Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art

Founded in Paris the year 1671, the Académie royale d’architecture served both as a council on architectural matters for the king and as a school where the best students would be trained to acquire what the institution and the State defined as the good taste, the “bon goût”. Even if each member of the academy had his own personal definition of good taste in architecture, they all soon agreed that the model would be found in the remains of classical antiquity. Until the end of the 19th entury this general consensus was never questioned either inside the institution or its direct successor, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as established after the French Revolution. As the core of the pedagogy was organization of monthly and annual architectural competitions amongst students, it is therefore essential to analyze the prize drawings in order to understand the evolution of the classical language advocated inside the Academy and then the Ecole. The goal of every student was to win the Grand Prix, which allowed the winner to obtain a three-year pension in Rome in order to study Antiquity. Hence the whole system was turned towards the classical tradition. Most of the academicians, who were to judge the drawings, were former Grand Prix winners, consequently they had spent time in Italy to study and copy remains of Antiquity. Others who had never seen Antique architecture with their eyes , had to design buildings inspired by a mediated Antiquity. They had at their disposal books, engravings and above all the drawings brought back by their predecessors from Italy and Greece. This paper aims to analyze the evolution of classical references in competition drawings throughout the 18th and 19th centuries as the body of architectural surveys available became increasingly precise.