ARTEAGA, ESTEBAN de. — Born in Teruel in Aragon in 1747, died in Paris on 3 Oct. 1799. A Jesuit, expelled under the reign of Charles III, he found, like other brethren, hospitality in Italy.
He lived for a long time in Bologna with Cardinal Albergati, and was in contact with G. B. Bodoni, to whom he addressed several letters defending his own edition of Horace’s Odes. He published various works in Italy; wrote essays on Metastasio, Cesarotti, Alfieri, and on Italian literary taste in the 18th century. As a musical critic, his output occupies an eminent place in that significant body of work by other Spanish Jesuits who had settled in Italy, 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 nudo en la música de los antiguos*, his most notable contribution in this field is the two-volume work *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). This work may be defined as a history of our musical drama and suffices to assign the author the title of the first musical critic of his time.
He appears as an original systematizer of the aesthetic ideas of the age especially in the work that brought him European fame, *Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la beleza ideal, considerada como objeto de todas las artes de imitación* (Madrid 1789), a fruit of deep knowledge and reflection on what the leading thinkers of the day (Voltaire, Diderot, Adam Smith, Mendelssohn, Winckelmann, and certainly also, though not named, Lessing) had written on the subject, and at the same time a result of decidedly innovative tendencies and intuitions. Discussions about the aesthetic canons formulated by classical antiquity now give way to concrete examination of the artistic work: what had been mechanical application of general principles becomes formulation of judgments and appreciation of how the artist overcame and conquered the intrinsic difficulties of the subject proposed. Such ideas make this work one of the most complete treatises on aesthetics possessed by Europe before Baumgarten; nor are acute judgments on literature lacking, as might be expected. In the field of his literary activity, it is worth recalling an essay he wrote in Italian, *Dell’influenza degli Arabi sull’origine della poesia moderna* (Rome 1791), in which he denies such influence, contrary to the opinions already expressed by Father Andrés and Tiraboschi.