Abstract
This contribution is intended to show that the events of geometrical drawing in Italian schools may be a good case study for the interplay of institutional and epistemological instances, and their impact on the actual implemented curriculum in classrooms. First, we retrace the institutional development of official curricula- focusing on three main turnpoints: the birth of Italian unitary school (seventh decade of XIX century), with the work of distinguished geometers like Luigi Cremona, Francesco Brioschi and others; the Gentile reform (third decade of the XX century); the new 2009 and 2012 curricula. Second, we examine some important epistemological debates on the nature of geometry and the role of drawing, focusing on two moments: the discussion carried on by Giovanni Vailati and Federigo Enriques at the beginning of the XX century, and the debates following the explosion of “modern maths” in the second half of the XX century.