The collections

Overview of the collection

The collection of the French Academy in Rome comprises a large number of pieces of historic furniture, contemporary art and design objects, a large collection of plaster prints, the oldest of which date back to a commission from Louis XIV, tapestries from the 17th and 18th centuries, bas-reliefs integrated into Villa Medici’s façade or decorating the garden, and medals. The painting collection comprises some 500 works, including 463 portraits of residents painted between 1798 and 1936. The Academy also owns a number of historic musical instruments, an important graphic art collection of engravings, drawings and watercolors, and a photo library of some 16,000 photographs (prints, ektachromes and negatives). The Academy also holds works from French collections, notably the Mobilier national.

Exceptional originals

Today, visitors can still admire some of the original antique masterpieces on display at Villa Medici. The monumental marble sculpture of the Dea Roma, over 5 metres high, represents Rome’s patron goddess and greets visitors in the gardens. Her helmet, adorned with two wolves, recalls the city’s founding legend. The sculpture was presented by Pope Gregory XIII to Ferdinando de’ Medici immediately after its discovery during excavations on the Quirinal. Was it her role as Rome’s patron goddess that saved her from exile to Florence with the other antiques in the cardinal’s collection?

In another square of the gardens, ancient remains (columns, capitals, steles) have been staged in the spirit of a poetics of ruins such as the Academy’s resident painters might have dreamed up in the 18th century. One of the funerary steles bears the names of boarders who died at the front during the First World War, inscribed by their comrades.

In the gardens, the facade offers another glimpse of Ferdinando de Medici’s collection of antiques. In 1584, Ferdinando acquired the famous antique collection of another cardinal, Andrea della Valle, which included numerous bas-reliefs. That same year, he asked his architect, Bartolomeo Ammannati, to assemble them on the façade overlooking the gardens: around the three bays of the loggia’s serliana, they were symmetrically distributed throughout the Villa’s elevation. Dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, they bear witness both to the taste for Antiquity during the Renaissance and to Roman sculpture under the Empire.

The central body features the temple of the mother goddess Cybele, depictions of Trajan’s wars against the Dacians and Hercules fighting the Nemean lion. The side panels feature the monumental garlands of the Ara Pacis altar, built by Augustus in IX B.C. to celebrate Pax, the goddess of Peace. In addition to acanthus, fruit and flower scrolls, they feature ox heads, reminders of the animal sacrifices made to the goddess. Ferdinando had acquired the Ara Pacis reliefs from Cardinal Ricci, who had sold him Villa Medici.

Initially white in Ferdinando de’ Medici’s time, the facade took on a darker hue from the 1870s, first as a result of the aging patina, then as a result of the decision to cover it with ochre-colored plaster. Extensive restoration work carried out between 1994 and 1996 restored the bright white monochrome formed by the combination of antique marble, travertine and stucco. This restoration was all the more important as the Villa dominates the Pincio hill and is an essential landmark in the urban panorama.

Inside, the collections are displayed in the historic salons and rooms. The Villa houses an important collection of tapestries, including 9 by Les Gobelins (the Tenture des Indes). The historic tapestries include two examples of the Four Seasons cycle (1574-1651), the Tenture des Indes (1723-1726) and theEsther cycle (1774). They offer a glimpse into the transformations of European imaginations over the centuries, and reveal significant heritage, cultural and historical issues.

The allegorical Autumn and Spring tapestries, based on designs by Mannerist painter Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), testify to the exceptional skill of Brussels’ 17th-century leatherworkers. Bequeathed to Villa Medici by Italian art historian and collector Federico Zeri, they have undergone a major conservation restoration campaign in 2021-2022, thanks to the skills of Ateliers Bobin Tradition, which has enabled them to be rehung in the Music Room.

Presented to the French Academy in Rome by King Louis XV, the Tenture des Indes adorned the main floor of the Palazzo Mancini in via del Corso, the Academy’s headquarters until the end of the 18th century. Woven by the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, the Tenture des Indes comprises eight pieces. Although conceived as an ambitious “portrait” of Brazil, based on drawings and paintings by Albert Eckhout (1610-1665) and Frans Post (1612-1680), the ensemble evokes an “exotic” elsewhere, referred to generically as the “Indies”, which combines the flora and fauna of South America with plants and animals from the African continent, and even imaginary species. These artifacts celebrate a fantasized abundance, intertwined with motifs evoking the exploitation and colonization policies of the New World, in which both the Amerindian populations and the African slaves present in the colonies are represented. The study and promotion of the collections is one of the Academy’s missions, which is reflected in the organization of colloquia and the hosting of researchers at Villa Medici to continue to analyze and illuminate the heritage.

