The digital repository of The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca was created with Canopy IIIF (“triple-eye-eff”), a static HTML generator designed for digital scholarship collections using IIIF APIs. This website—and overall project—was designed to be sustainable, reusable, and to employ minimal resources.
The project team uses Tropy to curate image collections and metadata; the Tropiiify extension to export IIIF collections in three main content types (documents, maps, and guidebooks); and GitHub to publish source files. These interoperable components are open-source and free to use with relatively low initial cost. They can be deployed by users who wish to generate their own research from the same source materials.
New features:
- Enhanced search features and filters
- Annotated key terms in document transcriptions
- Reusable manifests and IIIF collections for all resources
Digital project history
The initial goal of our research project was to build a database of archival documents using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the international Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines to mark names, dates, and places in document transcriptions. By 2010, the project website was live and able to search and filter documents.
In 2014, when TEI encoding was no longer supported by the National Gallery’s digital platforms, the project team built a new system with Adobe CQ5 (later AEM), which also allowed for easier content updates. From 2016, the site featured interactive maps of 16th- and 17th-century Rome using IIIF. Historical guidebooks describing Rome and its churches were added in 2021-2023. In 2023-2024, approximately 200 new archival documents were added to the database.
In 2025-2026, during the rebuilding of the National Gallery’s website, resources for The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca migrated to the current home on GitHub.
Toward a documentary history of the Accademia di San Luca
Although our understanding of the early history of the Accademia di San Luca has long depended on the earliest published accounts and a limited number of historical anchors, this digital repository makes available the notarial records from the Accademia’s first few decades, records that were once preserved in the institution’s own archive, in order to help map its institutional history.
Archives and transcription conventions
The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca brings together notarial records from the Trenta Notai Capitolini (TNC) and the Tribunale Civile del Senato (TCS) held at the Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR). Many of these documents were previously thought to be lost. They include:
- Rental agreements
- Records of legal disputes regarding the collection of rent payments
- Transactions with workers who renovated the Accademia’s original church
- Inventories of the Accademia’s art and library collections
- Evidence of the institution’s increasing control over the production and appraisal of works of art
- Details of the internal strife that marked the Accademia’s first decades
- Evidence of instruction to young artists in Rome
The transcriptions are organized by personal name, place-name, key term, document type, notary name, and year. The documents are intended for researchers of early modern Italy. Our newly enhanced search capability offers greater opportunities for users to find previously overlooked documents.
Full transcription conventions are detailed here.
How to cite
On this page you find our preferred citation conventions: Chicago and MLA.
Bibliography and archived website
Our project team maintains a Zotero database of bibliographical resources on the history of the Accademia and its most prominent members.
A web-recorded version of the previous project website (2015–2025) is available through the Internet Archive. Certain features, such as search and image zoom, will not work on the archived site.
Credits and collaborators
The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca is designed and supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, in collaboration with the Archivio di Stato di Roma and the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca.
Additional support has come from the Getty Foundation; a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for a series of educational tours dedicated to audience outreach; and a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to transcribe archival documents, carried out by former research associate Roberto Fiorentini.†
The project team thanks, in addition to our previous team members, colleagues at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, including Carolina Brook, accademico cultore; Elisa Camboni, head of the Archivio Storico; and Claudio Strinati, segretario generale; as well as Ricardo Gandolfi, director at the Archivio di Stato di Roma. Special thanks also to Catherine Sutherland, deputy librarian, Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge University; Vincent Buonanno; and Paul and Frederika Jacobs for their generosity. The project team also thanks Renata Ago, Patrizia Cavazzini, Sarah McPhee, and Laurie Nussdorfer, who serve on our advisory board, and Antonia Fiori, associate professor of the history of medieval and early modern law, Università La Sapienza di Roma. We are equally grateful to colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and the National Gallery of Art Library.
This site was created in coordination with Mat Jordan (Northwestern University), developer of Canopy IIIF, with contributor Mark Baggett (Texas A&M University). The associated research publications were developed with Quire in coordination with Erin Dunigan at Getty.
For more information, please write to TheCenter@nga.gov
Current project team
- Peter M. Lukehart, project director
- Michael Cowden, manager of platform development
- Valeria Federici, research associate
- Emily Leffler Schulman, lead product architect
- Magda Nakassis, editor
- Memo Saenz, product manager
- Matthew J. Westerby, digital research officer