Antonio Tempesta, A Soldier on Horseback and Other Studies, pen and brown ink and red chalk on laid paper, laid down on an old album sheet, Gift of Benjamin and Lillian Hertzberg, 2004.140.30

The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca

Explore research and scholarly essays about the Accademia di San Luca in Rome—one of the first academies of painters, sculptors, and architects, founded in 1593.


Initiated in 2010, this project is a collaboration of the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in association with the Archivio di Stato di Roma and the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. 
 

News

Our scholarly essays now have a new online home. The essays originally launched in 2023 and 2024 are now available as digital publications designed for long-term sustainability.

In 2025–2026 the project will adapt to new scholarly publication models intended for academic audiences and for greater accessibility. During this transition a web recorded version of the project website is available at the Internet Archive. Please note that certain features like search and image zoom will not work on the archived site.

Resources

Research and publications

Essays :  On Girolama Parasole

Essays by Susan Nalezyty and Evelyn Lincoln, available in English and Italian, published in 2024.
 

Essays :  On the cameral obligation and notarial tradition

Essays by Antonia Fiori and Laurie Nussdorfer, available in English and Italian, published in 2023.

 

Publication:  The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Luca in Rome, c. 1590–1635

This volume of essays reexamines the establishment and early history of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, one of the most important centers of governance, education, and theory in the arts for the early modern period and the model for all subsequent academies of art worldwide.

Coming soon

Coming Soon :  Documents and transcriptions

Search and browse transcriptions of notarial documents from the 16th and 17th centuries preserved in Roman archives.

Coming Soon :  Maps and guidebooks

Explore historical maps and guidebooks that highlight places important to the Accademia’s development.

Forthcoming April 2026 :  Academies of Art in Europe and the Americas, 1600–1900

Edited by Peter M. Lukehart, Ulrich Pfisterer, and Oscar E. Vázquez, 17 essays from leading and emerging scholars examine academies from Brazil, Colombia, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and beyond.
 

References

Bibliography

Search and sort a database of bibliographical resources on the history of the Accademia and its most prominent members.

Shown from the waist up, an elderly, balding, light-skinned man with a bushy white beard sits behind a table, facing us, in front of a winged angel who looks on in this shadowy, horizontal painting. The man sits with his body angled slightly to our right, and he turns his head to look in the opposite direction. His eyes are sunk in shadow under deeply furrowed brows, set in his lined face. His sparse, gray and white hair is tousled. He wears only a scarlet-red cloth draped across his lap and over his sinewy left arm, on our right. His open left hand is raised, palm up, at shoulder height. In his other hand, he holds a pen, hovering over a partially unwound scroll. His forearm rests on an open book beneath the scroll. He looks over his right shoulder at the curly-haired angel with snow-white wings. The angel wears a flowing, light blue robe with a golden yellow cloth draped around the chest and over the shoulders. Softly smiling, the backlit angel leans toward the man, face deep in shadow. With arms lifted, one hand gestures with a slightly crooked finger, pointing beyond the picture’s border to our left. In the other hand, the angel holds a golden horn in the dusky background behind the man’s left shoulder. Behind the man and angel and to our right, a single candle sits on two books lying in an arched wall niche. On the desk closest to us are a crumpled cloth on a book, a shiny rust-brown ball, a pair of eyeglasses, an inkpot, an hourglass, and a second book, to our right. Light coming from our upper left starkly illuminates the two people against the shadowed, earth-brown background.

Archived website

A web recorded version of the previous project website (2015–2025) is available at the Internet Archive. Please note that certain features like search and image zoom will not work on the archived site.

In our collection

Many of the artists who participated in the Accademia di San Luca from 1590 through the 1600s are represented by works of art in our collection.

