The Congress of Cythera
Francesco Algarotti
Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), the Venetian who had explained Newton to the ladies, published Il Congresso di Citera in 1745: Love, alarmed at the state of his empire, summons a congress to his island, where an English, a French and an Italian lady each expound the art of love as practised at home – English politics and spleen, French inconstancy, Italian Platonism – until Pleasure proclaims the God’s own rules, drawn from Ovid. With the sequel, The Judgment of Love, in the English translation of 1783 (The Modern Art of Love), newly transcribed from the scan and checked against the Italian, with 130 notes, by Bernhard Trebuch. Reading sample: the preface and the Congress up to the speech of the English ambassadress.
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