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TheAccademia degli Arcadi orAccademia dell'Arcadia, "Academy of Arcadia" or "Academy of the Arcadians", is an Italian literaryacademy founded inRome in 1690. The full Italian official name wasPontificia Accademia degli Arcadi.
The beginnings of the Accademia degli Arcadi date to February 1656, when a literary circle formed under the patronage ofQueen Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated the Swedish crown in 1654, converted to Catholicism, and taken up her residence in Rome, where she spent much of the rest of her life. There she became a significant patron of literature, science and music, with composers includingAlessandro Scarlatti,Alessandro Stradella andArcangelo Corelli dedicating works to her.
Christina died in 1689, surrounded by a group of admiring members of Rome'sintelligentsia, desirous of opposing the complexities of Baroque culture with a return to classical simplicity and directness. They applauded her desire to get back to basic (and classical) literary values of sincerity and simplicity in an Italy which, she believed, was allowing its national heritage to waste and decay, because of that Baroque concentration on over-ingenious conceits to the detriment of meaningful content. In 1689, a group of intellectuals belonging to Christina's circle established the academy in her memory and elected her as its symbolic head (basilissa, the Greek term for 'Queen'). For the next two hundred years, the Academy remained a leading cultural institution.
The first solemn gathering of the Arcadians was held on theJaniculum hill, in a wood belonging to theReformed Minorites, on 5 October 1690. The Accademia degli Arcadi was so-called because its principal intention was to reform the diction of Italian poetry, which the founders believed had become corrupt through over-indulgence in the ornamentation of the baroque style. Under the inspiration of pastoral literature, the conventions of which imagined the life of shepherds, originally supposed to have lived in Arcadia in the golden age, divinely inspired in poetry by theMuses,Apollo,Hermes andPan, the Academy chose as its emblem the pipe ofPan with its seven unequal reeds.
The fourteen founders selectedGiovanni Mario Crescimbeni as the firstCustode di Arcadia or president of the academy. He was the author of a history of Italian poetry and of various literary works.[1] The Arcadians resolved to return to the fields of truth, always singing of subjects of pastoral simplicity and drawing their inspiration from Greco-Roman bucolic poetry. The ideal parameters for the artistic work were simplicity and a sense of measure and beauty. Common to all the poets was the desire to oppose the poetry of theMarinists,[2] and return to classic poetry, embracing also the recent rationalist influence ofDescartes. Norms and rituals of the academy took their cue from classic and pastoral mythology, as in the custom of assuming 'pastoral' names (Crescimbeni, for example, chose that of 'Alfesibeo Cario').
In 1692, the meetings were transferred to the gardens ofDuke Orsini on theEsquiline hill; in 1696, to theFarnese Gardens on thePalatine. Finally, the generosity ofJohn V of Portugal, one of its members under the name of Arete Melleo, enabled the society to secure (1723) on the Janiculum a site known as theBosco Parrasio or (Parrasian Grove). Here they held their meetings on summer days, in winter moving to theTeatro degli Arcadi in thePalazzo Salviati.[3] In 1696 the Accademia admitted seven musicians includingGiovanni Bononcini.[4]
While the academy was still on the Palatine, itsStatuto or Constitution was drawn up. This constitution (the work of co-founderGian Vincenzo Gravina) was modelled on the ancient Roman laws of the 'Twelve Tables', and was engraved on marble. Differing tendencies soon asserted themselves, following the ideas of the two founders: that of Gravina stood in the tradition ofHomer and Dante, while that of Crescimbeni was more influenced byPetrarch. Because of these differences, Gravina left to found theAccademia dei Quirini in 1711. Despite this loss, Arcadia retained its vigour in the following years and created colonies in many cities of Italy. Many noblemen, ecclesiastics, and artists held membership in it to be an honour, and very soon it numbered 1,300.
The celebrated lyric poet and opera librettistPietro Metastasio (1698–1782), a student of Gravina's and a prominent member of the Academy, is widely regarded as the highest exponent of the movement.
