23 August

NEW - Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese – mathematician and natural philosopher

Noblewoman made an important geometrical discovery

An aristocratic woman who was recognised as a brilliant mathematician and scientist of her time, Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese, died on this day in 1777 in Milan.  Borromeo Arese had become known for her outstanding ability to solve difficult mathematical problems and she was also considered to be a natural philosopher, having made a study of how the world worked.  She was born in Genoa in 1684, the daughter of Duke Marcantonio Mondragone and his wife, Antonia.  As young Clelia grew up she received a good education, at first from her mother, Antonia, and then at a convent that she attended. She became proficient in eight languages and was interested in geometry and how things worked.  In 1707 she married Count Giovanni Benedetto Borromeo Arese and they had eight children together.  Read more…

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Roberto Assagioli – psychiatrist

Harsh imprisonment sparked new psychiatric theories

Roberto Assagioli, the pioneering psychiatrist who founded the science of psychosynthesis, died on this day in 1974 in Capolona in the province of Arezzo in Tuscany.  His innovative psychological movement, which emphasised the possibility of progressive integration, or synthesis, of the personality, aimed at finding inner peace and harmony. It is still admired and is being developed by therapists and psychologists today.  Assagioli explained his ideas in four books - two published posthumously - and the many different pamphlets he wrote during his lifetime. In 1940 the psychiatrist had to spend 27 days in solitary confinement in prison, having been arrested by Mussolini’s Fascist government for praying for peace and encouraging others to join him. He later claimed this experience helped him make his psychological discovery.  Read more…

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Pino Presti – bass player and composer

Talented musician could sing, play guitar, write songs and conduct

Pino Presti, one of the most important personalities in the Italian music business, was born Giuseppe Prestipino Giarritta on this day in 1943 in Milan.  He is a bass guitar player, arranger, composer, conductor and record producer and his work ranges between the different music genres of pop, jazz, funk, latin and dance.  His father, Arturo Prestipino Giarritta, was a well-known violinist and Presti began studying piano and music theory at the age of six.  He taught himself to play the bass guitar and began playing professionally at the age of 17, having developed his own special technique using either the pick or thumb.  Presti was a pioneer of electric bass and was probably the first to play a Fender Jazz Bass in Italy.  His talent for playing the instrument led him to collaborate with the major Italian pop artists of the 1960s, including the famous singer, Mina. Read more…

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Giovanni Minzoni - priest

Devout Catholic murdered for opposing Fascists

Don Giovanni Minzoni, a Catholic priest whose name is commemorated in many street names around Italy, was murdered by Fascist thugs in the small town of Argenta in Emilia-Romagna on this day in 1923.  A parish priest in the town, midway between the cities of  Ferrara and Ravenna, Don Minzoni was attacked at around 10.30pm as he returned to his rectory in the company of Enrico Bondanelli, a parishioner, when he was set upon by two men who were attached to a Fascist militia in Casumaro, almost 50km (31 miles) from Argenta on the other side of Ferrara. He was pelted with stones and, when the blows made him fall to the ground, was beaten. What proved to be the fatal blow was struck with a heavy walking stick. He had a fractured skull and, despite being helped home by Bondanelli and neighbours, died a couple of hours later. Read more…

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Rita Pavone - teenage singing star

Precocious talent who conquered America

Rita Pavone, who was one of Europe's biggest teenage singing stars in the 1960s, was still performing live concerts as recently as 2014 and sang at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2020, was born on this day in 1945 in Turin. The singer had her first hit single when she was just 17 years old and enjoyed success at home and in America during a career that spanned more than five decades, going on to become an accomplished actress on television and in the theatre.  She announced she was quitting show business in 2006 but came out of retirement in 2013 to record two studio albums as a tribute to the stars who had influenced her in throughout her career, then embarking on a series of live concerts in Italy in 2014 and performing in Toronto, Canada exactly 50 years after her first appearance there.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, by Jacob Burckhardt 

For 19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form of society, and traces the rise of the creative individual, from Dante to Michelangelo. A fascinating description of an era of cultural transition, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy was to become the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, and anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche's concept of the 'Ubermensch' in its portrayal of an age of genius.

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) intended to join the church, but lost his faith while studying theology. Thereafter he studied history at the University of Basel, gaining his doctorate in 1843 and becoming a lecturer. He moved to the Zurich Polytechnic as Professor of Architecture and History in 1855, which is where he wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. 

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Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese – mathematician and natural philosopher

Noble woman made an important geometrical discovery

Clelia Borromeo Arese was from an aristocratic
family but was also an eminent scientist

An aristocratic woman who was recognised as a brilliant mathematician and scientist of her time, Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese, died on this day in 1777 in Milan.

Borromeo Arese had become known for her outstanding ability to solve difficult mathematical problems and she was also considered to be a natural philosopher, having made a study of how the world worked.

She was born in Genoa in 1684, the daughter of Duke Marcantonio Mondragone and his wife, Antonia. 

As young Clelia grew up she received a good education, at first from her mother, Antonia, and then at a convent that she attended. She became proficient in eight languages and was interested in geometry and how things worked.

