Marianna Candidi Dionigi, long overshadowed by her male contemporaries, is now recognised as one of the most multifaceted intellectuals of her time. The daughter of Giuseppe Candidi, a physician, and Maddalena Scilla, a descendant of the Sicilian painter Agostino Scilla, M. Candidi was active between the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a painter, musician, linguist and archaeologist. Her Roman salon, located in Palazzo Verospi Vitelleschi, became a gathering place for some of the leading cultural figures of the age.

Although she received an invitation from the French court to serve as governess to a royal princess – an extraordinary honour – M. Candidi declined the offer, choosing instead to remain in Rome with her husband, the Ferrarese nobleman Domenico Dionigi, and their children. She received her artistic training under Carlo Labruzzi, and her work focused mainly on landscape painting, a genre undergoing significant theoretical and aesthetic development during her lifetime.

In 1816, she contributed to the codification of landscape painting with her treatise Precetti elementari sulla pittura de’ paesi [Fundamental Precepts on Landscape Painting], published by the Roman press De Romanis. But it was her earlier publication, Viaggi in alcune città del Lazio che diconsi fondate dal re Saturno [Travels to some cities in Latium said to have been founded by King Saturn] (1809), that secured her legacy. This pioneering collection of prints documented the megalithic architecture of ancient towns in the Lazio region – a subject that placed her at the forefront of emerging archaeological interest. In 1823, she was one of the sixteen women artists admitted to the Congregazione del Pantheon in recognition of their talent and faith.

Recognised as the first woman archaeologist, M. Candidi joined several Italian and international academies, including one in Charleston, South Carolina. She lived into her seventies, and following her death, the antiquarian Luigi Cardinali wrote her obituary, published in 1826 in the Memorie romane di antichità e di belle arti [Roman Memoirs of Antiquity and Fine Arts] edited by Luigi Cardinali. This text includes a list of her paintings under the telling heading “Miei Lavori di Paesaggio [My Landscapes] – a title that suggests many of her works, though grounded in natural settings, included mythological or historical elements. Amongst these are Horace, Among the Lucretili Mountains, The Infant Moses on the Nile and Mars and Rhea Silvia by the Tiber, all reflecting the Roman taste for “historiated” landscapes. The whereabouts of these works remain unknown, and there is limited information about their origins or the period in which they were created.

M. Candidi’s intellectual and artistic legacy was continued by her daughters, particularly Carolina, already married to Pietro Stampa by 1796, and Enrichetta (1784–1868), who was also a painter and member of the Arcadian Academy. Enrichetta is remembered amongst Giacomo Leopardi’s correspondents, further underscoring the enduring cultural presence of the Candidi family in Rome’s artistic and literary circles.