The article analyzes the relationship between Antonio Niccolini, authoritative scholar and intellectual of the
Florence of the Regency, Lady Walpole (Margaret Rolle d’Ayton, Countess of Orford), an emancipated
and lively figure of emigrée, and the Paduan abbot Antonio Conti (1677-1749), scholar and philosopher,
interlocutor of the cultivated Europe of time. The letters sent by Walpole and Conti to Niccolini, preserved
in the very rich correspondence of the Archive of the Marquis Niccolini-Camugliano, and here
for the first time published, allow reviving a dialogue in which the Florentine Marquis confirms his role
as support to the circles of Tuscan masonry and as judge and promoter of the Conti’s Tragedies.
