In view of increasing pressure by the Parisian guilds for painters and sculptors to submit to their control, the young but already very successful painter Charles Le Brun conceived a plan to free the true artists from the humiliating influence of mere artisans. He involved his two close friends, the brothers Louis and Henri Testelin, to lobby for an independent organisation where membership was based on merit alone, following the examples of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence and the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.