Drawing and Mathematics Studies

Drawing and Mathematics Studies Six years after a circular order was received from the Supreme Council of Castile, requesting a response from the Economic Society to know its opinion on the creation of a school of Arts and Drawing, the utensils and models sent from the capital of the kingdom arrived. That same year, 1787, the commissioned members were appointed for the fitting out of the furniture and for the provision of the necessary material, which would be sent by the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. In addition to all this, a room in the old hospital of San Martín was also requested from the Ecclesiastical Chapter to install the aforementioned dependencies. Thanks to that deployment of resources, he soon had 70 students and the protection of the monarch, who had insistently requested himself from the island. Shortly afterwards, on August 31, 1788, the regulations on order and good regime to be observed by the disciples were presented in the Economica, thus confirming once again how compliance and discipline seemed to be the most reputed virtues. All that remained was to establish the distribution of prizes, which, as in the other courses, was considered a priority in order to stimulate the attendance and interest of young people. However, the teaching of this subject continued under the approval of the Economica and its director, Bishop Antonio de la Plaza, despite the displeasure caused by his transfer to the diocese of Cadiz in 1790. The importance of these teachings for the island's society was soon demonstrated, as we can see in the following quotation from A. Millares Torres: The Economic Society, for its part, desirous of fulfilling the main object of its institute, strove to promote education, owing to its efforts the creation and maintenance of a free academy of drawing. where the craftsman found models to copy, and the artist a stimulus to awaken and develop his genius".26 With regard to the studies of mathematics, the events unfolded differently. Let's take a look at what happened: a year and a half after Domingo Romero de Medina unsuccessfully requested the creation of Mathematics studies from the Económica Lagunera, assuring that he was adequately prepared in this matter to contribute to "purifying the Royal intentions in the promotion of practice and the Homeland",27 he again requested the creation of these studies to the Económica de Las Palmas in a meeting held on November 27, 1786. Although the Tenerife Economic Commission denied that offer due to lack of means to finance it, the reasons that led its counterpart in Gran Canaria to deny the project were of different depth. "Having no news of the sufficiency of this subject, a commission was given to find it out and then agree on what seemed opportune, from which inquiry only resulted the disappointment that the said Romero boasted of what he did not know and that some drawings he had presented to the Society were very old and used".28 That ineptitude – real or attributed, we don't know– it was compensated by the talent of Antonio Conesa, captain of the Corps of Engineers and professor by vocation without salary assignment at the Conciliar Seminary, to whom all kinds of praise were paid. From 1788 onwards, the Economics defrayed the necessary expenses for him to teach arithmetic, equations, algebra, etc. All that remained was to establish the prizes, which on this occasion were made up of geographical charts and map games, among other distinctions. These studies, which had attracted the unconditional support of the Society, began to languish when Conesa moved to Tenerife, despite having left one of his most outstanding disciples at the head of them.