Book excerpt: The Academy and the Limits of Painting in Seventeenth-Century France is the first study in over a century devoted to the creation of one of the most important European institutions of art, the French Académie Royale. Founded in the mid-1660s, the Academy institutionalised the discourse around painting and thus had an immediate impact on the making of art in France, becoming a decisive influence on painting until the close of the nineteenth century. In the process of forging an identity for itself, the Academy redefined almost every aspect of art - the nature of art training, the sources of patronage, the social standing of the artist, and the place of the arts in national life.