Introduzione
Massimiliano Rossi
This monographic issue of “Predella” reexamines the relationship between Fine Arts Academies and the
emergence of art history as a discipline. Challenging traditional narratives that locate the discipline’s
origins exclusively in nineteenth-century universities, the essays gathered here demonstrate that art history
first developed within academic institutions, where the construction of artistic genealogies, the collection
of documents, the organization of libraries and plaster cast collections, and the teaching of historical
knowledge all converged. The Academies are presented not as peripheral actors but as central protagonists
in the long-term process through which the historical consciousness of the arts was built, transmitted, and
transformed across modern and contemporary Europe