ABSTRACT
The first academies of painting and sculpture were founded in Italy during the second half of the 16th century. Formed under the protection of a prince or state, art academies were intended as instruments of artistic reform, and their members included scholars, art lovers and art patrons as well as painters, sculptors and architects. They were modelled on literary and scientific academies, societies of humanist scholars and gentlemen who shared an interest in ancient culture. Part of the purpose of art academies was to free artists from the exclusive control of the guilds to which they had traditionally belonged (painters to the Arte de’ Medici e Speziali, sculptors and architects to the Università dei Fabbricanti). Nevertheless, they continued to share many of the same functions and aims, and the first art academies co-existed with the system of guilds and artists’ confraternities (Compagnia di San Luca). There were also private academies that were less formal associations of artists who trained and worked together, such as the Accademia degli Incamminati founded by the Carracci in Bologna (1584). But both public and private academies differed from guilds and medieval workshops in their focus on art theory and classical ideals in addition to studio practice.
