MARCHETTI, GIOVANNI. — Unopo
Politician and writer, born in Senigallia on 26 August 1790, died in Bologna on 28 March 1852. In 1848 he was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Mamiani cabinet. A friend and intimate of Pius IX, he composed poems and a cantata in his honour, set to music by Rossini and performed at the Campidoglio on New Year’s Day 1847.
A literary critic and Dante scholar, he wrote songs, odes, and sonnets. Notable works include the canticle *Una notte di Dante*, an ode condemning the traffic in Negro slaves, and one mourning the death of Napoleon’s son. He also produced numerous religious poems,
(1844–47): in the final instalment (pp. 237–72) is the report on the discovery of the intact tomb of St Hyacinth the Martyr (1845). Other parts remained unpublished owing to the upheavals of 1848–49, which the Lyonese architect L. Perret exploited to issue a spurious original artistic illustration of the catacombs. Marchetti, for his part, turned over to Fr Raffaele Garrucci the abandoned iconographic material he had collected, including the paintings from the tombs of Vincent and Vibia, already published as Christian by Bottari, which Marchetti had researched and recovered (1847). He obtained from Pius IX permission to have copies made from 1850 of many funerary paintings; these, together with ancient Christian sculptures, he arranged in the new Lateran Christian Museum, founded in 1854. His greatest service was to have committed the young G. B. De Rossi to Christian archaeology in 1842, entrusting him with the collection of inscriptions and thereafter, with constant encouragement, moulding him into his most able pupil, collaborator, and successor. In Latin epigraphy Marchetti was deservedly regarded as the equal of Morcelli; and he composed countless inscriptions celebrating important works and public and private events during the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX. His religious and priestly virtues were no less outstanding than his intellectual gifts, learning, and industry.