The story
In 1813 Francesco Hayez, a young Venetian painter studying in Rome, won a competition funded by the sculptor Antonio Canova. The brief was a life-size male nude, and the winning canvas, The Victorious Athlete, still hangs at the Accademia di San Luca, the academy that ran the contest.
Competitions were at the heart of this place. Rome's painters had a confraternity of Saint Luke, patron of artists, by the late 15th century, and a papal brief of 1577 allowed it to become an academy. The painter Federico Zuccari was its first president in 1593, and for generations it held prize contests for young artists, the Concorsi Clementini. Its collection grew out of that membership, with about 500 portraits and a large holding of drawings.
Among the pictures a visitor meets is a self-portrait of 1577 by Lavinia Fontana, the Bolognese painter, seated at a keyboard instrument with a maidservant beside her. There are paintings attributed to Titian and a Madonna and Child with angels by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck.
For centuries the academy sat by the Roman Forum. When its seat on Via Bonella was demolished for the new avenue through the imperial forums, it moved in 1934 to Palazzo Carpegna, a short walk from the Trevi Fountain. Francesco Borromini, the Baroque architect, had reworked the palace, and his spiral ramp still climbs from the ground floor to the upper floors.
