Communauté des maîtres peintres et sculpteurs de Paris

The Communauté des maîtres peintres et sculpteurs de Paris (community of painters and sculptors of Paris), called maîtrise for short , was founded in 1391 under the name Communauté des maistres de l'art de peinture et sculpture, graveurs et enluminers de ceste ville et faubourgs de Paris founded in Paris . On August 12, 1391 , the Prévôt de Paris Jean de Folleville confirmed their statutes, which were renewed several times in the following centuries (May 24, 1558, January 5, 1583, January 16, 1619, 1622) before the community in February 1776 - at the same time as other guild-like communities and guilds - was dissolved by royal order.

In addition to painters , sculptors , engravers and illuminators who viewed their métier as a craft , members were also artisans in the modern sense and art dealers . About a hundred years before the founding of the community, a total of 33 painters were registered in Paris according to the tax register registre de la taille of 1292, in 1627 275 masters were organized in the maîtrise , in 1697 there were 552. Their number rose by 1764 on 1140.

The declared main objectives were the quality control of the materials and colors used, as well as the works produced, and the protection of its members by excluding outside competitors. In particular, it banned the importation of works manufactured beyond the country's borders. The statutes of 1619 explicitly forbade any person, regardless of their trade or status, outside of the Foire Saint-Germain held in the monastery district of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and other fairs held in Paris and its vicinity, from importing paintings from abroad.

The artists' association had its own art school in Paris, the Académie de Saint-Luc . The urge to break out of the guild obligation and to avoid the associated taxation prompted several painters, including Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), to seek the support of the Queen Mother and regent Anna of Austria and the co-regent of Mazarins in order to found the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture , which was enforced on February 1, 1648. This broke the strict laws of the Communauté des maîtres and subverted its influence until its dissolution in 1776.

literature

Alfred Fierro: Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris , Paris, 1996, Ed. Robert Laffont, ISBN 2-221-07862-4
Jules Guiffrey: Histoire de l'Académie de Saint Luc , in Archives de l'Art français , nouvelle période, Volume IX, 1915, p. 177

Footnotes

^ "Il est interdit à toutes personnes, de quelque mestier et condition qu'elles soient, de faire venir aucuns tableaux de Flandres, ou d'ailleurs, hors les temps de la foire Saint-Germain, et autres qui se tiennent en ladite Ville et Banlieue "(Statutes of 1619, quoted by Alfred Fierro in: Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris , p. 1062, Paris, 1996, Ed. Robert Laffont)

[1] "Il est interdit à toutes personnes, de quelque mestier et condition qu'elles soient, de faire venir aucuns tableaux de Flandres, ou d'ailleurs, hors les temps de la foire Saint-Germain, et autres qui se tiennent en ladite Ville et Banlieue "(Statutes of 1619, quoted by Alfred Fierro in: Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris , p. 1062, Paris, 1996, Ed. Robert Laffont)