Chapter Una singolare epidemia del Settecento: Baretti e la «peste» antiquaria

Abstract

This essay aims at outlining Baretti’s attitude toward antiquarianism, which pervaded eighteenth-century Europe and Italy in particular, first with the revival of Etruscan studies and then with the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Baretti’s attacks towards the study of antiquities cover the years before Baretti definitively moved to England in 1766, starting from 1750, when he published the “Primo Cicalamento” against Giuseppe Bartoli, Paduan antiquarian and professor of eloquence and Greek at the University of Turin, who took part in the renowned antiquarian dispute over the «Querini Diptych». His dislike of the antiquarian concerns of his time would later become ‒ unexpectedly ‒ a matter of political balance, involving the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Venice.