Abstract/Summary

This PhD thesis, entitled Prints and drawings in the Inscriptiones christianae (Vat. lat. 9071- 9074) of Gaetano Marini (1742-1815), is dedicated to the study and cataloguing of the prints and drawings collection that was put together by Abbot Gaetano Marini (1742-1815) in Rome over the second half of the eighteenth-century. The Inscriptiones christianae consist of drawings and prints of inscriptions and inscribed objects, while the focus of my research is on those including figurative imagery, found on stone inscriptions or functional objects, or in church and catacomb wall paintings and mosaics, where the whole artwork or object on which the text is located, or the wider pictorial setting of which it forms part, is illustrated in detail by a print or a drawing. Marini was an archivist, a paleographer, an archaeologist, and a collector of prints and drawings of early Christian antiquities. He worked at the Albani Library in Rome from 1768 and was elected prefect of the Vatican Library in 1798. Regrettably, the Inscriptiones christianae were left unpublished at the Vatican Library after his death. In addition to a total of 9,775 epigraphic texts, which were recorded on cards systematically numbered and glued on folio-size pages, then bound in four volumes, the Inscriptiones christianae contain prints and drawings of antiquarian origin. This thesis addresses issues of attribution, origin, and provenance of prints and drawings, which still need to be fully reconsidered. Watercolors of wall paintings and mosaics from Roman churches in the Inscriptiones christianae share the same known origin, while my research considered the provenance, and contribution to the corpus, of other drawings of later date. The study of the prints and print cuttings in the Inscriptiones christianae has also thrown new light on Marini’s research methods and provided pivotal information on the history of the inscriptions and objects copied.