II

The Prix de Rome

Founded in 1663 by the Académie royale, the Prix de Rome rewarded each year the most gifted young painters, sculptors and architects of France. The winner earned a long stay in Rome at the king’s expense: whole years to draw from the Antique, copy the masters and train far from Paris.

The competition was severe and almost legendary: tests of drawing, then of painting or sculpture “en loge”, those weeks of seclusion in which each candidate painted his trial canvas. To win was to enter the history of French art before the age of thirty.

Generations of residents have walked these same paths and these same salons. Some remained great names — David, Ingres, Carpeaux, Debussy for music — others were forgotten; but all carried away with them the memory of Rome.

It was this almost three-hundred-year-old tradition that in 1966 led the youngest of the Premiers Grands Prix, Jean Marc Lange, through the villa’s gate. The competition would be abolished two years later, in 1968: he was among the last residents of the prize’s old history.