It was founded and operated by a family of Italian artists' models from the Valle di Comino to the south of Rome.

Cesare Vitti came from Casalvieri, a village in the Valle di Comino close to Atina in the mountains south of Rome.

Carmela Caira posed for James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Henri Matisse (1869–1954), Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Alice Pike Barney (1857–1931).

[2] Teachers included Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Luc-Olivier Merson, Frederick MacMonnies, Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942) and Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa (1871–1959).

[1] In March 1903 Walter Sickert (1860–1942) began teaching again in Paris, probably at the Académie Vitti with Blanche and Lucien Simon (1861–1945).