The Académie Royale Art Collection

This first volume of a series exploring the history, composition, and arrangement of the art collection of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture focusses on the reception pieces. From its founding in 1648 to its dissolution in 1793, the Académie royale amassed a collection of more than 15 000 artworks: reception pieces, donated artworks, commissioned portraits of the Académie’s patrons, paintings and bas-reliefs awarded the Prix de Rome, académie drawings, plaster casts of classical sculptures, and other objects. Today, these works provide valuable insights into the aesthetic canons, educational practices, and behind-the-scenes networks. The reception pieces, which, throughout its century-and-a-half history, remain the conceptual core of the collection. Embodying the Académie’s admission practices and internal hierarchies, reception pieces are key to understanding the collection as a whole, as well as fascinating and often overlooked objects of study in their own right. In this volume, Hannah Williams, Melissa Hyde, Catherine Girard, Mark Ledbury, Susanna Caviglia, Yuriko Jackall, Alden Gordon, and Antoine Gallay explore the role of reception pieces for the Académie, the academicians, and beyond.