QUIRINAL CAFFEAUS AND CAFFÉ GRECO | Contrasts in the 18th Century Coffeehouse in Rome with David Marshall

Coffee houses were centres of sociability, like a club, for drinking a non-alcoholic beverage, reading the papers and engaging in (possibly seditious) political discussion. Eighteenth-century popes liked to be up with the latest fashions, and Benedict XIV built himself a Caffeausin the gardens of his Quirinal palace. Its magnificent (but little known) decoration, involving Pompeo Batoni and Giovanni Paolo Panini, can be compared to the very different decoration of the Caffé Greco - a haunt of artists and intellectuals - in the streets below.

DAVID R MARSHALL is Principal Fellow, Art History, School of Culture and Communication, the University of Melbourne. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Honorary Research Fellow, British School at Rome. He is founder and editor of Melbourne Art Journal and a Director of Melbourne Art Network.

Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691 – 1765), Benedict XIV receiving Charles III of Naples at the Caffeaus on the Quirinal in 1744, 1745, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples