L'École de dessin

In February 1656, the year he painted this, Michiel Sweerts petitioned the city magistrates of Brussels for the right to run a drawing academy of his own. This canvas is more or less his argument for it. A teacher stands with his back to us, guiding a cluster of boys as they draw a nude model posed in the middle of the room. It is not one particular studio, but a stage every young painter went through, learning to draw from a living body before moving on to plaster casts and copies of the old masters. The candlelight and the plain brown room give it the hush of real work. Around the floor lie the fragments of antique sculpture the students would copy at the next stage.