“…On the diffi culty of aligning Lloyd's different life-stories, see Capra 2002, 148. rendered in Carlo Goldoni's famous play La bottega del caffè (1750), the Accademia dei pugni was a transalpine equivalent of the salons of Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm and of Madame d'Épinay. Just as the spirit of the Encyclopédie was manifested in these Parisian circles, Il caffè became both the incubator (as coffee shop) and medium (as journal) of the accademia's message of reform (Francioni 1998;Romagnoli 1998;Messbarger 1999). There, the accademia addressed the major cultural, economic, political, and scientifi c questions of the day, such as why Italy, twice in history at the center of the world's attention, was languishing in the wake of Britain, France, and Holland, and what to do about it.…”