Giovanni Aldini - physicist

Professor thought to have given Mary Shelley the idea for Frankenstein

Giovanni Aldini picked up the mantle of his uncle, Luigi
Galvani, in his experiments with bioelectricity

The physicist and professor Giovanni Aldini, whose experiment in trying to bring life to a human corpse is thought to have inspired Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, was born on this day in 1762 in Bologna.

The nephew of Luigi Galvani, who discovered the phenomenon that became known as galvanism, one of Aldini’s goals in life was to build on his uncle’s work in the field of bioelectricity.

Galvani’s discovery that the limbs of a dead frog could be made to move by the stimulation of electricity sparked an intellectual argument with his rival physicist Alessandro Volta that he found uncomfortable. When he was then removed from his academic and public positions after Bologna became part of the French Cisalpine Republic in the late 18th century, Galvani was unable to progress his experiments as he would have liked.

Aldini essentially picked up his uncle’s mantle and was determined to discover whether the effect of an electrical impulse on the body of a frog could be reproduced in a human being.

Aldini conducing experiments in galvanism, as
depicted in a 19th century book

His most famous experiment came in 1803, when he was given permission to test his electrical equipment on the corpse of George Forster shortly after he had been hanged at Newgate Prison in London, following his conviction for the murder of his wife and daughter, whose bodies were found in the Paddington Canal not long after the last sighting of them alive at the nearby Mitre Tavern.

Aldini had chosen to conduct this experiment in England because most other European countries carried out executions by beheading, and he felt needed a corpse that was fully intact.

Forster’s body was taken directly from the gallows to a nearby house, where Aldini conducted experiments using conducting rods and a battery, the existence of which, ironically, he owed to his uncle’s rival, Volta.

In front of an audience of surgeons, Aldini successful made the corpse’s facial muscles contort, causing his jaw to twitch and one eye to open. He was then able to cause the dead body to raise his right arm with a clenched fist, and to produce movement in the thighs and lower legs.

The future Mary Shelley would have been only five at the time yet as she grew up she learned all about Galvani, Volta and Aldini through two friends of her father, Humphry Davy (famously the inventor of the Davy safety lamp) and William Nicholson, who were leading electrical researchers.

Mary Shelley, as portrayed in a miniature
painting by Reginald Easton in 1857

During the summer of 1816, it is known that Mary Shelley was in Geneva with her future husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, and that among the topics of their conversation was the potential for re-animating a corpse with electricity.

At around the same time, the three friends, along with another writer, John Polidori, decided they would have a competition to see who could write the best horror story.  Mary came up with a tale of a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque, monstrous but humanoid creature, which he brings to life with electrical charges.

The brother of Count Antonio Aldini, a statesman, Aldini followed Galvani in becoming professor of physics at the University of Bologna.

He devoted himself to his scientific work, which was mainly focussed on galvanism, anatomy and its medical applications, along with the construction and illumination of lighthouses, and with experiments for preserving human life and material objects from destruction by fire.

He died in Milan in 1834, bequeathing a considerable sum to found a school of natural science for artisans at Bologna.

A courtyard at the historic Palazzo Poggi in Bologna

Travel tip:

The University of Bologna, the oldest university in continuous use in the world, has sites dotted around the centre of Bologna.  Its headquarters are in the Palazzo Poggi, in Via Zamboni, about 1km (0.62 miles) northeast of the Fountain of Neptune just around the corner from Piazza Maggiore. The palace is adorned with many frescoes painted by Mannerist and early Baroque artists, including Prospero Fontana, Pellegrino Tebaldi and Niccolò dell'Abbate.

The Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade

Travel tip:

Bologna is a progressive, left-leaning city with a lively student population and considerable history and culture. Italians regard it as one of the country’s most beautiful cities and has the advantage of being not nearly as busy as Rome, Florence and Venice, which tend to the the magnets for overseas visitors.  The Piazza Maggiore, the medieval Asinelli and Garisenda towers and the Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade - pink marble at the bottom with bare bricks above - are among the main sights.  Another advantage, apart from the lack of crowds, in the summer months are the 45km of porticoed walkways.

