Le modèle vivant, patrimoine absent des écoles d’art académiques

The pedagogical heritage that is kept in the art schools that have existed for a long time as academies would tend to let us think that most of the drawing practice transmission is done by copying from models, either antique or modern. To believe this is to forget that studying from models is at the core of drawing pedagogy as we conceive it in France. This study by observation of nature has been in a constant struggle against the hegemony of the antique model favoured by the great quantity of plaster casts that was produced in the 19th century. It is of a primordial importance to know the history of that missing heritage before we conceive any potential museography of the heritage of art schools.