Camillo Renati e la sociabilità accademica a Mantova nel tardo Settecento

A figure who has been little studied by historians to date, Camillo Renati (1770-1852) played a role that was anything but secondary in the cultural and literary scene of late 18th-century Mantua. A member of the Arcadian Colonia Virgiliana, founded in 1747 by Marquis Carlo Valenti Gonzaga and approved in 1752 by Maria Theresa of Austria, Renati was one of the most prolific authors in the years following the association's affiliation with the Royal Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts, an institution of which he was a member by right as an Arcadian and of which he became permanent secretary during the Napoleonic era. In addition to maintaining close relations with the most prestigious figures on the Mantua intellectual scene and holding political positions in the city administration, in the ninth decade of the 18th century, he also witnessed the profound changes that affected the local academic context following the assimilation of the territory into the Cisalpine Republic (1797) and the advent of the temporary Austro-Russian restoration of the Thirteen Months (1799). Through the analysis of extensive unpublished documentation preserved in the archives of Mantua and Milan, this contribution reconstructs Renati's intellectual profile in his younger years. In addition to emphasising the contacts he established in the academic context of his hometown, the paper also highlights the importance and legacy of Renati’s involvement in the political celebrations that were promoted during the republican era by General Miollis.