Accademia di San Luca, was founded in 1593 as an association of artists in Rome, under the directorship of Federico Zuccari, with the purpose of elevating the work of "artists", which included painters, sculptors and architects, above that of mere craftsmen. Other founders included Girolamo Muziano and Pietro Olivieri. The Academy was named after Saint Lukethe evangelist who, legend has it, made a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and thus became the patron saint of painters' guilds. It was based in an urban block by the Roman Forum and although these buildings no longer survive, the Academy church of Santi Luca e Martina, designed by the Baroque architect, Pietro da Cortona does; its main facade overlooks the Forum.The Accademia Nazionale di San Luca is its modern descendant. From the very beginning, the statutes of the Academy directed that each candidate-academician was to donate a work of his art in perpetual memory and, later, a portrait. Thus the Academy, in its current premises in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Carpegna, located in the Piazza dell'Accademia di San Luca, has accumulated a unique collection of paintings and sculptures, including about 500 portraits, as well as an outstanding collection of drawings.