Diploma Work

In art, a reception piece is a work submitted by an artist to an academy for approval as part of the requirements for admission to membership.

The piece is normally representative of the artist's work, and the organization's judgement of its skill may or may not form part of the criteria for accepting a new entrant. The work itself is usually retained by the academy, and many academies have large and valuable collections acquired in this way. Alternative terms include ''diploma work'' at the Royal Academy in London (where some 18th and 19th century examples are on display), ''diploma piece'', and in France at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, ''tableau de réception'' or ''morceau de réception''. The term masterpiece originated in the same way under the earlier system of guilds, including those for artists.

Origins

The requirement to submit a reception or diploma piece is closely related to the practice in the medieval period and later of requiring a craftsman to submit one or more virtuoso or test-pieces to a guild to demonstrate his skill before he was granted membership.

Joining an academy

Membership of an academy may be by genre or technique and limited by numbers or age. The Royal Academy, London, for instance, at one time limited the number of engravers who could join, and where artistic styles and tastes change, new categories of membership may be created as necessary.

When Antoine Watteau applied to join the ''Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture'', there was no suitable category for his ''fête galante'' works, so the academy simply created one rather than reject his application, describing him as a "peintre des festes galantes". While this acknowledged Watteau as the originator of the genre, it also prevented him being recognised as a history painter, the highest class of painter, and the only one from which the academy's professors were drawn. Charles-Antoine Coypel, the son of its then director, later said: "The charming paintings of this gracious painter would be a bad guide for whoever wished to paint the Acts of the Apostles."

In 1728, when Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was admitted to the same academy for ''The Ray'', it was as a "painter of animals and fruits".

Gallery

File:Mars and Rhea Silvia by Nicolas Colombel, 1694.jpg, ''Mars and Rhea Silvia'' by Nicolas Colombel, 1694, for the ''Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture''.
File:Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin 007.jpg, Chardin's ''The Ray'' for the ''Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture'', 1728.
File:Boucher renaud et armide louvre.jpg, ''Rinaldo and Armida'' by François Boucher for the ''Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture'', 1734. Levey, Michael. (1993) ''Painting and sculpture in France 1700-1789''. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 164.
File:Boucher par Gustav Lundberg 1741.jpg, ''François Boucher'' by Gustav Lundberg, 1741. One of two works by Lundberg presented to the ''Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture'' 1742.
File:Johann Heinrich Füssli 011.jpg, Henry Fuseli's ''Thor battering the Midgard Serpent'', was his Diploma Work for the Royal Academy, accepted 1790.Henry Fuseli, R.A. 1741 - 1825. ''Thor battering the Midgard Serpent'', 1790.
Royal Academy of Arts Collections, 3 February 2014. Retrieved 3 February 2014
Archived here.
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See also

*Masterpiece

References

External links

{{commonscat, Reception pieces
Reception pieces visitor trail at the Louvre.
Visual arts terminology