de’ Medici. The Roman Accademia di San Luca was relaunched by Federico Zuccaro in 1593.
Cornelis Cort (after after Jan van der Straet), The Practice of the Visual Arts, 1578, Engraving, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By the second half of the sixteenth century, artists conducted anatomical studies in more institutional settings, such as the one evoked in Cornelis Cort’s allegorical engraving, The Practice of the Visual Arts. Teaching academies, such as the Accademia del Disegno in Florence and the Haarlem academy founded by Hendrick Goltzius, Karel van Mander and Cornelis van Haarlem in the 1580s, provided the facilities necessary for the close observation and study of dissected bodies. As part of their training, young artists studied the human figure progressively, beginning with the skeleton and then moving on to other parts of the body, such as the muscles.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Man Drawing from a Plaster Cast, 1655, etching, Private Collection.
Michiel Sweerts, The Drawing Class, 1660, oil on canvas, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum.
Gian Battista Tiepolo, Piazzetta's Academy: Artists Drawing a Nude in an Academy by Lamplight, ca. 1720, black and white chalk on blue paper, Private Collection.
Philippe Joseph Tassaert, A Drawing Academy, 1764, grey black and grey wash draw with the brush over black, Private Collection.
Jean-Robert Ango and Hubert Robert, An Artist Drawing Beside a Statue of Jupiter, 1764, black chalk counterproof over red chalk, Private Collection.
Anonymous (French School), A Drawing Academy, ca. 1770, red chalk, Private Collection.
The Drawing Academy (after J. Wright), 1772, print, New York, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Jean-Philippe Guy le Gentil, Comte de Paroy, The Drawing Academy, after F. G. Menagéot, 1787, etching with roulette and aquatint, Private Collection.
Tom Heywood, Two Ladies in a Drawing School, 1868, watercolour, Private Collection.
J. Bluck after T. Rowlandson and A.C. Pugin, A Male Nude Seated Before a Life Class at the Royal Academy, 1880, aquatint, London, Wellcome Trust.