Reception piece
In art, a reception piece is a work submitted by an artist to an academy for approval as part of the requirements for admission to membership. The piece is representative of the artist's work, the organization's judgement of its skill may or may not form part of the criteria for accepting a new entrant; the work itself is retained by the academy, many academies have large and valuable collections acquired in this way. Alternative terms include diploma work at the Royal Academy in London, diploma piece, in France at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, tableau de réception or morceau de réception; the term masterpiece originated in the same way under the earlier system of guilds, including those for artists. The requirement to submit a reception or diploma piece is related to the practice in the medieval period and of requiring a craftsman to submit one or more virtuoso or test-pieces to a guild to demonstrate his skill before he was granted membership. Membership of an academy may be by technique and limited by numbers or age.
The Royal Academy, for instance, at one time limited the number of engravers who could join, where artistic styles and tastes change, new categories of membership may be created as necessary. When Antoine Watteau applied to join the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, there was no suitable category for his fête galante works, so the academy created one rather than reject his application, describing him as a "peintre des festes galantes". While this acknowledged Watteau as the originator of the genre, it prevented him being recognised as a history painter, the highest class of painter, the only one from which the academy's professors were drawn. Charles-Antoine Coypel, the son of its director said: "The charming paintings of this gracious painter would be a bad guide for whoever wished to paint the Acts of the Apostles."In 1728, when Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was admitted to the same academy for The Ray, it was as a "painter of animals and fruits". Masterpiece Reception pieces visitor trail at the Louvre
Pierre Mignard
Pierre Mignard or Pierre Mignard I, called "Mignard le Romain" to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas Mignard, was a French painter known for his religious and mythological scenes and portraits. He was a near-contemporary of the Premier Peintre du Roi Charles Le Brun with whom he engaged in a bitter, life-long rivalry. Pierre Mignard was born at Troyes in 1612 as the son of Marie Gallois, he came from a family of artisans. He was the younger brother of Nicolas, who became a painter and etcher, active in Avignon and was known as Mignard d'Avignon. Nicolas had two sons, Paul who became a painter and etcher and Pierre who became a painter and architect. To distinguish his nephew Pierre from his uncle, the nephew was called "Pierre II" or "Le Chevalier". Pierre Mignard trained in Bourges with the Mannerist painter Jean Boucher, he spent time making copies of the Mannerist works in the château of Fontainebleau. He studied for a period in the studio of Simon Vouet. Mignard left for Rome in 1635, it is because of his long residence in Rome that he got the nickname'Mignard le Romaine'.
In Rome he painted religious commissions. He was known for his many images of the Madonna and Child, they were so popular that they were referred to as "Mignardises." He painted altarpieces. His compatriot Nicolas Poussin hired Mignard to make copies of is works, he was active as a reproductive engraver making copies after Annibale Carracci. Mignard's life-long interest in portrait painting was developed at this time and he painted portraits of subsequent popes and prominent members of the Italian nobility, he travelled to Northern Italy where he visited Bologna, Mantua and Venice. His reputation was such that he was summoned to Paris in 1657 by Cardinal Mazarin, he travelled back via Avignon. Here he met the dramatist Molière, who became a close friend and of whom he painted several portraits. In Paris he became a popular portrait painter, he found favor with king Louis XIV. Mignard became a rival of the leading French painter of that time and first painter to the King, Charles Le Brun, he declined to enter the Academy.
Mignard opposed the authority of the Academy. His brother Nicolas and his nephew Paul, his pupil, chose the side of Le Brun against Pierre, which led to a break in the relationship. With the death of Le Brun in 1690, the situation changed. Mignard succeeded to all the posts held by his opponent, he died in 1695 at Paris. Mignard was active as a portrait painter, he produced mythological and religious scenes. Soon after his return to Paris, Mignard was able to attract the patronage of important personalities who commissioned portraits of him, his sitters included Turenne, Molière, Maintenon, La Vallière, Sévigné, Descartes. He was thus one of the most successful portrait painters of his time although according to some art historians the most boring one. Many of compositions were engraved by Gérard Audran, Pieter van Schuppen, Robert Nanteuil, Gérard Edelinck, Antoine Masson, François de Poilly and others. There is a good selection of works by Pierre and Pierre II in Avignon at the Musée Calvet; the Courtauld Institute of Art, Harvard University Art Museums, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, Kunst Indeks Danmark, the Louvre, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Musée des Augustins, Musée Ingres, Museo Lombardi, the Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum and Versailles are among the public collections holding works by Pierre Mignard.
