Some Observations on the Education of Artists in Florence and Bologna during the Later Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Original sources show that the founders of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence intended to provide a professional education equivalent to the university teaching of letters, and the same is true elsewhere. Grammar school education is studied in the case of Bologna, to show that artists there were taught in a humanistic pattern. Finally it is suggested that modern antipathy to the idea of academic teaching has distorted not only our understanding of the nature of Academies, but also that of the art of the Carracci.