Unlike most learned societies of the period, Arcadia admitted female members. It was the first Italian academy to do so, and several women became prominent writers within the organization, with their works appearing in official publications. One of the first female members of the Academy was the Italian poetDiodata Saluzzo Roero, admitted in 1795,[5] but some evidence does exist for earlier female members. In the 17th century, the poetMaria Antonia Scalera Stellini was elected a member, and the 1721 edition of the Academy's publication included work byCaterina Imperiale Lercari Pallavicini.Margherita Sparapani Gentili Boccapadule was also a member.[6]
A violent anti-Arcadian reaction soon developed, and, starting from the early 19th century, Arcadianism began to be regarded as a late and unconvincing expression of theancien régime. Severe critics includedGiuseppe Baretti, who was fiercely opposed to what he considered the emptiness and fundamentally frivolous quality of the compositions of the Arcadians, whileLuigi Settembrini saw the movement as a Jesuitical attempt to reduce the Italian intelligentsia to childish decadence.
After the end of theFrench Revolution, the Academy strove to renew itself in accord with the spirit of the times, without sacrificing its traditional system of sylvan associations and pastoral names. The Academy no longer represented a literary school, but a general interest in the classics and figures like Dante came to be greatly honoured by its members. Furthermore, the Academy's field of endeavour was enlarged to include many branches of study, including history and archaeology. The new Arcadian revival was marked by the foundation (1819) of theGiornale Arcadico. In 1925 the Academy was renamed to become theArcadia – Accademia Letteraria Italiana, a historical institute. Arcadia has demonstrated its resilience and its independent stance, not least during theFascist era, when alone of the Italian academies, it refused to remove Croce's name from its register of fellows. In its modern guise as promoter of literary criticism, its conservative programme shows every sign of outliving the theories of postwar criticism, and currently the Academy has long waiting lists for its keenly contested membership.
The Accademia degli Arcadi counted among its members some of the principal literary men and women of the time, including scholarsFrancesco Redi,Ludovico Antonio Muratori,Scipione Maffei andGiambattista Vico, librettistsApostolo Zeno,Pietro Metastasio andPaolo Rolli, and linguistClotilde Tambroni, among others. Some of the leading Italian poets of the eighteenth century, includingGiuseppe Parini,Carlo Goldoni andVittorio Alfieri, were co-opted as members, despite their differences from Arcadian poetic tradition.
The famous composerGeorge Frideric Handel is known to have often attended the meetings and symposia of the Arcadians when studying in Italy, under the patronage of Ruspoli, a leading member of the Academy.Goethe, was welcomed as a member of the Arcadian Academy in 1786.[7] There is an interesting account of the Academy's history and program in his 'Italian Journey'.
The archives of the academy are currently housed in theBiblioteca Angelica, next to the church ofSant'Agostino inRome. The paintings are housed in thePalazzo Braschi.
Following Baretti, the 19th-century criticFrancesco de Sanctis, with hisRomantic emphasis on national liberation and patriotic values, reviled what he saw as the uncommitted attitudes of the movement, though he appreciated the technical achievements of some of the Arcadian poets, particularly Metastasio.Giosuè Carducci robustly took up de Sanctis's nationalistic attack, but 20th-century critics, notablyBenedetto Croce and Mario Fubini, have concentrated rather on the reforming side of the academy, claiming that without its early revolutionary and enlightened aims, writers such as Goldoni, Alfieri, and Parini would not so easily have been able to achieve their particular originality; and that it helped enlightened critics, such as Gravina andMuratori, to lay down critical rules for judging and defining literary and particularly poetic creations. Nor perhaps would it have been so easy for Italian cultural, or at least literary, nationalism to make itself heard through the literary histories of Crescimbeni (Istoria della volgar poesia) and ofTiraboschi (Storia della letteratura italiana), which led directly to the patriotic history of Italian literature created by de Sanctis.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Crescimbeni, Giovanni Mario".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 411–412.
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