French Baroque and Classicism List of paintings by Pierre Mignard Media related to Pierre Mignard at Wikimedia Commons
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. Starting on 14 May 1643 when Louis was 4 years old, his reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power. Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital, he sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.
Louis encouraged and benefited from the work of prominent political and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, André Charles Boulle, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine, Marais, Le Brun, Bossuet, Le Vau, Charles, Claude Perrault, Le Nôtre. Under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished; the revocation forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis' long reign, France was the leading European power, it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of the Spanish Succession. There were two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce and pique", Louis sensed that warfare was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war.
He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he was named Louis Dieudonné and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years, his mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as his birth a miracle of God. Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, his lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, make the concession of appointing her head of the council. Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time.
Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed. Both were interested in food and theatre, it is likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother; this long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as: "Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed by blood." It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule. During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children François de Villeroy, divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy. On 14 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris.
This action made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers, she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne nominated Saint Vincent de Paul as her spiritual adviser, which helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question. Anne kept the direction of religious policy in her hand until 1661. Anne wanted to give her son a victorious kingdom, her rationales for choosing Mazarin were his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, she left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin. The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor of France Pierre Séguier, in his post. Séguier was the pers
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts - École supérieure des Arts de la Ville de Bruxelles, in Dutch Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Brussel, is the Belgian art school, established in Brussels in the Kingdom of Belgium. It was founded in 1711. At the beginning housed in a single room in the city hall, in 1876 the school moved to a former convent and orphanage in the Rue du Midi, rehabilitated by the architect Pierre-Victor Jamaer, where the school still operates; the Bombardment of Brussels by French troops in 1695 was the most destructive event in the history of this town. After the reconstruction of the Grand Place in Brussels there was a turning point for the history of art in the Netherlands. In 1711 the City of Brussels gave. One room in the city hall was freed; the guilds of painting, sculpture and other art areas should have its own training center. On October 16 of the same year the establishment of a new school took place. Model was the Accademia del Designo to Florence. In 1752 they moved to the hostel d'Golden Head.
In 1762 the Duke Charles Alexander of Lorraine took over the school after a long crisis. Henceforth, their line was in his hands, his attention rested on the architecture. In 1768 Barnabé Guimord established the first architecture class. Through sales and issue of shares additional funds were made available. A year the school returned to the town hall. In 1795, the Academy was closed after the conquest of Brussels by the French revolutionary troops. In 1829 the school moved into the Granvelle Palace on. One year François-Joseph Navez became director. There was new life in the Académie, while the sculpture has been promoted, he expanded it. In 1832 it went to the basement of the left wing of the Industrial Palace. From 1835 til 1836 the plans of Navez were implemented. In 1836 it was awarded the privilege to wear "royale" as part of their name; the panel painting was declared to another important department. This was based on the old painting of the first golden age of Dutch painting. However, there was some time tensions at the Academy to the yet propagated Style of Neo-Classicism.
In addition to painting and sculpture architectural education became more important. Only they never achieved the status of a pioneering training facility. In 1876 the Academy moved to the school buildings in the Rue du Midi, it is the building of the former monastery Boogaard. The architect Pierre-Victor Jamaer was able to link the whole school in the limited space of the existing ensemble; the facade was redesigned by the architectural style of classicism. Till today this academy is here. From 5 January 1889 women were allowed to participate in a class for advanced students. At the end of the 19th century was the founding of the modern LUCA Campus Sint-Lukas Brussels a strong competition. Meanwhile, ARBA is one of the 16 art schools of the French Community of Belgium. Under the director Charles van der Stappen the doctrine came to this university to an greater prestige. Literature and photography were part of the training offer. In the European art scene around the turn of the century Brussels drew forth in addition to his training center in the shadow of Paris.
Since 1889 Brussels was the uncrowned capital of Art Nouveau in the architecture, which had its triumphal procession through Prof. Horta; the Academy managed the step to another center of the avant-garde in the panel painting. From the Academy and its students went influence on the development of Realism, the Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Post Impressionism and the newly incipient Expressionism. Everything was precursor of Modern Art. In the year 1912 Victor Horta had made changes to the organisation of this school. A system of studios was created, as it was recommended by Paul Lambot. In 1936 the Royal Order was made to the formation of the separate Department of Architecture. In 1949 the rank of a small department for planning and urban development was established, too; the architectural studies got the rank of university education. In 1972, the Department of artistic humanities was established. At last in 1977 the Department of Architecture had acquired its autonomy. In 1977 the Institute Supérieur d'Architecture Victor Horta, named after the Art Nouveau architect and former director, was founded.
