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Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access originally published online on September 30, 2007
Journal of the History of Collections 2007 19(2):165-175; doi:10.1093/jhc/fhm022
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Antiquaries and politicians in eighteenth-century Naples

Anna Maria Rao


  Abstract

In eighteenth-century Naples, as elsewhere in Italy and in France, enlightened reformers criticized antiquarian culture and claimed that new scientific and economic thought was of greater importance for the development of the state. Some modern historiography has taken at face value this confrontation between erudition and politics. This essay, on the contrary, shows that many exchanges and borrowings occurred between ‘antiquaries’ and ‘politicians’. Far from being eruditely but backwardly self indulgent and hostile to enlightened reform movements, antiquarianism embodied a whole set of cultural practices that were well articulated both within the realm of knowledge and that of politics. The ‘taste’ for the antique fuelled legal and economic reforms, contributed to the renewal of historical knowledge and natural sciences and favoured intellectual sociability; it also led to a full awareness of the importance of cultural and natural patrimony, and to the birth of new professions.

Address for correspondence Professor Anna Maria Rao, Dipartimento di Discipline storiche, Università di Napoli Federico II, Via Marina 33, 80133 Naples, Italy. annamrao{at}unina.it

Translated by Mark Weir


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