Italophilia
Michelangelo was born in Florence in 1475 and, like Leonardo, was a true Renaissance man. He was a sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. He was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime and, since then, one of the greatest artists of all time. His two best-known sculptures, the Pietà and David, are famous throughout the world. Michelangelo also created two of the most famous and influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis covering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Chapel.
Vincenzo Cuoco
Vincenzo Cuoco was born into a middle class family in the town of Civitacampomarano, near Campobasso in the Molise region of central Italy. His father was Michelangelo Cuoco, a lawyer and economist, while his mother was Colomba de Marinis. He studied in his native town under Francesco Maria Pepe, then moved to Naples in 1787 to study jurisprudence and become a lawyer, but instead found himself attracted to economics, philosophy, history, and politics. In Naples he had the opportunity to meet some of the prominent intellectuals of Southern Italy, including Giuseppe Maria Galanti, who in a letter to Vincenzo's father described the young man as "capace, di molta abilità e di molto talento" ("able, of great skill and great talent"), although "trascurato" ("careless") and "indolente" ("lazy"); Galanti was probably not entirely satisfied with Vincenzo's collaboration on his "Descrizione Geografica e Politica delle Sicilie". During his studies, Cuoco was deeply influenced by Enlightenment writers from Southern Italy (Genovesi, Galiani, and of course Galanti) and France (Montesquieu, Rousseau), as well as by earlier writers, especially Giambattista Vico and Niccolò Machiavelli.