In 1980, the higher education of the second degree and new courses at the Academy of Fine Arts are presented. Today programs are offered for Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in the fields of design and media and offered doctoral studies, too; the Academy has been an ESA with a university orientation. In addition, it is part of Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium RASAB, founded in 2001, it is responsible for the task of promoting activities of the affiliated members and organizations here and coordinate. - Her tasks include projects at home and abroad. Includes some of the most famous names in Belgian painting and architecture: James Ensor, René Magritte, Paul Delvaux, creator of The Smurfs, Kali Barnabé Guimard, architect Tilman-François Suys, architect François-Joseph Navez, Belgian neo-classical painter. Louis Gallait, painter Eugène Simonis, sculptor Jean-François Portaels, Belgian painter Charles van der Stappen, sculptor Jef Lambeaux, sculptor Jacques van Lalaing and painter Victor Horta, architect Paul Saintenoy, architect Alfred Bastien, sculptor Léon Devos, painterThe school is sometimes confused with the Royal
Accademia di San Luca
The Accademia di San Luca, was founded in 1577 as an association of artists in Rome, with the purpose of elevating the work of "artists", which included painters and architects, above that of mere craftsmen. Other founders included Pietro Olivieri; the Academy was named after Saint Luke the evangelist who, legend has it, made a portrait of the Virgin Mary, thus became the patron saint of painters' guilds. From the late 16th century until it moved to its present location at the Palazzo Carpegna, it was based in an urban block by the Roman Forum and although these buildings no longer survive, the Academy church of Santi Luca e Martina, does. Designed by the Baroque architect, Pietro da Cortona, its main facade overlooks the Forum; the Academy's predecessor was the Compagnia di San Luca, a guild of painters and miniaturists, which had its statutes and privileges renewed at the much earlier date of 17 December 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV. Included among its founding members, was the famous painter Melozzo da Forlì, as he was the pictor papalis in that period.
In 1605, Pope Paul V granted the Academy the right to pardon a condemned man on the feast of St. Luke. In the 1620s, Urban VIII extended its rights to decide, considered an artist in Rome and it came under the patronage of his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini. In 1633, Urban VIII gave it the right to tax all artists as well as art-dealers, monopolize all public commissions; these latter measures raised strong opposition and were poorly enforced. Over the early years, the papal authorities exerted a large degree of control over the leadership of the institution; some modern critics have stated "with the ostensible purpose of giving artists a higher education and the real one of asserting the Church's control over art,". The prìncipi of the institution have included some of the pre-eminent painters of the 17th century, including Domenichino, Bernini and Romanelli. However, many prominent artists never were admitted to the academy. Artistic issues debated within the Academy included the Cortona-Sacchi controversy about the number of figures in a painting.
Disdain was espressed by many academicians for the Bamboccianti. Giovanni Bellori gave famous lectures on painting in the Academy. In the early 18th century, the painter Marco Benefial was inducted, expelled for criticizing the academy as an insider; the Academy is still active. From the beginning, the statutes of the Academy directed that each candidate-academician was to donate a work of his art in perpetual memory and a portrait, thus the Academy, in its current premises in the 16th-century Palazzo Carpegna, located in the Piazza dell'Accademia di San Luca, has accumulated a unique collection of paintings and sculptures, including about 500 portraits, as well as an outstanding collection of drawings. Prominent artists to become Principi of the academy over the first 200 years include: Claude Lorrain was a member but declined the offer of being principi; the Academy can boast modern members, including sculptors Ernesto Biondi and Piccirilli Brothers. Accademia Nazionale di San Luca Official site Galleria Nazionale di San Luca Accademia San Luca The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c.
1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma
Eustache Le Sueur
Eustache Le Sueur or Lesueur was a French artist and one of the founders of the French Academy of Painting. He is known for his paintings of religious subjects, he was born in Paris. His father, Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, placed him with Vouet, in whose studio he distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the academy of painting and sculpture, was one of the first twelve professors of that body; some paintings, illustrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which were reproduced in tapestry, brought him into notice, his reputation was further enhanced by a series of decorations in the mansion of Lambert de Thorigny, which he left uncompleted, for their execution was interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now missing, although they were entered in Bailly's inventory. In the gallery of the Louvre are the Angel and Hagar, from the mansion of De Tonnay Charente.
