ARCADIA, ACCADEMIA della. – A literary academy founded in Rome in 1690 by 14 scholars and rapidly developed into a widespread and influential institution. In opposition to the programmatic originality and extravagance of the Seicento, it sought a return to simplicity of feeling and rustic spontaneity of imagination. Its members, who adopted Greek names upon joining, styled themselves “shepherds”; the many branches established in Italian cities were called “reservoirs”; the academy’s protector, or Grand Shepherd of shepherds, was chosen as the Christ Child, born in a stable and among shepherds; its emblem was the Greek panpipe wreathed with laurel and pine. The first and principal seat in Rome (“central reservoir”) was inaugurated on 15 October 1690 with a meeting held in the garden of the Reformed Franciscans at S. Pietro in Montorio. The academy received the high patronage of Innocent XII the following year and enjoyed the favor of Christina of Sweden, a great patron of artists and men of letters in Rome.
Its statutes were drafted in Latin by the scholar and jurist Gian Vincenzo Gravina; its head, with the title of General Custodian, was Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, author of *Le Bellezze della volgar poesia* (1700), which sets forth the Platonic aesthetics of the Arcadians, and of the *Memorie istoriche dell’Accademia*. In keeping with its character, the academy held its meetings outdoors in the Parrasian Wood; then, in 1725, through the munificence of John V of Portugal, it moved to the Janiculum.
During the first three decades of the 18th century, there was scarcely an Italian city that did not host one of its colonies, as they termed them in Latin. Protected and favored by leading figures of the day (the Roman Arcadians often enjoyed the lavish hospitality of Cardinal Ottoboni in the gardens of the Abbey of S. Pancrazio), its membership included Clement XI, 46 cardinals, hundreds of patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops and prelates, the Queen of Poland and her son, the reigning princes of Bavaria, Tuscany, Parma, the Duke of Mirandola, all the princes of the Holy See, nearly all the Italian nobility and much of that from beyond the Alps, and many ladies, among them Faustina Maratti and the Marchioness Petronilla Paolini Massimi.
Among the most notable Arcadians may also be recalled: Monsignor Sardini of Lucca; Monsignor N. Forteguerri; Canon G. Crocchiante; and, among the poets, G. B. Zappi, C. I. Frugoni, A. Bertola, I. Vittorelli, P. Rolli, E. Manfredi, and Metastasio. The academy also welcomed the most famous improvisers, such as Cavalier Bernardino Perfetti and Maria Maddalena Morelli (known in Arcadia as Corilla Olimpica).
It may truly be said that, at least for the first half of the 18th century, virtually all Italian poetic production took place within the ambit of the academy, which came to dominate the literary fashion of the peninsula, imposing uniform aesthetic canons and standards of taste. Precisely in these aesthetic canons, rather than in any profound vital movement, lay the reaction it opposed to the Seicento. Giambattista Marino and his school had made wonder the end of poetry, and their baroque style was the result of a quest for novelty at any cost, with wonder and novelty substituting for spiritual values that were lacking; thus in the imagery of the Seicento we see the expression of mere sensualism. The academy sought to fill this inner void by other means, but did not abolish II. Against originality as an end in itself, the Arcadians restored the primacy of structure over inspiration and affirmed the rule of discipline. This position already contained in embryo that mannerism and dilettantism which remain the limiting factors of all Arcadian poetry. Apart from its acknowledged debt to Tasso, the academy also drew on Marino, whom it sought to oppose, for its pastoral world.
Of the three directions discernible in Arcadian poetry—the Petrarchan, the classicizing (which in varying degrees looked back to Platonism, especially the Renaissance Platonism of Marsilio Ficino)—the first two were undoubtedly the most artificial, while the pastoral and Anacreontic vein produced the best surviving “little songs” (notably those of Rolli and a few others) and the happiest moments of Metastasio. Even in these livelier expressions, genuine feeling rarely rises above sentimentality and serves chiefly as a pretext for melodious verse and refined elegance of expression, indicating that sensualism, though it had been a constitutive element of Marinist imagery, remained so for the Arcadians as well. This lack of feeling in its purest and most vital form makes Italian Arcadian poetry a literary phenomenon parallel to the sensism of French philosophy. In this regard, the poetic praises bestowed by Frugoni on Condillac are significant.
The academy began to decline in the second half of the 18th century; its decadence grew ever more pronounced as changing times brought new demands. After a long period of feeble and precarious existence, it was reorganized in 1925 with the addition of the Accademia letteraria italiana. Its seat was transferred from the Parrasian Wood, which remains the property of the Institute, to the Angelica Library in Rome. The academy has published 13 volumes of *Rime* and three periodicals: *L’Arcadia* (1889–1896), *Giornale arcadico* (1898–1916), and *Atti dell’Accademia e scritti dei soci* (from 1917).