This book is about a family tree: the line of descent that can be traced from Perugino in Italy in the fifteenth century to Edouard Manet in France in the nineteenth. It is not the usual kind of genealogy, of those connected by blood, more an 'apostolic succession', following the way in which art in Europe was taught, from one generation to the next, from 1480 to 1880. The book reveals how the nature and methods of artistic instruction changed over the centuries, from the guild system and the individual workshop to the academy and the establishment of state institutions dedicated to the purpose, as exemplified in France.
The sequence that connects Perugino with Manet is made up of just eighteen artists. Some are household names such as Raphael and David, while others, such as Horace Le Blanc and Louis Boullogne, have fallen into obscurity. All are connected by a common bond: the belief that art could be taught and learned, and that those lessons would, in the nature of things, be passed on from an older artist to a younger, as generation succeeded generation. With Manet, the succession came to a halt, marking the end of a great tradition but also the beginning of the modern art world, in which the very desirability of teaching art has been thrown into question.
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