Teaching artists by copying the Masters
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, workshop and guild traditions were based on the principle of emulation, with apprentices learning by copying the works of their masters. In painting, the practice was gradually regularised and systematised in the curricula of emergent national academies of art, beginning at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and in Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s program at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris.
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