Ricerc@Sapienza

The article’s focus is on two poetic collections, the one dedicated to Catherine the Great and the other to Alexios Orloff, both published in Naples, and on a political article, published in Florence in the early 1770s, and highlights their importance for the Italian Philhellenism. Offering an overview of the literature related to the subject, the author underlines the lack of sufficient attention on the specific texts that F. Venturi first presented in 1979. Finally, the paper proposes a revision concerning the periodization of the Italian philhellenic movement by placing its beginning in the 1770s and separating this first phase from all the others on the basis of its political character: it was a reformist rather than a revolutionary Philhellenism.