The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San
Fernando. Sources and Documents of
a pedagogical referent (1752–1967)
Rosa María Recio Aguado
The San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts was founded in 1752 to train artists: painters, sculptors and
architects. A century later, in 1844, art teaching was discontinued at the academy and was transferred to
the Special School of Noble Arts. From that point onwards the academy and the school coexisted in the
Goyeneche Palace until 1967, when the school moved to the Madrid university campus. The school’s new
study programme, proposed by the academy, incorporated art theory and history as a subject called art
theory, sacred and profane history, mythology, costumes, practices and customs of peoples. This article
examines in depth the first two competitive examinations held in 1846 and 1860 to fill the related teaching
posts. It surveys all the professors who taught the subject, from the time it was created to when the school
was relocated: from Valentín Carderera, who was appointed by the queen, to Joaquín Gurruchaga, and
including Francisco José Fabre, the painters Juan José Martínez de Espinosa and Manuel Arroyo y Lorenzo,
the critics and historians Rafael Domenech and Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, and Leopoldo Soler y Pérez and
Rafael Láinez Alcalá. It also studies the 1899 competitive examination for the post of assistant professor of
theory and history of fine arts, artistic anatomy and perspective.