Abstract Scientiae 2015

The famous (and rarely carefully read) letter by the Sienese humanist Claudio Tolomei to count Landi from 1542, published by Tolomei in 1547, has always been regarded as the most ambitious project for the study of Roman Antiquity – in fact, too ambitious to have ever produced anything of importance. Only Philandrier's “Annotationes” to Vitruvius (1544) are usually regarded as one (and the only) result of the Accademia's work, even though the Accademia is not explicitly mentioned there. Another trace, Vasari's note that Vignola had measured “all the antiquities of Rome” for the Accademia, has been omitted because no such drawings by Vignola himself have been found.

Only in the 1980s the codices Coburgensis and Pighianus (containing systematic collections of drawings after antique reliefs, sarcophagi etc.) could be identified as having been produced by the Accademia circle.

The paper will propose the hypotheses that the Accademia, in fact, was very productive: Though almost none of its results have been published in the 16th century – and surely not with a decided reference to the Accademia –, up to 40 “antiquarians” from Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland … have been involved in collecting and ordering a vast amount of material. Since then, this material has not been regarded as belonging together, even though many central figures of the Accademia circle appear in cross-references. And because this material, created by specialists of disciplines like law, philology, numismatics, architecture… (i.e.: by an interdisciplinary network) has survived separated in “disciplinary” groups – in fact, possibly the first evidence of an interdisplinary division of labor (as already described by Tolomei) –, modern researchers did not recognise the interconnection of their specific objects with others from neighboring disciplines.

It is the aim of this paper to present indications from the vast amount of the surviving source material that it in fact belongs together and that the lack of constant references to the Accademia may just be a result of the fact, that this was the first time ever such a project was planned and executed – with basic rules which are still applicable or even applied today.