This is a volume of conference proceedings about Saverio Mattei (1743–95), the Neapolitan author of a vernacular translation of the Psalms: I libri poetici della Bibbia tradotti dall'ebraico originale, ed adattati al gusto della poesia italiana (1766–74). The volume is divided into ten contributions by twelve authors, with an introduction co-written by the editors. The scarlet thread uniting these contributions is an emphasis upon Mattei's literary, poetic, theatrical and musicological works, as a counterweight to the legal and political focus of his more recent interpreters – particularly Francesca De Rosa's Civiltà degli antichi e diritti dei moderni: Saverio Mattei e l'esperienza giuridica postgenovesiana (2007). As its title suggests, de Rosa's work had examined Mattei's experience as a jurist following the death of Antonio Genovesi (1713–69), the extraordinarily influential metaphysician and political economist who tutored Mattei at the University of Naples between about 1758 and about 1762. The question of Genovesi's influence over the generation which followed his death – the accuracy of describing its concerns as ‘postgenovesian’ – remains a fixation within the historiography of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. Yet Saverio Mattei: tradizione e invenzione takes a refreshingly indifferent approach to this issue, and declines to discuss Genovesi at all. The resulting work will please historians of literature and music, and may have an incidental relevance to scholars of the Bible in Enlightenment Europe.

The volume is not structured in any schematic way, but instead shifts focus from chapter to chapter. Silvia Tatti (pp. 33–48) and Mario Valenti (pp. 49–61) write capably about Mattei's biography of the poet Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782); Francesco Cotticelli (pp. 3–14) and Lucio Tufano (pp. 133–59) write engagingly about Mattei's interest in dramaturgy; Paologiovanni Maione (pp. 161–70) and Milena Montanile (pp. 75–84) write with great assurance about Mattei's libretti and musical compositions. The finest chapter, co-written by Rosa Cafiero, Marina Marino and Tommasina Boccia (pp. 85–131), excavates Mattei's role in the foundation of a musical conservatory in Santa Maria della Pietà dei Turchini, a small church in central Naples. Readers of this Journal will find the most interesting chapter to be Clara Leri's (pp. 15–32) on ‘neopindarism’ and Mattei's preliminary Dissertazioni to his translation of the Psalms. Current work on biblical criticism and translation in eighteenth-century Naples is at a premium, and Leri's chapter reminds us of the subject's potential importance. She connects Mattei's work to a broader European debate about neopindarism and ancient Hebraic poetry, and traces its origin to Robert Lowth's De sacra poesi Hebraeorum (1753). Her argument is somewhat vitiated by the complete absence of Mattei's reference to Lowth's magnum opus, and a broader failure to connect Mattei's interests to an earlier, post-Scaligerian debate about Hebrew poetry, recently discussed in the work of Kristine Haugen. Yet she provides an overdue and erudite reminder of Mattei's interest in the ars critica.

It is difficult to fault the ambition of this volume; however a fuller sense of the intellectual self-fashioning of contemporary letterati might have better served the contributors, in part because Mattei's polymathic range of interests was not quite as unusual as they seem to believe. Francesco Mario Pagano (1748–99), the lawyer and librettist, bears comparison, but does not come in for any significant treatment (cf. p. 88 n. 10). Nevertheless, it is excellent to see a prestigious imprint offering space within its collane to figures like Mattei. The volume's production is a testament to the professionalism of the editors and to Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. I could detect few typographical errors and I was consistently impressed by the quality of the illustrations.