Prix de Rome

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This article is about the French government prize. For similarly named prizes aimed at other countries' nationals, see Prix de Rome (disambiguation).
Palazzo Mancini, Rome, the seat of the Académie since 1725. Etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1752.
The Villa Medici as it looks today.

The Prix de Rome (pronounced: [pʁi də ʁɔm]) was a scholarship for arts students. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by completing a very difficult elimination contest. The prize, organised by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture), was open to their students. From 1666, the award winner could win a stay of three to five years at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome at the expense of the King of France. In 1720, the Académie Royale d’Architecture began a prize in architecture. Six painters, four sculptors, and two architects[1] would be sent to the French Academy in Rome founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert from 1666.

Expanded after 140 years into five categories, the contest started in 1663 as two categories: painting and sculpture. Architecture was added in 1720. In 1803, music was added, and after 1804 there was a prix for engraving as well. The primary winner took the "First Grand Prize" (called the agréé)[2] and the "Second Prizes" were awarded to the runners-up.

In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte moved the French Academy in Rome to the Villa Medici with the intention of preserving an institution once threatened by the French Revolution. At first, the villa and its gardens were in a sad state, and they had to be renovated in order to house the winners of the Prix de Rome. In this way, he hoped to retain for young French artists the opportunity to see and copy the masterpieces of antiquity and the Renaissance.

Jacques-Louis David, having failed to win the prize three years in a row, considered suicide. Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Ernest Chausson and Maurice Ravel attempted the Prix de Rome, but did not gain recognition. Ravel tried a total of five times to win the prize, and the last failed attempt in 1905 was so controversial that it led to a complete reorganization of the administration at the Paris Conservatory.

The Prix de Rome was suppressed in 1968 by André Malraux, who was Minister of Culture at the time. Since then, a number of contests have been created, and the academies, together with the Institut de France, were merged by the State and the Minister of Culture. Selected residents now have an opportunity for study during an 18-month (sometimes 2-year) stay at The Academy of France in Rome, which is accommodated in the Villa Medici.

The heyday of the Prix de Rome was during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[3] It was later imitated by the Prix Abd-el-Tif and the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers, 1907–1961, and later Prix d'Indochine including a bursary to visit the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine in Hanoi, 1920–1939, and bursary for residence at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, 1929–present.

Contents

Winners in the Architecture category [edit]

Winners in the Painting category [edit]

Winners in the Sculpture category [edit]

Winners in the Engraving category [edit]

The engravery prize was created in 1804 and suppressed in 1968 by André Malraux, the minister of Culture.

Winners in the Musical Composition category [edit]

After 1968, the Prix de Rome changed formats and the competition was no longer organised.

Netherlands [edit]

For a short while the Prix de Rome was also awarded to young artists during the Kingdom of Holland (today roughly Belgium & the Netherlands) under Lodewijk Napoleon. During the years 1807–1810 prize winners were sent to Paris and onwards to Rome for study. In 1817 King Willem I restarted the prize; though it took until 1823 before the new "Royal Academies" of Amsterdam and Antwerp could organize the juries. Winners (1807–1810):[15]

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Lee, S. "Prix de Rome", Grove Dictionary of Art online
  2. ^ Clarke, Michael. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, Oxford University Press, 2001
  3. ^ Lee, ibid
  4. ^ Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse, Paula Young Lee, 2008, University of New Hampshire Press,ISBN 978-1-58465-698-2, p. 48
  5. ^ A History of Western Architecture, David Watkin, 2005, Laurence King Publishing, ISBN 1-85669-459-3, p. 441
  6. ^ "Percier, Charles; and Fontaine, Pierre(-François-Léonard)" in The New Encyclopædia Britannica (15th edition, Chicago, 1991) 9:280:3a.
  7. ^ artnet.com: Resource Library: Durameau, Louis-Jacques retrieved 25 October 2009 (English)
  8. ^ The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, Pierre Bourdieu, p. 215, ISBN 0-231-08287-8, 1993, Columbia University Press
  9. ^ 1911 Encyclopedia
  10. ^ The Legacy of Homer: Four Centuries of Art from the Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-arts, Paris, 2005, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10918-0
  11. ^ The New International Year Book, Published 1966. Dodd, Mead and Co. P 86
  12. ^ Biografia Visual Antonio Alice 1886 – 1943 (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Museo Roca – Instituto de Investigaciones Historicas. 2007. p. 6. Retrieved 13 March 2010. 
  13. ^ Reno Evening Gazette, Monday,22 May 1939>
  14. ^ "Jagger, Charles Sargeant". Grove Art Online. 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-09. 
  15. ^ Prix de Rome winners in RKD database

External links [edit]

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