Carlo Marchionni and the Art of Conversation

Abstract

Carlo Marchionni, distinguished architect of eighteenth-century Rome, populated his renderings with monumental figures unparalleled in the European tradition of architectural draftsmanship, fundamentally altering the form and function of architectural drawing. The culture of civility, in particular the art of civil conversation, marks the corpus of Marchionni. Expressive figures underscore the central position artists, intellectuals, women, and craftsmen occupied in the production of social and cultural practices in Rome. Marchionni employs conversation to elicit audience participation and move viewers through fictive spaces. His figures eloquently articulate an analogy between conversation and drawing, each in its own way profoundly generative and creative.