In 1707 she married Count Giovanni Benedetto Borromeo Arese and they had eight children together. Her husband was the son of Carlo Borromeo Arese, one of the most wealthy and powerful men in Italy at the time.

Borromeo Arese often invited scientists to her home in Milan, both from Italy and abroad. A frequent visitor there was Antonio Vallisneri, who was  a physician, naturalist and a professor of Medicine at the University of Padua. 

His host was an avid reader of books and journals and visitors to her house were often struck by the breadth and depth of her extensive library.

She started her own academy at her home in 1717, which was called the Academia Vigilantium Cleli and she became famous for being able to solve any mathematical problem that she was given. Her academy also played a major role in the ongoing scientific debates of the time.

Among the Academy’s members were the mathematicians Giovanni Saccheri and Tomasso Ceva, and physicists such as Giovanni Crivelli and Alessandro Volta. The Academy played a prominent role in the dissemination of the physics of Newton and the philosophy of Leibnitz.

Scientist Alessandro Volta was a member
of Borromeo Arese's academy

In 1726, Borromeo Arese made an important discovery of her own in geometry. She identified a special kind of curve, on the surface of a sphere, which became known as the Clelia curve.

As an example, a path marked on the surface of a planet to correspond with an orbiting satellite's trajectory would follow a Clelia curve.

An independent woman, Borromeo Arese formed her own opinions and she chose to support Spain against Austria during the war in 1746, As a result, she had to leave Milan for a while, but when she was allowed to return home she was welcomed back as a heroine by the Milanese people.

Genoa, the city where she was born, honoured her contribution to geometry by awarding her a medal, which was inscribed with the words ‘Genuensium Gloria’, which means ‘The Honour of Genoa’.

After her death in 1777, Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese was buried in the Church of Santa Maria Podone, a Greek Orthodox church in the centre of Milan.

The Italian monk and mathematician, Luigi Guido Grandi, who had also been a member of Borromeo Arese’s Academy, wrote about the Clelia curve in a book that he dedicated to her. He wrote that ‘Clelia curves are curves on the earth’s sphere for whose points there is a linear relationship between longitude and colatitude’. 

A colatitude is the complement of a given latitude. It is found by subtracting the latitude angle from 90 degrees. Instead of measuring distance up or down from the equator, it measures the angle down from the North Pole.

The striking black-and-white
facade of San Lorenzo Cathedral

Travel tip:

The port city of Genoa, where Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese was born, is capital of the Liguria region. It has a rich history as a trading centre with wealth built on its shipyards and steelworks. It also has fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour. The Palazzo Ducale - the Doge's Palace - the 16th century Palazzo Reale, a lavish royal residence with frescoes, tapestries and a rooftop garden, and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral, with its striking black-and-white façade, are three examples worth visiting.  At the heart of the city centre is the Piazza De Ferrari, which features a monumental bronze fountain and is flanked by the Palazzo Ducale, the Palazzo della Borsa and the Teatro Carlo Felice.  The area around the restored harbour area has some fascinating alleyways and squares to explore and it has been enhanced in recent years by the Genoa architect Renzo Piano. 

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Palazzo Borromeo is one of the finest 
examples of a Milanese patrician palace

Travel tip:

The Borromeo family of Milan, into which Clelia Grillo Borromeo Arese married, were rich nobles, who started out as merchants and then became bankers. They played important roles in politics, and as cardinals during the Counter-Reformation movement in Italy. Federico Borromeo, who was Archbishop of Milan, founded the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan, one of Europe’s first, free public libraries. The ancestral home of the Borromeo family in Milan is Palazzo Borromeo, a late 14th century palace in Piazza Borromeo, about 10 minutes’ walk from the Duomo. It was originally built as both the home and business headquarters of the family. They had moved to Milan after fleeing from San Miniato, outside Florence, when the head of the family, Filippo, was executed.  It contains an important fresco cycle from the 1440s and is one of the finest examples of a Milanese patrician palace from the early Renaissance. Parts of the building were badly damaged during Allied bombings in World War II but were reconstructed and restored to their original appearance. 

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More reading:

Federico Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan who founded the Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Saint Charles Borromeo and the movement to combat the spread of Protestantism

Luigi Guido Grandi – monk, philosopher and mathematician

Also on this day:

1923: The murder by Fascist thugs of Catholic priest Don Giovanni Minzoni

1943: The birth of bass player and composer Pino Presti 

1945: The birth of teenage singing star Rita Pavone

1974: The death of psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli 

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22 August

Flavius Stilicho - Roman general

Last defender of the Western Empire

The military commander Flavius Stilicho, who for part of his career could be considered the most powerful man and de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was executed on this day in 408 in Ravenna.  Stilicho had successfully defended the empire against several barbarian invasions and gained his power through acting as regent when the death of Theodosius I in 395 left the Western Empire in the hands of Honorius, his 10-year-old son.  But as a soldier of partly Vandal descent, Stilicho had always aroused suspicion within the Roman court and his failure to deal with the advance across northern Europe of the rebellious Constantine III, leader of the Romans in Britain, combined with rumours that he planned to install his own son, Eucherius, as emperor of the Eastern Empire following the death of Arcadius, sparked a mutiny of the Roman army at Ticinum. Read more…

