Notizie dei Professori di Storia dell’Arte
alle Belle arti di Roma reperibili
nell’Archivio Storico dell’Accademia di
Belle Arti di Roma
Pietro Roccasecca
Based on the personal files preserved in the Historical Archive of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, this
essay traces the succession of art history professors at the Roman institution from its foundation in 1873
to the 1970s, across its three institutional phases (Istituto di Belle Arti, Istituto Superiore, Accademia). It
identifies three recurring professorial types — the erudite man of letters, the artist–art historian, and the
university-trained art historian — and follows the shifting conception of the discipline’s purpose, from
Basilio Magni’s literary erudition to Michele De Benedetti’s and Pietro D’Achiardi’s advocacy of an “artist
historian” model, up to the eventual dominance of university-trained scholars from the 1960s onward