Of the seven paintings that make up the complete tapestry dedicated to Esther, the Old Testament heroine, only two are preserved at Villa Medici and adorn the Chambre des Amours: the Toilette d’Esther and the Évanouissement d’Esther. These tapestries, one of the finest productions of the Manufacture des Gobelins, were woven from cartoons created by the artist Jean-François de Troy (1679-1752) when he was director of the Academy. Each tapestry took between two and three years to complete.

In dialogue with the historical tapestries, an ensemble of modern and contemporary tapestries adorn the walls of Villa Medici. Deposited by the Mobilier National, they are signed by Louise Bourgeois, Patrick Corillon, Eduardo Chillida, Sonia Delaunay, Sheila Hicks, Aurélie Nemours, Alicia Penalba and Raoul Ubac.

A place to live, work and meet, Villa Medici also houses a collection of antique furniture from the 17th and 18th centuries, creations by Balthus (floor lamps) and Richard Peduzzi (tables, chairs, lamps) as well as contemporary designers: Chiara Andreatti, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, India Mahdavi, Toan Nguyen, David Lopez Quincoces. From India Mahdavi’s four-poster bed to the Via Appia table designed by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance in homage to the famous ancient road, contemporary design shines at Villa Medici (find out more).

Music is also at the heart of Villa Medici collections, reflecting the importance of this discipline at the French Academy in Rome since the creation of the Grand Prix de Musique in 1803. Renowned composers have stayed at the Academy: Boulanger, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel… The collection of instruments includes a 17th-century harpsichord purchased by Balthus, an 18th-century positive organ, Liszt’s 19th-century Érard forte-piano, Debussy’s Pleyel piano and a Gaveau piano from the late 1920s. All are still played in concert, and in 2023, Villa Medici launched a major restoration program that is still ongoing. After the Debussy piano, the painted harpsichord in the Salon de Musique was restored to playing condition.

The art of copying

Villa Medici collection reflects the work of the residents in residence, based on the central idea of copying through the casting technique. Over the generations, a collection of “modern antiquities” has been built up, bearing witness to the great masterpieces of Antiquity and the Renaissance that were present in Rome in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Inaugurated in 2009 under the direction of Fréderic Mitterrand in one of the former workshops located on the walls of Aurélien, the gypsothèque houses part of this precious collection of plaster prints from the Academy . It includes prints of major works from the Classical and Hellenistic periods, including the famous Belvedere torso that has fascinated artists for centuries, the striking head of Montecavallo’s Dioscurus, and the oldest existing prints of fragments of the Trajan column, made in the time of Louis XIV. The opening of the gypsothèque to the public in 2009 marks the recognition of these heritage objects and the start of new research carried out in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre. This will enable us to analyze the materials and sophisticated techniques developed by the Academy’s artists for these casts, and to better understand their history.

Sensitive to the importance of copying, Balthus, director from 1961 to 1977, decided to restore the Renaissance character of Villa Medici gardens by installing copies of Ferdinando de’ Medici antiques, such as the obelisk in the Fontaine des Dauphins, the Dacian prisoners and the Niobids. In 1972, resident sculptor Michel Bourbon was commissioned to cast the originals for the copies. To create the copies, he developed an avant-garde recipe: a mixture of marble and epoxy resin.

The Niobides group, a replica of the 1st- and 2nd-century originals housed at the Uffizi in Florence, recounts the myth of Niobe, queen of Thebes who dared to boast that she had given birth to more children than Leto, the mother of Artemis and Apollo. To avenge the affront to their mother, the brother and sister pierce Niobe’s unfortunate offspring with their arrows. Balthus not only decided to copy the group, but also designed its layout in a square in the gardens, combining artificial rocks, vegetation and water fountains.

To create the copy of the 6-metre-high obelisk that adorned the Fontaine des Dauphins, Michel Bourbon also made a cast directly from the original erected in the Boboli gardens in Florence. Made of pink Aswan granite, the obelisk had arrived in Rome in the 1st century before being acquired by Ferdinand.

The casts of three Dacian prisoners draped in porphyry red, also created by Michel Bourbon in 1975, underwent a state-of-the-art essential oil-based bioremediation in 2020, in collaboration with two master restorers from the Vatican Museums’ marble restoration laboratory.