 As debates about taste in literature and music were taking place, other debates arose in the world of visual arts. Artists felt a new authority to theorize publicly about their work, even though in 1719 Dubos still referred to them as “artisans”, harking back to an era in which artists had no more prestige than other skilled manual laborers. However, Louis XIV had established the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 and thus gave these former artisans a special status. He named Charles Le Brun, who occupied the role of First Painter to the King, as the founding director of this Academy. Its leaders created a set of apprenticeships and tests that the aspirants had to pass in order to be formally accepted. Painters, depending on how they wished to be received, could present a master work in the “grand genre”: that is, a historic, mythological, or religious scene. Otherwise, they could undertake some of the minor genres, which were, in descending hierarchical order, portraits, landscapes, “genre” scenes that represented daily life, and lastly, still lifes.