  • Three women, one man, and a winged child gather near a cave opening within a vast, distant landscape in this horizontal painting. The people are small in scale, taking up the lower left quadrant of the composition, and all have pale skin. Near the lower left corner, the man sits on a rock with his back mostly to us, so we see him in profile. Red cloth drapes around his hips and legs, and his chest and arms are bare. He braces a long staff in his far hand, and raises his right hand, closer to us, and points at the women. He is cleanshaven with a straight nose, closed lips, and brown, shoulder-length hair. To our right, two women stand and one sits on a cloth-covered rock. All three have brown hair that has been pulled back. They also have straight noses, and their lips are parted. The woman at the center of this trio wears a coral-red dress under lapis-blue cloth that drapes across her legs and is held in one hand. Smoke-blue fabric billows behind her. She stands with her body angled to our left, and she looks down at the man in profile. The back of one hand, to our right, rests near that hip, holding the fabric, and she points up with the index finger of her other hand. A peacock with its tail fanned open stands next to her, to our left. The other two women are nude except for a white cloth that partially covers the soft, rounded contours of their bodies. To our left of the peacock and close to it, the second woman holds her drapery so it covers her breasts and her groin. Her body faces us, and she turns her face to look at the central woman. A nude, winged child holding an arrow stands between her and the man. A blue ribbon across the child’s chest holds a quiver of arrows on his back. The third woman is to our right, sitting on a rock draped with a goldenrod-yellow cloth. A white cloth covers her hips, and she leans forward, touching her sandal. A long lance rests under the yellow cloth, and a metal helmet with a red feather sits next to the rock. Six sheep lie or graze along the grassy ground, closer to us. The rocky outcropping with the cave opening rises steeply along the left edge of the composition. A waterfall is tucked into shadows just beyond the cave, and tall trees enclose the left half of the scene. Nearly reaching the top of the canvas, the cluster of trees near the center have dark green canopies. A rocky bank is shown nearly in silhouette in the lower right corner, in front of a deep landscape with a body of water winding through low, marshy areas and a flat-topped formation. Mountains are hazy purple in the deep distance. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and the sky above has mauve-pink and lavender-gray clouds sweeping across a vivid blue sky.
  • A nearly nude man and woman look up at a bearded man floating in front of a billowing red drapery in midair, accompanied by five chubby children in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or peachy skin. The man and woman on the ground, Adam and Eve, take up the left half of the composition and are shown near a grove of trees. Adam, to our right in the pair, stands with knees bent, his body facing us. He holds both open hands, palm up, toward Eve, to our left. His head tips to our right and he looks up at the bearded man, God, with dark eyes under raised brows. Adam has a brown beard and curly hair. He wears a ring of leaves across his hips but is otherwise nude. His cheek and nose, hands, knees, and toes are pink, and muscles stand out on his torso, arms, and legs. To our left, Eve kneels on one knee and braces her other leg on her splayed toes. Her body is angled to our left, and she turns back to look up at Adam. She has long blond hair, and her skin is more pale than the others. She also wears leaves around her hips, and her torso and legs are bare. Her left hand, closer to Adam, rests on her thigh. With her other hand, she points to a striped snake on the ground. The trees behind them have dark green leaves and yellow fruit. The dirt ground beneath them has some scrubby green growth. Close to Adam, God and his attendants float above a lion and a lamb on the ground, all taking up the right half of the composition. God’s gray beard and hair blow back as if in a wind. He wears a topaz-blue, knee-length toga. His body faces us, and he leans to our left, almost horizontally, toes pointed off to our right. He reaches his right arm, to our left, toward Adam. His other arm stretches out and rests on a black orb, about the size of a basketball. He is supported to our left by two child-like angels, wearing brick red or golden yellow robes. Three smaller children, like toddlers, gather around the black orb. The red cloth billowing around God and the angels creates a shell-like form that surrounds them. The white lamb lies below and looks at Adam and Eve, and the lion crouches and looks off to our left. Trees and grassy knolls lead back to distant, blue hills. A horse and bear stand, tiny in scale, in the distant landscape. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and the vivid blue sky above is clear. In the lower right corner, the inventory number “F.7” is painted in yellow.
