Masters and Pupils: The Artistic Succession from Perugino to Manet 1480-1880
By Gert-Rudolf Flick
Hogarth Arts, Paul Holberton Publishing, £50

When wealthy German art collector Gert-Rudolf Flick produced his first book, Missing Masterpieces, in 2003, its reception was mixed. Art critics applauded Flick’s detective work in piecing together the “biographies” of 24 missing works of art dating from 1450 to 1900; Brian Sewell considered it his book of the year.

Others pointed to Flick’s failure to discuss the Holocaust period, during which millions of paintings disappeared from Jewish homes, while his grandfather made a fortune on the back of Nazi-sponsored slave labour. Flick steers clear of the 20th century again in his new book, Masters and Pupils, which traces a genealogy of 18 master-pupil relationships from Renaissance painter Perugino in 1480 to French Impressionist Edouard Manet in 1880.

It’s hard to identify Flick’s target audience for this meandering tome. Brimming with lists, Latin and documentary details, it’s far too dense for the lay reader. Specialists would head straight to the chapters which dealt with their chosen periods, and perhaps skim those on either side. It’s best perhaps to think of this book as an inventive, and very selective, route through the story of western art.

It might at first resemble an amazing conjuring trick to link such great figures of art history as Raphael, the Carracci, Jacques-Louis David and Edouard Manet, all in one direct line of succession. It is a remarkable achievement, certainly, but it does involve a little sleight of hand.

With up to a hundred pupils in some artist’s studios, Flick had a wide choice of directions in which to turn. Moreover, most painters worked their way through several masters, finding their way (if they were good) into the workshop of a renowned artist. In some cases, Flick moved the goal-posts a little further apart, recognising the influence of masters on painters who were not officially their pupils at all.

So, for example, little-known French painter Horace Le Blanc was more of a friend of Giovanni Lanfranco’s than a pupil, but it is through their relationship that Flick’s story pirouettes neatly, during the Baroque period, from Italy to France. Having examined the workshops of the Italian Renaissance, and the first private academies, Flick segues into the foundation of the powerful state-run academy in France.

In 1790 Kant introduced the idea of genius as something unique that can’t be taught, and the revolutionary David petitioned two years later for the abolition of the academy. It was soon revived by another name, but by the time Manet trained in the studio of David’s art-historical “grandson”, the Salon was going rapidly out of fashion. Manet’s only student, Eva Gonzalès, died at 34, thus ending Flick’s line of artistic succession just as formal academy training drew to a close.

Various threads of knowledge run uninterrupted all the way from Perugino to Manet. The importance of drawing was drummed into many a reluctant apprentice, including life-drawing and anatomy. Pupils were encouraged to copy from the old masters (particularly from Raphael, second in the line of 18 artists) and to learn from antiquity. For those in the dynasty who didn’t lean towards classical art (such as David’s pupil, the Romantic Antoine-Jean Gros), life was not easy.

Having taken 375 pages to get to his point, Flick finally argues in the slimmest of conclusions that without the strict training regime of the past, Modernism is destined to fail. The western tradition of “a degree of representation and a level of technical sophistication”, he argues, “will be hard or impossible to escape”.

Flick’s reluctance to dip his toes in 20th century waters has once more weakened his project. Reading his conclusion, you would be forgiven for thinking that art colleges did not exist; clearly he does not consider them to be worthy successors to the academy system.

“The full stop that Manet represents” is a useful device for Flick. If he had chosen another route, and ventured into the 20th century, he might for example have found Josef Albers, who learned from German salon painter Franz von Stuck, and went on to teach first at the Bauhaus, then at Black Mountain college in America where he inspired a generation of students including Donald Judd and Robert Rauschenberg. In Flick’s family tree, these are the disinherited.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 27.04.08