An example for art-critical instruction: Roger De Piles

French diplomat, tutor, art theorist, amateur, and art critic Roger De Piles's insistence on the separation of visual and literary criticism made him the precursor of modern art criticism. The aesthetic theory of De Piles (1635-1709) had three purposes: to liberate the theory of painting from that of literature; to emphasize that visual interest in an artwork is independent of an intellectual, moral, or religious interest in the subject matter of the work; and to change the way of looking at pictures to one more closely associated with the way in which nature is viewed. His ideas on criticism emphasize the visual and the aesthetic and can be used as an exemplar for the study and development of art-critical thought.