Rome's talking statues, where the pasquinades were posted

Between about 1501 and the nineteenth century, Romans who wanted to insult a pope without signing their names pasted verses onto six battered ancient sculptures scattered across the centre. The statues answered each other: Pasquino asked, Marforio replied, and Madama Lucrezia supplied the group's only female voice in what contemporaries called the Congresso degli Arguti. Each of the six is still standing where the pasquinades were posted, and the engravings and transcriptions that recorded the practice survive in library and museum collections.

Places in this collection

• Babuino — A reclining Silenus set into a wall fountain, commissioned by the merchant Alessandro Grandi in the 1570s and mocked by Romans as a baboon…
• Abate Luigi — A headless late imperial statue of a togate man, probably a magistrate or orator, standing in Piazza Vidoni against the flank of Sant'Andre…
• Madama Lucrezia — A mutilated Roman bust close to three metres high, probably a priestess of Isis or the goddess herself, set on a plinth at the corner of Pa…
• Marforio — A colossal first-century reclining river god, identified variously as Oceanus, Neptune or the Tiber, found in the Forum area near the templ…
• Pasquino — Cardinal Oliviero Carafa had this shattered Hellenistic torso, probably a Menelaus carrying the body of Patroclus, set on a pedestal beside…

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