The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno ("Academy of the Arts of Drawing") of Florence promotes the safeguard of the works of art in Italy. Founded in 1563, it was the first academy of drawing established in Europe.
Contents |
Founded by Cosimo I de' Medici, on 13 January 1563, under the influence of the architect Giorgio Vasari, it had been initially denominated Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno—Academy and Company for the Arts of Drawing—as it was divided into two different operative branches.
While the Company was a kind of corporation which every working artist in Tuscan should join, the Academy was constituted only by the most eminent artistic personalities of Cosimo’s court, and had the task of supervising the whole artistic production of the medicean state.
The extraordinary contribution of academics as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Francesco da Sangallo, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Giorgio Vasari, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giambologna, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Palladio etc. increased the prestige of this institution, certainly not reduced to the politic and economic limits of the medicean principality. The first woman honoured with the admission in the academy was Artemisia Gentileschi.
The granduca Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena, in 1784, subtracted all kind of professional artistic responsibility from the Company, conferring this task to the just founded Accademia di Belle Arti. The Academics College of the prestigious medicean institution conserved the task of artistic formation and supervision of artistic production of the Granducato di Toscana.
The headquarters of the academy nowadays is Palazzo dell'Arte dei Beccai. The institution is divided in six classes: Painting Class, sculpture class, Architecture Class, History of Art Class, humanistic Disciplines and Sciences Class. The Academics are divided in Emerita, Ordinaries and Correspondents.
Among the Academics internationally famous are:
Moreover an unperiodically awarded title, that of Accademico d'Onore, is given by the Accademia for contributions to society and as a certificate of excellence in the political, scientific and cultural fields. Among the awarded are notable: Jasper Johns, Alberto Ronchey, Giulio Andreotti, Louis A. Waldman, the Nobel Prize Rita Levi-Montalcini and the Pritzker Prizes Philip Johnson, Jørn Utzon, Robert Venturi and Renzo Piano.
The President is Prof. Arch. Luigi Zangheri
|
||||||||||||||