This analysis of a large, unified body of student drawings from the first public competitions of the Accademia di San Luca, held between 1675 and 1700, brings to light a critical juncture in the Late Baroque. In Architectural Diplomacy, Gil Smith observes that at a time when building activity in Rome was greatly diminished, the Accademia became a successful laboratory of ideas where design methods, such as the productive fusing of French and Italian Baroque traditions, were tested for perhaps the first time before becoming common coin in 18th-century architecture.
