L'ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI DI PARMA E I CONCORSI INTERNAZIONALI DI PITTURA (1752-1796)

Based on the examination of more than 3,000 original documents concerning the Parma Academy of Arts (Accademia di Belle Arti) in the 18th century, the present dissertation focuses, in particular, on the Academy’s competitions of painting and of drawing and bas-relief compositions – the former opened to its students as well as to foreign artists, the two latter reserved to boarder students – from their beginnings in 1760 to their interruption in 1796, following the entrance of the French troops into Parma. All the 73 competition themes are analyzed (37 for painting, 36 for composition) that can be divided into three main categories: biblical, epic mythological and historical subjects. Each of them is explored in terms of literary and iconographic sources. In this connection, the most remarkable finding is the impact of the iconographic repertoires of the Count of Caylus: no less than 20 of the proposed themes are inspired to his Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, de l’Odyssée d’Homère et de l’Énéide de Virgile (Paris, 1757) and his Histoire d’Hercule le Thébain, tirée de différens auteurs, à laquelle on a joint la description des tableaux qu’elle peut fournir (Paris, 1758). For the first time the lists are given of the names of all the competition participants, not of the winners alone. It becomes thereby possible to know the number of those who entered their names, the places their works were forwarded from, the masters of the competitors, the mottos inscribed on their works so as to conceal the identity of the contestants, and the scores assigned by ballot to each painting submitted. On the whole, these data clearly point to the role played by both a few such Academy professors as Giuseppe Baldrighi, Pietro Ferrari, Benigno Bossi, Laurent Guiard and Giuseppe Sbravati and such foreign painters as Giambettino Cignaroli, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni and Anton von Maron who advised their students to participate, from Verona and Rome, in the Parma competitions. Thanks to the participation of these young foreign artists, earning often gold or silver medals, or distinguishing themselves for the quality of their works, the Parma Academy acquired a special authority within the major framework of the European schools of arts, and did contribute to the success of late-18th-century classicism. This research opens with an introductory chapter giving a general outline of the history of the Academy as an institution and a few reflexions on the latter’s choices in handling the competitions. Schedules and diagrams allow to visualize immediately a few hitherto neglected aspects. The 36 following chapters are dedicated to the yearly-announced contests and provided with full reproductions of the surviving paintings, drawings and bas-reliefs. At the end, a long appendix of mostly unpublished documents features that are preceded each by a short commentary: a list of the competition themes of the Parma Academy of Arts from 1760 to 1796 (A); the charter (Costituzioni) of the Academy (B); a composition in praise of the Comte of Caylus (C); a list of the competition themes of the Paris Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Académie royale de peinture et sculpture) from 1749 to 1793, for the sake of comparison with the case of Parma (D); the inventories of the paintings kept at the Parma Academy at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th century (E); the list of the presidents, directors, secretaries voting professor, voting counsellors and honorary fellows of the Academy from 1757 to 1796 (F).