Carlo Marchionni

Carlo Marchionni (10 February 1702 – 28 July 1786) was an Italian architect. He was also a sculptor and a virtuoso draughtsman, who mixed in the artistic and intellectual circles. He was born and died in Rome.

Marchionni's early career was fostered by his lifelong friend Cardinal Alessandro Albani, a great collector of antiquities. His mature style exhibits a richly-detailed idiomatic repertory on the cusp of Late Baroque and Neoclassicism that may be compared with the similar style by his Italian contemporaries Alessandro Galilei, Ferdinando Fuga or Vanvitelli, or indeed with their French contemporary, Ange-Jacques Gabriel, who designed the (Petit Trianon)

Marchionni's earliest training was as a sculptor. He studied architecture at Rome's Accademia di San Luca, as pupil of Filippo Barigioni, who favored the elaborated style of Borromini. In 1728 Marchionni had come to Albani's attention after winning first prize in the Academy's Concorso Clementino. Marchionni's Borromini-influenced style is identifiable in Marchionni's early work (1728) for Cardinal Albani's villa at Anzio and at the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo.

Marchionni helped restore and rebuild the choir at San Giovanni in Laterano along with Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who is best known for his etchings of Roman ruins. Piranesi's picturesque approach to Roman antiquity likely influenced Marchionni's style. However, Marchionni's mature work, such as the Villa Albani (1746–63) expresses the courtly decorative classicism of his patron's circle, which included the neoclassicist Winckelmann, curator of Albani's antiquities. After Nicola Salvi's death in 1751, Marchionni help design the Villa's garden façade (illustration, right) is without central emphasis or end pavilions, a single sequence of bays defined by an order of Corinthian pilasters standing on rusticated pilasters of an arcade with arch-head openings of "Palladian" form. The whole façade is surmounted by a running balustrade that emphasizes its linearity. The balustrades, herms and stone vases of the Gardens must be from designs of Marchionni (Gatta).

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