  • This free-standing, white marble sculpture shows the head, shoulders, and upper chest of a balding, bearded man. In this photograph, his body faces us and he looks straight ahead. Bushy eyebrows arch low over deeply set eyes, and his forehead hollows inward at his temples. He has high cheekbones and the skin of his cheeks draws slightly in. His thin lips are set in a straight line within a full beard. His high-necked robe falls slightly open over his chest and is cut also away over the shoulders to show the crinkled fabric of the garment beneath. The bottom edge of the sculpture curves upward in a very shallow U across the bottom, and is supported by a square pedestal foot decorated with scroll designs. The background behind the bust lightens from charcoal gray along the top edge to pale gray across the bottom, and the sculpture casts a shadow behind its base.
  • A young woman plays a small pipe organ while a winged angel holds up a piece of sheet music in this horizontal painting. A strong light source illuminates the scene from our right, creating deep shadows in the dark background. Both the woman and angel have pale skin, flushed cheeks, and light brown hair. Shown from the knees up and taking up the left half of the painting, the woman’s body is angled to our right as she sits at the organ, which is near the right edge of the composition. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, and wisps fall on her forehead. Her skin is smooth, and her head tilts down toward the organ. Her cherry-red dress has a squared neckline and olive-green sleeves over a white shirt. The voluminous sleeves are pushed back over her forearms as she rests her fingertips on the keys of the organ. Gazing toward the woman, the angel has short, curly hair, silvery gray wings, and wears a topaz-blue garment. Two lines of music on the paper the angel holds have notes written in and one staff is empty. The small organ is angled away from us so we see one narrow end and the row of low pipes along its back. The dark brown background lightens behind the young woman’s head.
  • A group of four men with pale skin, shown from the waist up, almost fill this square painting. Light pours onto the scene from the upper left and falls across the upturned face of the bearded, bare-chested man, Saint Bartholomew, who is situated with his back facing us and his arms spread wide. In the top right corner, his right wrist is lashed to a pole that extends off the top edge of the painting. His other arm is bent at the elbow near the lower left corner, and he holds that hand palm up. His profile, facing our left, is bright against the shadowed background. His mouth is slightly agape, and his eyebrows are raised as he looks up toward the light that bathes his lithe, muscular body. His long beard is streaked with gray, and he has receding black hair. A second, broad-shouldered man, draped in a brown cloak, stands facing us behind and just to our left of Saint Bartholomew. The younger man holds a knife in one hand resting against a black, rod-like sharpener held in the other. He turns his head to gaze at Saint Bartholomew, his eyes deep in shadow. He also has a furrowed brow and a craggy, ruddy complexion. Two more men stand behind him, to our left, filling the left side of the painting. The man on the far left has smooth skin, a trimmed beard, and short brown hair. He stands in profile looking to our right and wears a cranberry-red cloak. Barely visible beyond him, to our right, is a man wearing a gray-green hood hiding half his face. His features are loosely painted and faint, but he also looks up, either toward the young man or the light from above. All four are surrounded by deep shadows against a brown background.
  • Twelve people and one child stand, sit, or kneel along a riverbank in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or tanned skin, and are muscular. They are in various stages of undress, wearing robes of golden yellow, ruby red, petal pink, azure blue, or cream white. To our right of center, a man, Jesus, stands facing us with his arms crossed over his chest. He wears a blue robe wrapped loosely across his shoulders and across his hips. He looks down, his blond hair falling alongside his face, as another man, wearing red, pours water from a shallow dish onto his head. A white dove flies with wings spread overhead. To our right of Jesus, one kneeling person wearing white holds up Jesus’s blue robes and another looks on, wearing a sage green robe and holding a voluminous rose-pink cloth. To our left, a group of five men react by throwing up hands, pointing upward, or looking up. One man with a gray beard and hair stands and bows his head over praying hands. A young boy wraps the arm we can see across the praying man's hips. Three more men to the left of this group pause as they undress to look toward Jesus. All the men stand or sit among puddles as a river spans the width of the painting behind the group and winds into the distance to our right. At the center of the composition, three men stand or recline on a grassy mound on the far side of the river. Tucked under trees at the peak of the mound, a smudge of white could be another kneeling person. Two more people walk along a path that crests the mound to our left. Mountains in the distance are slate blue beneath a vivid blue sky streaked with white clouds.

About the project

The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca was conceived, under the direction of associate dean Peter M. Lukehart, as a project in two parts: a volume of essays concerning the establishment of the Accademia and a database of rediscovered notarial documents that support current and future study of the Accademia and its members.

Read the publication