Abstract

By analysing sources traditionally little considered by historians, this essay aims to show how, in the Italian area, it is possible to trace forms of political communication implemented through reliance upon and imitation of poetic models that represent neither sporadic episodes nor dull and repetitive encomiastic production. On the contrary, these poetic models are at the core of coherent strategies of political communication. In fact, it is clear how a true communicative model - which in these pages is defined as the «Metastasio model» - emerged during the eighteenth century. The «Metastasio model» first came into being between Rome and Naples in the late 1720s, found legitimacy in Vienna during the reigns of Charles VI and Maria Teresa, and was in the end exported and readapted to different settings, such as Ferdinand IV's Naples.