More reading:

Luigi Galvani, the father of bioelectricity

Alessandro Volta and the world's first battery

The death of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley


Also on this day:

1926: Airship leaves Rome on mission to North Pole

1991: The Moby Prince ferry disaster


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Francesco Foscari – Doge of Venice

Ignominious ending to a long and glorious reign

Lazzaro Bastiani's profile portrait of the
65th Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari

After 34 years as Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari was abruptly forced to leave office on this day in 1457.

Stripped of his honours, he insisted on descending the same staircase from the Doge’s Palace that he had climbed up in triumph more than a third of a century before, rather than leave through a rear entrance. Eight days later the former Doge was dead.

The story behind the downfall of Foscari and his son, Jacopo, fascinated the poet Lord Byron so much during his visit to Venice in 1816 that he later wrote a five-act play about it.

This play, The Two Foscari: An Historical Tragedy, formed the basis of Verdi’s opera, I Due Foscari, and ensured that the sad story of the father and son was never forgotten.

Francesco Foscari, who was born in 1373, was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice. He had previously served the Republic in many roles, including as a member of the Council of Forty and the Council of Ten, Venice’s ruling bodies, and as Procurator of St Mark’s. He was elected Doge in 1423, after defeating the other candidate, Pietro Loredan.

As Doge he led Venice in a long series of wars against Milan, which was then governed by the Visconti, who were attempting to dominate northern Italy.

An 1872 representation of the two Foscaris - Francesco and
Jacopo - by the Spanish painter Ricardo Maria Navarette Fos

The war was extremely costly for Venice, whose real source of wealth and power was at sea. Under Foscari’s leadership, Venice was eventually overcome by the forces of Milan under the leadership of Francesco Sforza, but meanwhile some of Venice’s eastern territories had been lost to the Turks.

In 1445, Foscari’s only surviving son, Jacopo, was tried by the Council of Ten on charges of bribery and corruption and exiled from the city. After two further trials, in 1450 and 1456, Jacopo was imprisoned on Crete, where he died.

After receiving the news of Jacopo’s death, Foscari withdrew from his Government duties. His enemies conspired to depose him and the Doge was forced to abdicate by the Council of Ten on October 23, 1457.

Foscari’s death, just over a week later at the age of 84, provoked such a public outcry that the former Doge was given a state funeral in Venice.

As well as being the subject of Byron’s play, Foscari’s life features as an episode in Italy, a long poem written by Samuel Rogers.

Byron’s play was the basis for the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera I Due Foscari, which premiered on November 3, 1844 in Rome. Mary Mitford also wrote a play about Foscari’s life, which opened in 1826 at Covent Garden, with the celebrated actor, Charles Kemble, playing the lead role.

The Doge's Palace has been the seat of the Venetian
government since the early days of the republic

Travel tip:

The Doge’s Palace, where Francesco Foscari lived for 34 years, was the seat of the Government of Venice and the home of the Doge from the early days of the republic. For centuries this was the only building in Venice entitled to the name palazzo. The others were merely called Cà, short for Casa. The current palazzo was built in the 12th century in Venetian Gothic style, one side looking out over the lagoon, the other side looking out over the piazzetta that links St Mark’s Square with the waterfront. It opened as a museum in 1923 and is now run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

The church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

Travel tip:

Francesco Foscari’s tomb is in the chancel of the magnificent church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. This huge, plain Gothic church in Campo dei Frari in San Polo is known simply to Venetians as the Frari. The church also houses the tombs of Monteverdi, Rossini, Titian and Doge Nicolo Tron. It has works of art by Titian, Bellini, Sansovino and Donatello. The church is open daily from 9.00 to 5.30 pm and on Sundays from 1.00 to 5.30 pm.

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Death of the poet Shelley

Dramatic storm took the life of young literary talent

Portrait of Shelley by Amelia Curran,
painted in about 1819

English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley died on this day in 1822 while travelling from Livorno in Tuscany to Lerici in Liguria in his sailing boat, the Don Juan.

