Per un database dei pubblici in visita al "Museo di Roma" (1733-1870)
The database of visitors to the “Museum of Rome" (1733-1870), an integral part of the project Visibility Reclaimed. Experiencing Rome's First Public Museums (1733-1870). An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective (FNS 100016_212922), is intended as a tool for the collection and querying of primary sources for studying the cosmopolitan public that accessed the city's museums and monuments between the 18th and 19th centuries. The objective is to provide, for the first time, a mapping and analysis of the audiences of the Urbe and their evolution, identifying their categories (social, professional, gender) and geographical origins.
In the famous Lettres à Miranda (1796), Quatremère de Quincy uses the expression "Museum of Rome" considering the entire city as an immovable heritage to be shared and protected in its entirety:
Le véritable muséum de Rome, celui dont je parle, se compose, il est vrai, de statues, de colosses, de temples, d'obélisques, de colonnes triomphales, de thermes, de cirques, d'amphithéâtres, d'arcs de triomphe, de tombeaux, de stucs, de fresques, de basreliefs, d'inscriptions, de fragmens d'ornemens, de matériaux de construction, de meubles, d'ustensiles, etc. etc.; mais il ne se compose pas moins des lieux, des sites, des montagnes, des carrières, des routes antiques, des positions respectives des villes ruinées, des rapports géographiques, des relations de tous les objets entr'eux, des souvenirs, des traditions locales, des usages encore existans, des parallèles et des rapprochemens qui ne peuvent se faire quedans le pays même.1
Adopting this expression, the database aims to focus on the extraordinary presence in Rome of various places to visit (collections of antiquities, palace galleries, patrician villas, museums, ancient and modern monuments, artists' studios, libraries) and the different ways of accessing and enjoying spaces of art and culture. The database aims to highlight the osmosis between the private and public spheres, the mobile geographies of visiting the city, and the most polarizing sites. The data currently being cataloged will be graphically searchable, accessible, and translated into thematic maps.
In this regard, a corpus of primary sources, mostly unpublished, sometimes dissimilar in form and function and representative of a multiplicity of actors and protagonists, is being progressively collected and catalogued. These are mainly requests and permits granted for access to museums, requests for copies, studies or surveys of ancient monuments, and visitors' books. This documentation reflects the complexity of the experience of exhibition spaces, the result of a dialogue, not always easy, between the public and museums, and which is sometimes mediated by a dense network of intermediaries (academies, diplomacy, etc.).
The sources preserved to date certainly provide a partial picture of the public in Rome during this period. However, the data recorded already provide an important qualitative and quantitative overview. Names, occupations, origins, reasons for visits, and visiting practices can be partially reconstructed, as demonstrated by previous researches, including the visitor database of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel. Compared to these models, the visitor database of the “Museum of Rome” combines an archiving system that not only allows us to specify encounters, networks, conflicts, and, more generally, the system of public discipline, but also to reveal the profound social, political, and economic changes that took place during the period under consideration.
1. Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, Lettres sur le préjudice qu’occasionneraient aux arts et à la science, le déplacement des monuments de l’art de l’Italie, le démembrement de ses écoles, et la spoliation de ses collections, galeries, musées, & c., Rome, 1815, [Nouvelle édition, faite sur celle de Paris de 1796], pp. 27-28.
