ACADEMIES PAGE — The Practice of Drawing

By the 17th century it was generally accepted that young men should learn the artistic profession in academies run along the lines of the Florentine Accademia del Arte del Disegno. Here they learned to draw first from the Antique, depicting in two dimensions plaster casts after classical sculptures. Only once they mastered these idealised figures were they allowed to draw from live models. Young women were largely excluded from these academies because it was considered improper for them to study the naked male body. Although two women became Founding Members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768, they were only allowed to draw naked models from casts. Academic training and the emphasis on classical ideals continued to be the norm in Europe and the Americas until the late 19th century, by which time Realism and Impressionism had taken artists out of the studio to focus on everyday life and the natural world in all its facets.

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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.