Academy of Fine Arts

The Accademia delle Belle Arti is in Piazza San Marco inside the old hospital called San Matteo, which was built round about 1400 and later restored. The Accademia derives its importance from the great number of eminent personalities who belonged to it. The first group - the Compagnia di San Luca - gathered round about 1339. The best painters in Florence met in it.

In 1563 the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Drawing Art Academy) developed under the patronage of Cosimo I and Giorgio Vasari. The members of the Accademia had the art and science teaching among their duties. The first rectors elected by the members were Cosimo I himself and Michelangelo, who was living in Rome then and died a year later. A cultural institution was so born that boasted of such personalities as Benvenuto Cellini, Bartolomeo Ammannati, the Bronzino and Galileo Galilei.

In 1784 the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo I from Lorraine reorganized the Accademia in accordance with a criterion of European modernization. It was so renamed Accademia delle Belle Arti. The subjects were: painting, architecture, sculpture, embellishment and copperplate. Inside the Accademia an art gallery was created, where Antonio Canova placed plaster figures from the Partenone at the end of the XVIII century. A library collected rare books and printed matter. In 1872 Michelangelo's David was also placed in the gallery.

Between the end of the XVIII century and the beginning of the XIX the traditionalist academicians and the innovators (as the macchiaioli, who anticipated the Impressionist movement) opened their disputes. Prizes were founded to enable worthy young men to study in Rome or in other Italian cities. In 1811 a Conservatory and a Technical School were also created inside the Accademia