History of Italian culture (1700s)
The 1700s refers to a period in Italian history and culture which occurred during the 18th century (1700–1799): the Settecento.
The Settecento is a word today commonly used to describe this period Italy
The first decades of the Settecento saw the ultimate end of the Renaissance movement in Italy, and the last development of the Counter Reformation and Baroque era.
In the 18th century, the political and socio-cultural condition of Italy began to improve, under Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, and his successors. These princes were influenced by philosophers, who in their turn felt the influence of a general movement of ideas at large in many parts of Europe, sometimes called The Enlightenment. All this led to a cultural revival in the 18th century's second half: the Age of Reason and Reform.
Politically Italy suffered mainly because of the crisis of the Republic of Venice, but in the last years of Settecento a Corsican named Napoleone Buonaparte brought the French Revolution ideals to Italy and created in 1797 the first unitarian state in the peninsula since the early Middle Ages: the Cisalpine Republic, that in 1804 became the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.
The 18th century saw the capital of Europe's architectural world transferred from Rome to Paris. The Italian Rococo, which flourished in Rome from the 1720s onward, was profoundly influenced by the ideas of Borromini. The most talented architects active in Rome — Francesco de Sanctis (Spanish Steps, 1723) and Filippo Raguzzini (Piazza Sant'Ignazio, 1727) — had little influence outside their native country, as did numerous practitioners of the Sicilian Baroque, including Giovanni Battista Vaccarini, Andrea Palma.
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