How Artists Were Trained: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era

Today, if you want to paint, you can simply buy colors at a store and start on a canvas. In the Renaissance, it didn't work that way. Becoming an artist was a long, grueling journey, very similar to that of a carpenter or a blacksmith. In this article, we explore how a master artist was born and how their role has changed over time.

The workshop as a school of life

In the Renaissance, painters did not work alone in a room. An artist lived and worked in his master's bottega (workshop). Imagine a workshop as a large artisanal laboratory filled with dust, wood, and the smell of oil.

A boy would enter the workshop around the age of ten or twelve. At first, he didn't touch the brushes. His tasks were to sweep the floors, grind stones to make pigments, and prepare wooden panels. It was physical, precise work. Only after years of practice would the master allow him to paint the less important parts of a composition, such as a sky or a meadow.

A famous example is Verrocchio's workshop in Florence. Here, a young Leonardo da Vinci learned the secrets of the trade. It is said that Leonardo painted an angel so beautiful in one of his master's paintings that it convinced Verrocchio never to touch a brush again. In the workshop, you learned by doing—by watching the hands of those who were more experienced.

The transition to academies and the control of rules

As time passed, the painter's work became more theoretical. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, academies were established. If the workshop was a laboratory, the academy was a true university.

In the academies, students no longer ground their own colors. They spent hours drawing plaster statues and live models. There were rigid rules about what was considered beautiful. To become famous, one had to win prizes and follow the style approved by the professors.

Drawing was the foundation of everything. It was believed that a good painter must first know how to construct space with millimeter precision. Only after mastering drawing could one move on to color. This system made artists technically proficient, but it sometimes stifled their imagination because they had to obey so many rules.

The market and the modern artist

In the nineteenth century, things changed again. Artists began to grow tired of academic rules. They wanted to paint what they felt, not what the professors ordered.

The figure of the modern artist working in a private studio was born. There were no longer large workshops with dozens of assistants. The painter created his works and tried to sell them through art dealers or public exhibitions. Paints began to be sold in ready-to-use tubes, allowing painters to work outdoors.

An example of this change is the Impressionists. They rejected the academies and began to paint sunlight directly in the fields. They no longer waited for a commission from a king or a church; they painted for themselves and for a market of private collectors seeking novelty and originality.

Did painters of the past do everything themselves?

Many people think that every brushstroke of a great Old Master painting belongs to the famous artist. In reality, this is almost never the case. Great masters like Raphael or Rubens had dozens of assistants.

The master decided on the general design and painted the difficult parts, such as faces and hands. The apprentices completed the clothing, the backgrounds, or the animals. This does not diminish the value of the work; it was a way to produce many high-quality paintings in a short time. The painting was the product of a team led by a superior mind.

Takeaways

Learning to look at art history means understanding that a painting is also an object constructed through hard work. Here are three points to remember:

• In the Renaissance, art was a manual trade learned from childhood in a workshop.
• The academies transformed painting into an intellectual discipline based on drawing.
• The modern artist was born when painters began to decide for themselves what and how to paint.

The next time you see an old painting, try to look for the differences between the various parts. You might discover the hand of an apprentice hidden in a corner.

Put it into practice now

You have read the method. Now practice it in the field.