Marianna Mancini

Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation

Builders of modern Rome: secondary craftsmen and the development of Roman architectural language in the 16th century

2025–⁠2026: Fall

Marianna Mancini holds an MA in Art History from the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, where her thesis—comparing the art historical theories and methodologies of Heinrich Wölfflin and Erwin Panofsky with a special focus on their application to the study of architecture—was awarded the "Luigi Tagliavini" prize for the best MA thesis in Visual Arts.

In February 2025, she earned her PhD in History of Architecture from the Department of History, Representation and Restoration of Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the palace of the Torres family in Rome, exploring the dynamics between patrons, architects and masons in sixteenth-century Rome and highlighting the circulation of architectural models, knowledge, and techniques beyond the sole agency of the architect. She is currently collaborating with the research group CHROME - Churches of Rome: Atlas of the Chapels of the Capitoline Nobility (1347-1600) (Italian PRIN 2022).

Her broader research interests include the study of architectural drawings produced and preserved in architects' workshops, considering them as instruments for the transmission and transformation of architectural knowledge. In this field, she is carrying out a study of the group of drawings held in the archives of the Hospital of San Giacomo degli Incurabili in Rome, a particularly interesting example of a graphic collection that provides an insight into the practices of small workshops active in Rome during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.