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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
PIETRO FRANCESCO ALBERTI Academia D'Pitori.
Etching. 405x528 mm; 16x21 inches. Fleur-de-lys in a circle watermark. With thread margins or trimmed on the plate mark. A very good impression of this large, scarce etching.
According to Nicolaas Teeuwisse, Berlin, who offered another impression of this subject in Selected Works XVII catalogue, 2017, "The painter and engraver Pietro Francesco Alberti (1584-1638) was a descendant of a large, well-known family of artists who originated from Borgo San Sepolcro. He worked almost exclusively in Rome, where he was a member of the Accademia di S. Luca. This delightful, large-scale depiction of a painting academy is the only print the artist ever made and therefore a precious rarity.
The composition owes its appeal to the wealth of sensitively and humorously observed details. We see a spacious hall in which students and teachers, in keeping with the artistic theories of the Renaissance, are engaged in a large number of different disciplines, such as mathematics, anatomy, architecture, sculpture and drawing. Through the wide-open window daylight streams into the sparsely furnished interior. On the left, a young student presenting a letter of recommendation is being admitted to the vast classroom. Fragments of ancient sculpture and plaster casts stand on a shelf or are fastened to the wall by a nail. The three paintings hanging on the wall symbolize the different genres of religious painting, portraiture and landscape painting. In an exemplary way the individual disciplines are shown, which art students had to complete in order to develop into artists with an all-round humanist education."
Alberti's choice of subject might have also tied into the popular contemporaneous artists' academy in Bologna founded around 1582 by the Carracci family: Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico. Initially named the Accademia dei Desiderosi (Academy of the Desirous), the school most likely began as an informal gathering of young artists in Ludovico Carracci's studio. Around 1590, the academy was renamed the Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of Those who are Making Progress or Academy of the Journeying), and adopted a more didactic academic program. There is some debate regarding the school's organization and academic structure. However, it is likely that the academy functioned as a combination of a painters' workshop and a formal institution, and was attended by both students and established artists alike. Bartsch 1.
