academy and the limits of painting in seventeenth-century France

Study on the creation of an important European institution of art, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Founded in 1648, the Academy institutionalized the discourse around painting and thus had an immediate impact on the making of art in France, becoming a decisive influence on painting until the close of the nineteenth century. In the process of forging an identity itself, the Academy redefined almost every aspect of art making: the nature of art training, the sources of patronage, the social standing of the artist, and the place of the arts in national life.