Academy - Oxford Definition

[From the ancient Greek akadma, a gymnasium near Athens where Plato taught his pupils philosophy] an association or school of artists, scholars, etc. arranged in a professional institution. In recent times the term was first used in Italy in the early 15th century to describe meetings of literati. By the 16th century it had been adopted to describe artists' corporations which included the teaching of subjects such as drawing after antique statuary and the live model, and also the study of anatomy, geometry, perspective, history, etc. Thus painting was raised from the status of a mere craft, as had been the case with medieval artists' guilds, to that of a liberal art. Around 1600 the concept of the artists' academy spread from Italy to Spain and the Netherlands, but took particularly powerful root in Louis XIV's France with the establishment in 1648 of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Its teaching methods remained current in most art schools, such as the English Royal Academy (founded in 1768), until the mid-20th century.