The Free Drawing School (Ecole royale gratuite de dessin) fulfilled the Enlightenment ideal of an education open to all-rich and poor, male and female - and of an education founded not on apprenticeship and the teachings of one master, but on ideas of every sort and the practical application of universal principles. Established in 1766 by royal decree, the school survived the political turmoil of the Revolution and of the decades that followed. The surviving documents, engravings, drawings, and objects that can be traced to the school, as well as the impressive number of artisans who trained there - such as craftsman Claude Odiot, sculptor Sebastien Cave, architect Charles Percier, and painter Girodet - and the important figures in eighteenth-century cultural life, including Voltaire, Lavoisier, the duc de Choiseul, and Madame du Barry, who were involved with the school, attest to its enormous importance in the development of the decorative arts in France.
- ISBN10 0892367784
- ISBN13 9780892367788
- Publish Date 2 February 2005
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 9 May 2011
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Getty Trust Publications
- Imprint J Paul Getty Trust Publications,US
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 176
- Language English