Just a month before his 30th birthday, the brilliant poet of the Romantic era drowned during a sudden, dramatic storm in the Gulf of La Spezia that caused his boat to sink.

His body was later washed ashore and, in keeping with the quarantine regulations at the time, was cremated on the beach bear Viareggio on the Tuscan coast.

Shelley had been living with his wife, the writer Mary Shelley, at a rented villa in Lerici and was returning to his home from Livorno, where he had been arranging the start up of a new literary magazine to be called The Liberal.

He had set sail with two other people on board the Don Juan at about noon on Monday 8 July.  His companions were a retired naval officer, Edward Ellerker Williams, and a boatboy, Charles Vivien. Both also perished.

A friend had watched Shelley’s departure until he was about ten miles out of the harbour and then there had been a storm and he had lost sight of the boat.

Three days later one of Shelley’s friends was informed that a water keg and some bottles from the boat had been washed up on to a beach near Viareggio.

Then the terrible news was received that two bodies had been found in the same area.

Shelley's cremation on the beach near Viareggio as depicted
by the French artist Louis Édouard Fournier

Shelley’s body was able to be identified by the volume of poetry by John Keats that had been found in his pocket.

The poet was cremated on the beach under the supervision of his friend, the poet Lord Byron, and others from his circle out in Italy. Byron is said to have gone for a swim while Shelley’s body burned. He is quoted as saying of Shelley: “He was the best and least selfish man I ever knew.”

Shelley’s ashes were later interred in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.


Travel tip:

The Protestant Cemetery, where Shelley’s remains were buried, is in the rione (district) of Testaccio in Rome. The poet Keats was also buried there after dying of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 25. Shelley’s three year-old son, William, was buried there after his death in Italy.

The Grand Hotel Royal in Viareggio is an example of
the Liberty style architecture characteristic of the town

Travel tip:

Viareggio is a popular seaside resort in Tuscany with excellent sandy beaches and some beautiful examples of Liberty-style architecture, including the Grand Hotel Royal.  There is a monument to Shelley in the Piazza Paolina.

(Photo of the Grand Hotel Royal by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)



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John Keats – poet

Writer spent his final days in the Eternal City

The portrait of Keats by William Hilton, which is
housed in the National Portrait Gallery in London

English Romantic poet John Keats died on this day in Rome in 1821.

He had been a published writer for five years and had written some of his greatest work before leaving England.

Ode to a Nightingale, one of his most famous poems, was written in the spring of 1819 while he was sitting under a plum tree in an English garden.

Keats was just starting to be appreciated by the literary critics when tuberculosis took hold of him and he was advised by doctors to move to a warmer climate.

He arrived in Rome with his friend, Joseph Severn, in November 1820 after a long, gruelling journey.

Another friend had found them rooms in a house in Piazza di Spagna in the centre of Rome and they went past the Colosseum as they made their way there.

Keats slept in a room overlooking the Piazza and could hear the sound of the fountain outside, which may have inspired the words he later asked to be put on his tombstone.

To begin with he was well enough to go for walks along the Via del Corso and he enjoyed sitting on the Spanish Steps, but he was advised by his doctor against visiting the city’s main attractions.

The house in Rome where Keats lived,
at the foot of the Spanish Steps. 

Keats insisted that Severn visited the Vatican Galleries and the Colosseum and that he entertained him with descriptions of them when he returned.

At the end of November he wrote in a letter to a friend: “I have an habitual feeling of my real life being past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.”

By December his condition had worsened and the doctor treated him by taking blood from him and keeping him on a virtual starvation diet.

In early January his health improved and Keats was able to go outside again and enjoy the warmth of the sunlight.

But by February his health had deteriorated further and he was confined to bed. On Friday, February 23 he asked his friend to lift him up because he knew he was dying. For hours, the devoted Severn held him in his arms until the poet passed away. He was just 25 years of age.

