This volume of essays reexamines the establishment and early history of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, one of the most important centres of governance, education, and theory in the arts for the early modern period and the model for all subsequent academies of art worldwide. It is the most comprehensive history of the Accademia to be published in more than forty years, and the first in nearly two hundred years to be based almost entirely on new primary and documentary material. In reconstructing the early history of the institution, the volume also provides a new basis for tracking the careers of painters, sculptors, and architects working in Rome in the early 16th century, and for understanding the artistic and professional issues that engaged them.