The Académie de Saint-Luc (French pronunciation: [akademi də sɛ̃ lyk]; English: "Academy of Saint Luke") was a guild of painters and sculptors set up in Paris in 1391, and dissolved in 1776.
[1] It was created by the Provost of Paris, along the lines of the Guilds of Saint Luke in other parts of Europe.
In 1648, a group of artists with royal patronage, led by Charles Le Brun, successfully persuaded the court of King Louis XIV to support the creation of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, an art institution with different membership criteria that became a rival to the Académie de Saint-Luc.
In the 1770s, the success of the Académie de Saint-Luc provoked the enmity of the Academie Royale, which complained to the King and petitioned for the closure of their rival.
The Académie de Saint-Luc was closed in February 1776, either on the order of Louis XVI of France in response to the petition, or as part of the broader suppression of the guilds by the edict of Minister Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.