Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery.
The academy was established by royal decree in 1744. About twenty years later, the enlightened monarch Charles III purchased a palace in Madrid as the academy's new home. The building had been designed by José Benito de Churriguera for the Goyeneche family. The king commissioned Diego de Villanueva to convert the building for academic use, employing a neoclassical style in place of Churriguera's baroque design.
Doubling as a museum and gallery, today it houses a fine art collection of paintings from the 15th to 20th centuries: Arcimboldo, Giovanni Bellini, Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Guido Reni, Rubens, Giovanni Battista Beinaschi, Zurbarán, Murillo, Fragonard, Goya, Giuseppe Pirovani, Juan Gris, Pablo Serrano, Lorenzo Quiros, among others. The academy is also the headquarters of the Madrid Academy of Art.
The first graduate of the academy was Bárbara María Hueva.
Francisco Goya was once one of the academy's directors, and its alumni include Felip Pedrell, Pablo Picasso, Kiko Argüello, Salvador Dalí, Antonio López García, Juan Luna, Oscar de la Renta, and Fernando Botero.
