From the Painters’ Idea to Painting Idea: Zuccaro’s Dual Disegno for the Roman Academy of the Arts
Résumé
The Accademia di San Luca in Rome was born in 1593 from a double project of its founder Federico Zuccaro (c. 1540-1609), a dual disegno, both internal and external (to use Zuccaro’s own terms), theoretical as well as practical: a philosophical teaching, directed toward the artists of the new academy, and a didactic painted program in his Roman palazzo, the first location of the new institution he established. Our project is to study them in a parallel manner and from a philosophical perspective, showing how the multi-faceted concept of disegno, developed in L’Idea de’ Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti, constituted an essential moment in a Roman history of the Idea, between earlier Renaissance art theories and XVIIIth-century theories of representation and aesthetics.