Il carteggio artistico di Salvatore Betti segretario e professore di mitologia all’Accademia di San Luca nell’Ottocento

The article analyses the unpublished artistic correspondence of Salvatore Betti (1792- 1882), secretary and professor of history and mythology at the Accademia di San Luca and editor of the “Giornale Arcadico di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti” and of “L’Ape Italiana delle Belle Arti”. The 232 artistic letters preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, a selection of which is published in the appendix, add new information on the most flourishing period of the Accademia di San Luca, which saw the classicists Vincenzo Camuccini, Jean Baptiste Wicar, Filippo Agricola and Giovanni Silvagni in dialogue with the purists Tommaso Minardi, Friedrich Overbeck and the Spanish pensionados under the guidance of Antonio Solá. In addition to collecting events, editorial news and theoretical questions, the secretary’s manuscripts clarify the role of the teaching of history, mythology and customs at the academy, confirming its close correlation with the outline prints used by Betti for teaching purposes.