Joshua Reynolds And The Royal Academy
A major force in British art
The Royal Academy was created on a wave of patriotism encouraging the “cultivation” and “improvement” of indigenous British art, which had been dominated by foreigners for too long.
In classical times, academia was a grove in Athens where Plato taught philosophy to students from all parts of ancient Greece. The term was revived nearly 2000 years later in Renaissance Florence where Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as the “Magnificent,” sponsored an informal “academy” in which artists like the young Michelangelo studied and copied antique sculpture.
In the following decades, an Accademia del Disegno (Academy of Drawing) was formally founded in the city by Giorgio Vasari and Cosimo de’ Medici; similar schools were established in Rome and Bologna. The Bolognese Academy, founded by the Caracci, stressed the importance of drawing from the nude model, a feature which became the cornerstone of future academic teaching.
In the next century, the idea was taken up by the absolutist French monarchy, who established an Academy of Sculpture and Painting in 1648 which imposed a rigid hierarchy on the arts. In this hierarchy, history painting was designated the noblest category, second came portraiture and below that landscape and genre painting.