On Monday, February 26 Keats was taken to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome where he was buried. The Reverend Mr Wolff conducted the service and, according to the poet’s wishes, daisies were planted over his grave.

Two years later, Severn supervised the placing of a tombstone on the grave bearing the words: ‘This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet who on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tombstone: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER.’

Travel tip:

Piazza di Spagna is at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The Fontana della Barcaccia that Keats could hear in his room was sculpted by Pietro Bernini and his son Gian Lorenzo Bernini. At the bottom of the Spanish Steps to the right is the house where Keats lived, which is now a museum, the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, commemorating the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Hotels in Rome by Booking.com

The Colosseum bathed in evening sunlight

Travel tip:

The Colosseum, which Keats passed on the way to his lodgings, is one of the most famous sights in Rome. Forbidden by his doctor to visit the main attractions in the city, Keats sent his friend Severn to have a look round and asked him to tell him all about it when he returned. He described it as: “superb in its stupendous size and rugged grandeur of outline.” The first century arena could seat more than 50,000 bloodthirsty spectators who revelled in the spectacle of gladiators fighting to the death. These days the ruins are floodlit at night creating another magnificent spectacle in Rome.



More reading:

Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns at sea

Lord Byron in Venice

Pietro Bembo - the poet who was Lucrezia Borgia's lover

Also on this day:

1507: The death of Venetian Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini

1806: The birth of military general Manfredo Fanti

1822: The birth of Giovanni Battista de Rossi, archaeologist

1834: The birth of Sicilian banker Emanuele Notarbartolo

1910: The birth of painter Corrado Cagli

Books:

John Keats: A New Life, by Nicholas Roe

Selected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library)

(Picture credits: Keats's House by Gabriele di Donfrancesco; Spanish Steps by Benreis at wikivoyage; Colosseum by Andreas Tille; all via Wikimedia Commons) 

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Lord Byron in Venice

Romantic English poet finds renewed inspiration

Aristocratic English poet Lord Byron and his friend, John Cam Hobhouse, arrived in Venice for the first time on this day in 1816.

They put up at the Hotel Grande Bretagne on the Grand Canal and embarked on a few days of tourism.

Byron spent first night at an hotel on Grand Canal

But it was not long before Byron decided to move into an apartment just off the Frezzeria, a street near St Mark's Square, and settled down to enjoy life in the city that was to be his home for the next three years.

Byron has become one of Venice’s legends, perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of all its residents.

Tourists who came afterwards expected to see Venice through his eyes. Even the art critic, John Ruskin, has admitted that on his first visit he had come in search of Byron’s Venice.

Byron once wrote that Venice had always been ‘the greenest island of my imagination’ and he never seems to have been disappointed by it.

He also wrote in a letter to one of his friends that Venice was ‘one of those places that before he saw them he thought he already knew’. He said he appreciated the silence of the Venetian canals and the ‘gloomy gaiety’ of quietly passing gondolas.

He found the city inspiring for his poetry and was particularly impressed with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and the Pozzi Prison, settings that were to feature in two of his dramas, Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari.

Byron wrote: “I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand…”

The Bridge of Sighs links the palace to the prison

It is believed he went to see the Bridge of Sighs on 11 November, the first morning after his arrival in the city and actually stood on the Ponte della Paglia, the bridge that stands between the Bridge of Sighs and the lagoon.

According to Ruskin, the view he saw that day became “the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice’.

Travel tip:

From the San Zaccharia vaporetto stop head towards the Ponte della Paglia (literally Bridge of Straw) over the Rio di Palazzo canal that separates the Doge’s Palace from the prison. If the bridge is crowded, wait for a spot by the balustrades to become free to make sure you see the same view of the Bridge of Sighs that Byron had found so inspiring.

Travel tip:

To see Byron’s first lodgings in Venice, where he conducted his affair with the landlord’s wife, Marianna Segati, look for Calle della Piscina, off the Frezzeria, which is close to St Mark’s Square. Number 1673 marks the entrance to the rooms Byron rented nearly 200 years ago.

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