Editing Academic art (section)

===The first art academies in Renaissance Italy===
[[File:Zucchi, Jacopo - Vasari, Giorgio - Uffizi ICCD.jpg|thumb|[[Giorgio Vasari]] helped found the [[Accademia delle Arti del Disegno|Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno]] (Academy and Company for the Arts of Drawing) in 1563]]

The first academy of art was founded in [[Florence]] by [[Cosimo I de' Medici]], on 13 January 1563, under the influence of the architect [[Giorgio Vasari]], who called it the [[Accademia delle Arti del Disegno|Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno]] (Academy and Company for the Arts of Drawing) as it was divided in two different operative branches. While the company was a kind of corporation that every working artist in Tuscany could join, the academy comprised only the most eminent artists of Cosimo's court, and had the task of overseeing all Florentine artistic activities, including teaching, and safeguarding local cultural traditions. Among the founding members were [[Michelangelo]], [[Bartolomeo Ammannati]], [[Agnolo Bronzino]] and [[Francesco da Sangallo]]. In this institution, students learned the "arti del disegno" (a term coined by Vasari) and heard lectures on [[anatomy]] and [[geometry]].<ref>[http://www.librari.beniculturali.it/opencms/opencms/it/istculturali/istituti/istituto_172.html Accademia delle Arti del Disegno] (in Italian). Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Direzione Generale per le Biblioteche, gli Istituti Culturali e il Diritto d'Autore. Accessed October 2014.</ref><ref>[[Gauvin Alexander Bailey]], ''Santi di Tito and the Florentine Academy: Solomon Building the Temple in the Capitolo of the Accademia del Disegno (1570–71)'', Apollo CLV, 480 (February 2002): {{p.|31–39}}</ref><ref>Adorno, Francesco. (1983). ''Accademie e istituzioni culturali a Firenze'' {{in lang|it}}. Florence: Olschki.</ref> The Accademia's fame spread quickly, to the point that, within just five months of its founding, important [[Venice|Venetian]] artists such as [[Titian]], [[Francesco Salviati (painter)|Salviati]], [[Tintoretto]] and [[Palladio]] applied for admission, and in 1567, King [[Philip II of Spain]] consulted it about plans for [[El Escorial]].<ref>Pevsner, Nikolaus. ''Academies of Art: Past and Present''. The University Press, 1940. {{p.|110–111}}</ref>

Another academy, the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma (Academy of Painters and Sculptors of Rome), better known as the [[Accademia di San Luca]] (named after the patron saint of painters, [[St. Luke]]), was founded about a decade later in [[Rome]]. It served an educational function and was more concerned with [[art theory]] than the Florentine one, attaching great importance to attending theoretical lectures, debates and drawing classes.<ref>Carl Goldstein (1996). ''Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers''. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-55988-X}}.</ref> Twelve academics were immediately appointed as teachers, establishing a series of disciplinary measures for studies and instituting a system of awards for the most capable students.<ref>Pevsner, Nikolaus. ''Academies of Art: Past and Present''. The University Press, 1940. {{p.|118–119}}</ref>

In 1582, the painter and art instructor [[Annibale Carracci]] opened his very influential [[Accademia degli Incamminati|Accademia dei Desiderosi]] (Academy of the Desirous) in [[Bologna]] without official support; in some ways, this was more like a traditional artist's studio, but that he felt the need to label it as an "academy" demonstrates the attraction of the idea at the time.<ref>Claudio Strinati, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=--0ckszMavAC&dq=incamminati+accademia+carracci&pg=PA8 Annibale Carracci]'' {{in lang|it}}, Firenze, Giunti Editore, 2001 {{ISBN|88-09-02051-0}}</ref>

[[File:Academic students.jpg|thumb|left|[[Carlo Maratti]], ''The Academy of Drawing'', {{circa|1704–1709}}. An allegory of academic teaching dedicated "to young students of drawing".]]

The emergence of art academies in the 16th century was due to the need to respond to new social demands. Several states, which were moving towards [[Absolutism (European history)|absolutism]], realized that it was necessary to create an art that specifically identified them and served as a symbol of civic unity, and was also capable of symbolically consolidating the status of their rulers. In this process, the [[Catholic Church]], then the greatest political force and social unifier in Europe, began to lose some of its influence as a result of the greater [[secularization]] of societies. [[Sacred art]], by far the largest field of artistic expression throughout the [[Middle Ages]], came to coexist with an expanding profane art, derived from [[Classical Antiquity|classical]] sources, which had been experiencing a slow revival since the 12th century, and which, by the time of the [[Renaissance]], had been established as the most prestigious cultural reference and model of quality.<ref>Duro, Paul. ''Academic Theory: 1550-1800''. In Smith, Paul & Wilde, Carolyn. ''A companion to art theory''. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. {{p.|89–90}}</ref><ref>Tanner, Jeremy. ''The sociology of art: a reader''. Routledge, 2003. {{p.|4}}</ref>

This re-emergence of [[classicism]] required artists to become more cultured, in order to competently transpose this reference to the [[visual arts]]. At the same time, the old system of artistic production, organized by [[guild]]s—class associations of an artisanal nature, linked more to mechanical crafts than to intellectual erudition—began to be seen as outdated and socially unworthy, as artists began to desire equality with the intellectual versed in the [[liberal art]]s, since art itself began to be seen not only as a technical task, as it had been for centuries, but mainly as a way of acquiring and transmitting knowledge. In this new context, painting and sculpture began to be seen as theorizable, just as other arts such as literature and especially poetry were already. However, if on the one hand the artists did rise socially, on the other they lost the security of market insertion that the guild system provided, having to live in the uncertain expectation of individual protection by some [[Patronage|patron]].<ref>Pevsner, Nikolaus. ''Academies of Art: Past and Present''. The University Press, 1940. {{p.|97–98}}</ref>