ROME — After 14 months of being ignored, mocked and yanked around by his deputies in Italy’s nationalist-populist government, the departing prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, used his resignation speech last week as a last-ditch audition — filled with previously unseen flashes of gravitas and steel — for the leading role in the government to come.

On Thursday, Mr. Conte got the part.

Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, gave the little-known lawyer turned political power broker the task of forming a sequel, but drastically different, government known as Conte II. (“Conte Reloaded,” preferred the conservative daily Il Giornale.)

Mr. Conte will now begin meetings with all party leaders and is expected next week to submit to Mr. Mattarella a cabinet that, if approved, will then be brought to parliament for a confidence vote.

[A new government takes shape in Italy, sidelining Matteo Salvini]

In accepting the mandate, Mr. Conte said on Thursday that he wanted to win back lost time “to allow Italy, a founding member of the European Union, to rise again as a protagonist” and “transform this moment of crisis into an opportunity.”