X. The Method of fixing a Standard, and defining the Proportions of the Human Frame, with Direc- tions to the Student in copying the Life XI. On the prevailing Method of treating the History of Painting, with Observations on the Picture of "The Last Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci - 550 LECTURES ОР ROYAL ACADEMICIANS. INTRODUCTION. SOME account of the general rise and progress of European academies of arts will be, perhaps, the most appropriate introduction to a series of academic discourses: to this will be appended slight biographical sketches of the authors, followed by a review of their distinctive characteristics of style, both as regards their subject matter and their mode of expression. It does not appear that the Greeks or Romans had any public or gratuitous, academies of the arts of design. There was at Sicyon a very celebrated private school, more celebrated, indeed, than perhaps any public school of modern times has ever been.† It was originally established by Eupompus, of Sicyon, about 400 B. C., but acquired its greatest renown under his scholar Pamphilus, of Amphipolis, 46 Akaonula. The term originated in the name of a grove or garden near Athens, which was so named from its founder and possessor Academus: atque inter Silvas Academi quærere verum. Hor. Ep. ii. 2. There was a very celebrated gymnasium in this garden; and it was from this that the academic philosophers acquired their distinctive designation. Academia became, even in the time of the Romans, an established name for a place of study. Cicero called a part of his villa at Tusculum Academia. However, we have here no further business with academies than as institutions of the arts of design, as schools of instruction, or assemblies of honour. t Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 36. who succeeded him. The celebrity of this school was so great, that through Pamphilus, says Pliny*, the art of drawing became established as one of the necessary branches of a liberal education. We know little of the system of Pamphilus, but the course of study, according to Pliny, occupied ten years, and the fee of admission was an Attic talent, a large sum. We may conceive, however, a good idea of its celebrity from the statement of Plutarch §, that Apelles entered it, not on account of what he might learn, but in order, merely to obtain the reputation of having studied in the school of Sicyon...The only approximation to a parallel case in modern times is, perhaps, the school of Francesco Squarcione, at Padua, in the earlier half of the fifteenth century. Squarcione was apparently the first private individual who collected a museum of drawings and ancient works of art; and he made it for the express purpose for which the collections of our academies are now made- for the example and instruction of pupils. He owed his collection, which is said to have been the best of its time, entirely to his own exertions; he visited many parts of Greece, and travelled over the whole of Italy, purchasing much, and making drawings of whatever else he thought of value. He was very affluent, and the judicious application of the ability of his scholars tended much to his affluence; they executed many of his commissions. His scholars, at one time, amounted to 137, the largest number of artists, probably, ever brought together by one master: Andrea Mantegna, Marco Zoppo, and Jacopo Bellini were his pupils. || Academies are much older as assemblies of honour than as gratuitous schools of design; but the first institutions of an academic description were entitled societies, and the earliest of them were simple guilds originally assembled from feelings of piety, and they included also decorative artists as well as painters as a part of their body. One of the most ancient of these societies, or guilds, was that of St. Sophia, of Venice (called a School - Scuola), which was established about the middle of the thirteenth century; and both from its date and its title it probably originated with the Greek artists who migrated into the West of Europe, after the capture of Constantinople by the Venetians, in the beginning of that century, 1204 A. D. This society, or scuola, which still exists, but not as a society of painters (for these have separated from it), is distinguished from all the other early societies of painters by the name of its patron, St. Sophia; which almost proves its Byzantine origin, as St. Sophia was the patron saint of the metropolitan church of Constantinople; and St. Luke is, perhaps, without exception, the patron of all other similar societies of painters. There are, according to Zanetti*, statutes preserved in its archives, in the Scuola de' Dipintori, of Santa Sofia, of a date as early as 1290, in which still earlier statutes are referred to. The present scuola was built in 1532, from funds bequeathed for the purpose by Vincenzio Catena; and the painters continued members of the society until 1682, when a distinct college of painters, or an academy more according to the modern system, was founded, chiefly through the exertions of Pietro Liberi, who was appointed its first priore, or president. This was, however, still not a school: it was first established as a school by a decree of the Venetian senate in 1724; and, by a similar decree, an academy in 1766. The first distribution of prizes took place in 1774; and in 1782 it received new statutes as the Public Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture-Pubblica Veneta Accademia, &c. its present title is Reale Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venezia. The collection of pictures in the academy is the largest and finest in Venice, and it possesses also a valuable collection of casts from the antique, and from the works of Canova, and other modern masters. The present academy building is what was formerly the Scuola della Carità, built by Palladio, but some modern additions have been made to it.† The old corporation of the painters of Siena, "Università de' Dipintori," was probably as old an institution as the "Scuola de' Dipintori" of Venice. Della Valle has printed the statutes of this society of the year 1355 in his Lettere Sanesi; but he supposes the society may have been esta * Della Pittura Veneziana, &c. Venice, 1771. + Guida per la Reale Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venezia, Fiorillo, Geschichte der Mahlerei, vol. ii. Göttingen, 1801. blished a century earlier. St. Luke was its patron; and it was a fine of ten florins for any painter to absent himself from the annual festival on Saint Luke's day, when he was obliged to carry a wax torch in procession. The statute which orders this form and penalty for its omission is dated 1367, and its heading explains the reason of the resolution: it is as follows "In the name of the Almighty God, and of his blessed mother, the Holy Virgin Mary, and of all the saints of the court of Heaven, and especially of the blessed Luke, the Evangelist, chief and guide of all painters, who painted and drew the image of the Virgin Mary, mother of the Son of God." The origin of the fable here alluded to is obscure; it existed already in the time of John Damascenus, who lived in the eighth century: there are several pictures of the Virgin and Child still extant in Rome and elsewhere, which are attributed to, and vulgarly believed to have been painted by, St. Luke. D. M. Manni first ventured to show the absurdity of attributing these pictures to the Evangelist.* As he erred, however, in assigning its origin to the confounding with the saint an old Florentine painter of the name of Luca, called Santo, for his piety, his argument was weakened by Tiraboschi, who showed that the tradition was of a much earlier origin than this Florentine painter of the twelfth century. There was, however, a Greek hermit of a much earlier age, of the name of Lucas, who passed his time in painting pictures of the Virgin; and thus the error originated in confounding Luke the Hermit with Luke the Evangelist.† There was also a society of sculptors (Magistri Lapidum) at Siena, whose statutes were translated into the vulgar tongue as early as 1292: the original statutes may have been framed as early as 1233, and not later than 1270 or 1286, as they were made under a certain government of Siena, which originated in 1233, and ceased at one of the latter dates mentioned. There were sixty-one sculptors at Siena at this time. A society of painters was also established in Florence in • Dell' errore che persiste di attribuirsi le pitture al Santo Evangelista. Florence, 1766. † See Lanzi, Storia Pittorica, &c. |