Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni’s father sent him to a formal education, but Michelangelo preferred to copy paintings in churches. He later became friends with the arts and studied with some of the great painters and sculptors of his time. But he thought that he could learn more by copying the masters.
In museums around the world, you can see artists creating copies of paintings. At the Louvre in Paris, you can see a stream of artists copying his great paintings. Copying masterpieces has been a cornerstone of traditional art education for a long time. In fact, one art course you can take at the New York Academy of Art in New York City, NY, USA involves students walking a few blocks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) and copy paintings. That’s the course!
I have made copies of paintings at MMA New York City from oil paintings by Theodore Gericault (French Romantic painter, 1791-1824) and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish Baroque-era painter, 1599 – 1660).
MMA performers wishing to make copies must apply to the MMA Education Department. The Museum allows artists to obtain exclusive use for a month of a museum room or gallery to make a copy of a specific painting. The public still has access, but only one artist can copy in that gallery. I highly recommend that you do the same.
Museums vary by allowing artists to make copies. In New York City, USA, MMA does it, but the Frick Collection and the Museum of Modern Art don’t. Check with your museum.
The way it works varies from museum to museum, but generally, you request, get permission, and follow the rules of that museum. For example, in the Louvre and other museums, painters are not supposed to use canvases that are the same size as the original. There is no eating or drinking in the museum, a canvas drop cloth must be used on the floor where painting on an easel and must be thoroughly cleaned after each session. Some museums offer copyists space in lockers to leave their paintings and equipment in the museum instead of bringing everything back and forth each day that they want to copy during their month of access to a painting gallery.
If you can’t afford to go to art school due to lack of time or money, learn from the masters. If you can’t go to a museum, copy the great paintings from the reproductions. If you can’t get reproductions, you can find them in library books or on the web.
What can you learn by copying the masters? Everyone is different in their ability to extract information from textbooks, videos, or art classes. By copying a masterpiece, you can learn something about the artist’s technique, handling of paint, use of color, composition, form, drawing, etc.
Can you learn by copying great paintings? Michelangelo thought so.
