École des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts (ākôl` dā bōzär`)[Fr.,=school of fine arts], French national school of fine arts, on the Quai Malaquais, Paris, founded in 1648 by Charles Le Brun with the consent of Cardinal Mazarin as the Académie de peinture et de sculpture; the title was changed in 1793, when it merged with the Académie d'architecture, founded in 1671 by Jean Baptiste Colbert. It includes departments of painting, graphic arts, and sculpture and is free to artists whose previous training enables them to pass the entrance examinations. Architecture was taught at the school until 1968. Students are prepared in the various courses to compete for the Prix de Rome, which provides admission to the Académie de France à Rome. Besides its extensive collection of plaster casts of antiquities, the École is known for its superb collection of old-master drawings and for its exhibitions.

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École (Nationale Supérieure) des Beaux-Arts

School of fine arts (beaux arts) in Paris. It was founded by the merger in 1793 of the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded by Charles Le Brun in 1648, and the Académie d'Architecture, founded in 1671 by Jean-Baptiste Colbert. It has traditionally provided instruction in drawing, painting, sculpture, engraving, and (until 1968) architecture. The Beaux-Arts style in architecture has been particularly influential.

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École des Beaux-Arts

The school in Paris that taught elaborate, historic, and eclectic architecture, designed on a monumental scale, based on classical architecture of Hellenic Greece and Imperial Rome, that adapted features of French architecture of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries; became a State institution in 1863 and still is the center of the teaching of architecture in France. Also see Beaux-Arts style.