From reliefs to statues: copying the Antique in Roman Academic competitions between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The paper examines the subects proposed to the competitors , painters and sculptors, of the “third class” of Academy of San Luca’s competitions and intends to start a reflection on how the direction given to young people changed in relation to the mutation of the status of the Ancient as a model for the contemporary artistic production between the second Seventeenth and the full Eighteenth
century. In parallel with the evolution of critical speculations about the Ancient and the Ancient as a model, from Bellori to Winckelmann, the drawings reveal the transition from an attention to the composition and the narration, expressed through the study of the reliefs, to a concentrated attention on the single human figure, expressed viceversa through the study of the statues.