At the turn of the eighteenth century, while a number of important works on the history of philosophy were being published in France and Germany, only short works of little significance were being produced in Italy on the subject (see Models, II, pp. 213–297). In the second half of the eighteenth century, it looked at first as if Italy wanted to make up for lost ground. Appiano Buonafede, the most important Italian historian of philosophy of the time, declared this intention in the preface to his Istoria e indole di ogni filosofia, in the hope that "Italy still has some historian of philosophy", who can thus "raise [it] from its past sterility". Indeed, Buonafede added here, "Italy has almost no philosophical historians. Luigi Pesaro, Lionardo Cozzando, Giambattista Capasso, Odoardo Corsini and Antonio Genovesi provided a few essays on this subject, but did not think of writing a full history, the sole exception being Capasso, who in mixing much erudition and much credulity, even writing that Pythagoras was a Carmelite and that the Druids had predicted the virgin birth, greatly diminished the dignity of trustworthy history and made us lose all interest in reading his tales' (Della istoria, 2nd Venetian edition (Venice, 1788), I, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii). But it was not only Appiano Buonafede who was aware of this situation. Prefacing his Quadro storico e critico delle opinioni filosofiche, Paolo Marcello Del Mare surveyed the existing works on the historiography of history and among the Italians found only Agatopisto Cromaziano, the last in a long line of historians of philosophy. Before him were the Frenchmen Bayle and Deslandes, the Germans Buddeus and the "learned Brucker", the Dutchman Voss, and the Englishman Stanley. Interestingly enough, in his Storia della letteratura italiana, which, among other things, also dealt with philosophy, Girolamo Tiraboschi "reversed" the Italian sense of inferiority towards foreign culture and tried to demonstrate how Italy had always been ahead of other countries in sciences, letters, and all arts in all ages.