ARTEAGA, ESTEBAN de. — Born in Turolio in Aragon in 1747, died in Paris on 3 October 1799. A Jesuit, expelled during the reign of Carlo III, he found, like other members of his order, hospitality in Italy.
He lived for a long time in Bologna with Cardinal Albergati, was in contact with G. B. Bodoni, to whom he addressed several epistles in defense of his edition of the Horatian Carmina; he printed various works of his own in Italy; and wrote essays on Metastasio, Cesarotti, Alfieri, and Italian literary taste in the eighteenth century. As a music critic, his production occupies an eminent place within that of the other Spanish Jesuits who immigrated to Italy, equally significant though it was, such as Andrés, Eximeno, and Requeno. Besides Memoria para servir a la historia de la música española and Disertaciones sobre el ritmo sonoro y el ritmo mudo en la música de los antiguos, his principal work in this field is the two-volume work on Le Rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano dalla sua origine fino al presente (Bologna–Venice 1783–85), written in Italian but later translated into German (Leipzig 1789) and abridged in French (London 1802). It may be defined as a history of our musical drama, and is sufficient to earn A. the title of the foremost music critic of his time.
He appears above all as an original systematizer of the aesthetic ideas of the period in the work that brought him European fame, entitled Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la beleza ideal, considerada como objeto de todas las artes de imitación (Madrid 1789), the fruit of profound knowledge and reflection on what the major thinkers of the period had written on the subject (Voltaire, Diderot, Adamo Smith, Mendelssohn, Winckelmann, and certainly also, although he is not named there, Lessing), and at the same time the outcome of distinctly innovative tendencies and intuitions. Discussions concerning the aesthetic canons formulated by classical antiquity now give way to the concrete examination of the work of art: what had been the mechanical application of general principles becomes the formulation of judgments and appreciations concerning how the artist has overcome and mastered the difficulties inherent in the proposed subject. These ideas make this work one of the most complete treatises on aesthetics that Europe possessed before Baumgarten; nor, naturally, does it lack acute judgments concerning literature. In the field of A.’s literary activity, it will be useful to recall an essay of his, written in Italian, entitled Dell'influenza degli Arabi sull'origine della poesia moderna (Rome 1791), in which this influence is denied, contrary to the opinions already expressed by Father Andrés and Tiraboschi.