Abstract
Abstract Concern for culture held a central place in Italian intellectual life. In the eighteenth century, the elites of Sicily and Naples were connected to those of Lombardy, the Veneto, and Piedmont by cultural ties more than by political or economic interests. Learned treatises on the subjects of the day and individual artists and intellectuals moved from city to city more easily than any commerce in material goods. Educated Italians took delight in their common culture: the Latin classics; Dante, and all the Italian poets after him; five centuries of paintings and sculptures recognized as Italian, and music that was admired and imitated across Europe. Culture ranked with geography-Italy’s distinctive shape, clear boundaries, and picturesque terrain-as a marker of Italian identity.
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