“In the heart of Florence, our Academy is reviving the disciplines and principles that the great Masters themselves used.”
Michael John Angel, Founder
What you will learn: Representationalism redefined.
Representationalism is not to be confused with Naturalism.
For us, Representationalism goes well beyond copying nature. It is a
method of artistic creation. It is a method of painting and drawing used
to generate convincing and evocative works.
With this in mind, our students learn the wide range of techniques needed to compose innovative art that appears convincing, even when a fantasy, an allegory or a vision is portrayed.
Once they have become masters of Representationalism, Angel Academy of Art students have free-range to intentionally capture, enhance, and manipulate reality and the emotions it can evoke.
At the Angel Academy in Florence, students are taught the drawing and painting techniques used by the Old Masters. These include, for example, traditional methods for:
- Effectively employing the principles of colour and composition
- Sequencing and executing the progression from under- to over-painting
- Bringing convincing Life to Representational paintings and drawings
How you will learn: as the Masters did.
The Angel Academy of Art has resurrected the knowledge of art’s golden ages: the Renaissance and that of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Our programmes teach using the methods begun in the early 1400’s and developed over the ensuing 600 years; it is the system that created the Masters. Its adherents include Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Velasquez, Rembrandt, van Dyck, Lord Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Bouguereau and, more recently, Annigoni, among many others.
Academy director and co-founder Michael John Angel has researched this method for the past 45 years. “Those who do not learn from the masters waste their lives re-inventing the wheel. Priceless knowledge has been sacrificed in the 20th century,” he says. “Starting from nothing you can go nowhere, but, stand on the shoulders of giants, and you possess the tools and vision to travel far.” A rare emphasis is placed on the instructor-apprentice relationship and on learning-by-doing.
In this way, students benefit from both traditional wisdom and present-day innovation. Hands-on lessons happen in modern classrooms with controlled environments of increasing complexity.