Reynolds, 1769, Discourse One stresses the importance for students of studying 'the great examples of Art'. Raphael 's study of Michelangelo enabled him to move from the style of his master Perugino to the grand style, a shift which for Ruskin marks the 'degradation' ( Works, 12.148) of the art of Italy:
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an Academy; but all Rome and the works of Michael Angelo in particular, were to him an academy. On the sight of the Capella Sistina, he immediately, from a dry, Gothick, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by the general and invariable idea of nature. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 15)