ABSTRACT
A new vision of an academy emerged in Spain with the rise of the Bourbon dynasty in the beginning of the 18th century. Although there had been attempts as early as 1726, the project to establish a fine arts academy materialized in 1744 when plans were presented to the monarch Ferdinand VI. After eight years of deliberation, the king gave his final approval by Royal Decree in 1752, thereby establishing the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. The San Carlos Academy of Valencia was subsequently erected during the reign of Carlos III in 1768. And that institution was followed in 1783 by the creation of the Royal Academy of the Three Noble Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture of San Carlos, in Mexico City of the viceroyalty of New Spain. The San Carlos Academy in Mexico City has the distinction of being the first, royally sanctioned Academy of Fine Arts founded in the American continent. The economic, political, and cultural conditions achieved in the second half of the 18th century in the colony of New Spain were conducive for establishing an academy.
The artist charged with establishing that Academy was Gerónimo Antonio Gil, academician of merit in Madrid’s San Fernando Academy and who had originally traveled to Mexico City to open a school of drawing and instruct the officers who worked in the Royal Mint there; that site of the drawing school would become the Academy. Between 1776 and 1787 Fernando José Mangino was the Superintendent of the Royal Mint. The general scholarship on that art institution, perhaps because of Mangino’s position, has considered him to be largely responsible for the foundation of the Academy. However, in reality he took over the project from Gil. Indeed, documents show that it was Jerónimo Antonio Gil who was the true motivating force behind the founding of that institution. This chapter, therefore, reexamines and re-contextualizes the role of the engraver Gil as the actor who, I argue, kept alive the idea and brought to fruition the San Carlos Academy.