These last have more personal character than anything else Le Sueur produced, much of their original beauty survives in spite of injuries and restorations and removal from the wall to canvas. The Louvre possesses many fine drawings, of which Le Sueur left an incredible quantity, chiefly executed in black and white chalk, his pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife's brother, Theodore Goussé, three brothers of his own, as well as Claude Lefèbvre and Pierre Patel the landscape painter. Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran, Drevet, Chauveau and Desplaces, it is considered that Le Sueur's work lent itself to the engraver's art, as he had a delicate perception of varied shades of grave and elevated sentiment, possessed the power to render them. His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a fine taste, but his works fail to please because, producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types, because he saw colour except with the cold and clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Le Sueur, Eustache". Encyclopædia Britannica. 16. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 499–500. Life of St. Bruno gallery at the Louvre
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau, better known as Antoine Watteau, was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air; some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian ballet. Watteau was born in October 1684 in the town of Valenciennes which had passed from the Spanish Netherlands to France, his father, Jean-Philippe Watteau, was a roofer given to brawling. Showing an early interest in painting, Jean-Antoine may have been apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gérin, a local painter. Jean-Antoine's first artistic subjects were charlatans selling quack remedies on the streets of Valenciennes. Watteau left for Paris in 1702. There he found employment in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition.
By 1705 he was employed as an assistant by the painter Claude Gillot, whose work represented a reaction against the turgid official art of Louis XIV's reign. In Gillot's studio Watteau became acquainted with the characters of the commedia dell'arte, a favorite subject of Gillot's that would become one of Watteau's lifelong passions. Afterward he moved to the workshop of Claude Audran III, an interior decorator, under whose influence he began to make drawings admired for their consummate elegance. Audran was the curator of the Palais du Luxembourg, where Watteau was able to see the magnificent series of canvases painted by Peter Paul Rubens for Queen Marie de Medici; the Flemish painter would become one of his major influences, together with the Venetian masters he would study in the collection of his patron and friend, the banker Pierre Crozat. In 1709 Watteau was rejected by the Academy. In 1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy.
He took five years to deliver the required "reception piece", but it was one of his masterpieces: the Pilgrimage to Cythera called the Embarkation for Cythera. Watteau lacked aristocratic patrons. Among his most famous paintings, beside the two versions of the Pilgrimage to Cythera, one in the Louvre, the other in the Schloss Charlottenburg, are Pierrot, Fêtes venitiennes, Love in the Italian Theater, Love in the French Theater, "Voulez-vous triompher des belles?" and Mezzetin. The subject of his hallmark painting, Pierrot, is an actor in a white satin costume who stands isolated from his four companions, staring ahead with an enigmatic expression on his face. Watteau's final masterpiece, the Shop-sign of Gersaint, exits the pastoral forest locale for a mundane urban set of encounters. Painted at Watteau's own insistence, "in eight days, working only in the mornings... in order to warm up his fingers", this sign for the shop in Paris of the paintings dealer Edme François Gersaint is the final curtain of Watteau's theatre.
It has been compared with Las Meninas as a meditation on illusion. The scene is an art gallery where the façade has magically vanished, the gallery and street in the canvas are fused into one contiguous drama. Watteau alarmed his friends by a carelessness about his future and financial security, as if foreseeing he would not live for long. In fact he had been physically fragile since childhood. In 1720, he travelled to London, England, to consult Dr. Richard Mead, one of the most fashionable physicians of his time and an admirer of Watteau's work. However, London's damp and smoky air offset any benefits of medicines. Watteau returned to France and spent his last few months on the estate of his patron, Abbé Haranger, where he died in 1721 from tuberculous laryngitis, at the age of 36; the Abbé said Watteau was semi-conscious and mute during his final days, clutching a paint brush and painting imaginary paintings in the air. His nephew, Louis Joseph Watteau, son of Antoine's brother Noël Joseph Watteau, grand nephew, François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, son of Louis, followed Antoine into painting.
Little known during his lifetime beyond a small circle of his devotees, Watteau "was mentioned but in contemporary art criticism and usually reprovingly". Sir Michael Levey once noted that Watteau "created, the concept of the individualistic artist loyal to himself, himself alone". If his immediate followers and Pater, would depict the unabashed frillery of aristocratic romantic pursuits, Watteau in a few masterpieces anticipates an art about art, the world of art as seen through the eyes of an artist. In contrast to the Rococo whimsicality and licentiousness cultivated by Boucher and Fragonard in the part of Louis XV's reign, Watteau's theatrical panache is tinged with a note of sympathy and sadness at the transience of love and other earthly delights. Famously, the Victorian essayist Walter Pater wrote of Watteau: "He was always a seeker after something in the world, there in no satisfying measure, or not at all."Watteau was a prolific draftsman. His drawings executed in trois crayons technique, were collected and admired by those, such as Caylus or Gersaint, who found fault wit
