Linford, SarahGeorgi, KarenCahill, Katherine2024-06-132024-06-132018Cahill, Katherine. "The Inventory List, From Functional to Artistic: The Apartments of the Marchese Diomede Bourbon di Sorbello and Marchesa Vittoria Pitti Gaddi Bourbon di Sorbello". Master's Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2018.https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/139Master of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Fall 2018.This thesis explores what motivated the Marchese Diomede Bourbon di Sorbello to write an ekphrastic inventory list of rooms in his palazzo in Perugia between 1794 and 1797. Evidence will be presented to argue for the literary value of the inventory in addition to being a document preserving the now-lost interior decoration of an eighteenth-century Italian palazzo containing both mobile and immobile objects and decorative arts. Common threads woven through the thesis are English translation excerpts positioned to offer comparisons and support the primary arguments of why the Marchese Diomede chose to write in this manner and demonstrate the inventory’s two-fold value as a literary and historical work of art. The prosopography of Diomede, including friendships with Vittorio Alfieri and François-Xavier Fabre, together with family history of collecting and the effects of the French Revolution are discussed as affecting both the manner and timing of the writing of the inventory list. A striking similarity between Diomede’s written descriptions and existence of floor plans, compared to the 1774 and 1786 editions of Mr. Horace Walpole’s description of his Villa at Strawberry-Hill are suggested as a possible model. The use of technical ekphrasis is illustrated by the use of movement and infinitive verbs to give the reader explicit instructions about how mechanical gadgets functioned and expressed opinions about how, when and where certain objects were to be used. The manner of writing descriptive sentences, creating a visual image with written words is what sets this inventory list apart from others in the family archive as well as from other published inventories at the same time in history. Translation of the twenty-three page original Italian document is included as an appendix A. Floor plans of the palazzo are present in Appendix B.90 pagesenAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Diomede Bourbon di SorbelloVittoria Pitti Gaddi Bourbon di SorbelloItalian artThesis