Frederic Lord Leighton: At the Accademia delle Belle Arti

"Nicandra" by Frederic Leighton

"Frederic Leighton became a pupil under the leading professors of drawing and painting in Florence, Bezzuoli and Servolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in the spring of 1845 when he was little more than fourteen years old.  At this time Signor Zanetti was lecturing upon anatomy, and nothing would do but that the lad must enroll himself as a member of his class. 

Frederic's father used to make him draw the bones, muscles, and articulations from prints, and when he had finished his copies he tore them up and told the boy to draw them all over again from memory. In this way, Frederic, who entered heartily into the course, learned not only the value of every particle of the human figure, but also gained the power of drawing them with absolute fidelity.

Early in 1846 young Leighton began to paint in oil colours systematically under the instruction of his masters. In this he made rapid progress. Much early work is in existence in oil and other media -the spontaneous effort of his own unassisted ideas - and some of it is excellent.

With his fellow students, he made regular visits in and about Florence for the purpose of working in crayon and pencil in the open air. These excursions were regarded as serious stages in the pursuit of art studies, but they were also occasions of merriment and youthful exuberance. On the day his family left Florence in 1846 on their return to England, their coach was followed by a crowd of his friends running behind it and crying out, 'Come back, Inglesino! Come back!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Lord Leighton of Stretton, P.R.A." by Edgcumbe Staley.)