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History’s first air raid

Balloon bombs dropped on Venice

Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history of warfare on this day in 1849.  It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele Manin had established the Republic of San Marco.  The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources on defeating the Venetians.  They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself, having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation.  Read more…

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Bruno Pontecorvo - nuclear physicist

Defection to Soviet Union sparked unsolved mystery 

Bruno Pontecorvo, a nuclear physicist whose defection to the Soviet Union in 1950 led to suspicions of espionage after he had worked on research programmes in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, was born on this day in 1913 in Marina di Pisa.  One of eight children born to Massimo Pontecorvo - a Jewish textile manufacturer who owned three factories - Bruno was from a family rich in intellectual talent. One of his brothers was the film director Gillo Pontecorvo, another the geneticist Guido Pontecorvo.  Bruno studied engineering at the University of Pisa but after two years switched to physics. He received a doctorate to study at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where Enrico Fermi had gathered together a group of promising young scientists, dubbed “the Via Panisperna boys” after the street where the Institute of Physics was then situated.  Read more…

Giada De Laurentiis - TV chef

Food Network star who was born in Rome

The TV presenter, chef, author and restaurateur Giada De Laurentiis was born in Rome on this day in 1970.  A classically-trained chef who learned her craft in Paris, she worked in the kitchens of a number of restaurants in Los Angeles before breaking into television. Since 2003 she has been a regular on the Food Network, the American cable channel.  Born into a theatre and movie background, De Laurentiis takes her name from her mother, the actress Veronica De Laurentiis, whose parents were the producer Dino De Laurentiis and the actress Silvana Mangano.  Her father is the actor-producer Alex De Benedetti.  Giada spent her first seven years in Rome, where her mother still has a home near the Spanish Steps, but after her parents divorced she and her sisters moved to Los Angeles.  Her grandfather had a home in Hollywood. Read more…

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Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi – bishop

Progressive priest who shaped the destiny of a future Pope

Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who was a mentor for the future Pope John XXIII, died on this day in 1914 in Bergamo.  He was Bishop of the Diocese of Bergamo from 1905 until his death and is remembered with respect because of his strong involvement in social issues at the beginning of the 20th century when he sought to understand the problems of working class Italians.  Radini-Tedeschi was born in 1857 into a wealthy, noble family living in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  He was ordained as a priest in 1879 and then became professor of Church Law in the seminary of Piacenza.  In 1890 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and was sent on a number of diplomatic missions.  In 1905 he was named Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bergamo by Pope Pius X and was consecrated by him in the Sistine Chapel.  Read more…

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Luca Marenzio – composer

Madrigal writer influenced Monteverdi

Luca Marenzio, a prolific composer of madrigals during the late Renaissance period, died on this day in 1599 in the garden of the Villa Medici on Monte Pincio in Rome.  Marenzio wrote at least 500 madrigals, some of which are considered to be the most famous examples of the form, and he was an important influence on the composer Claudio Monteverdi.  Born at Coccaglio, a small town near Brescia, in 1553, Marenzio was one of seven children belonging to a poor family, but he received some early musical training at Brescia Cathedral, where he was a choirboy.  It is believed he went to Mantua with the maestro di cappella from Brescia to serve the Gonzaga family as a singer.  Marenzio was then employed as a singer in Rome by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and, after the Cardinal’s death, he served at the court of Cardinal Luigi d’Este.  He travelled to Ferrara with Luigi d’Este and took part in the wedding festivities for Vincenzo Gonzaga and Margherita Farnese.  While he was there he wrote two books of madrigals and dedicated them to Alfonso II and Lucrezia d’Este.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, by Peter Heather

In The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather skilfully weaves a captivating tale of an ancient and long-lasting superpower that crumbled within the short space of a century. Its downfall was not instigated by massive rebellions or towering foes but by a small group of German-speaking asylum-seekers who audaciously defeated a vast Roman army and killed an Emperor, slowly eroding the bedrock of an empire that stood tall for over four hundred years.  Heather's engaging narrative exposes the intricate dynamics that culminated in the empire's fateful decline. This extraordinary story pierces the glamour of the gilded imperial court, and delves into Rome’s interactions with Europe's barbarians, who, after centuries of contact, gradually weakened and eventually dismantled the empire.  Hailed as 'triumphant' and 'fascinating', The Fall of the Roman Empire offers a masterful blend of meticulous analysis and vivid storytelling, providing fresh insights into an enigmatic chapter of history that continues to captivate the minds of historians and enthusiasts alike.

Peter Heather was born in Northern Ireland. He has taught at University College, London, and Yale University, and is currently a Fellow of Medieval History at Worcester College Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed works of history.

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21 August

NEW - Cesare Mazzoni – lawyer and entrepreneur

Businessman who turned San Pellegrino spa water into a global export

Cesare Mazzoni, a Milanese lawyer who founded the company that produces the world-famous San Pellegrino mineral water, died on this day in 1915 in Milan.  The business Mazzoni started, in the small spa town of San Pellegrino Terme in Lombardy in northern Italy, manufactured 1.5 million bottles of the reputedly beneficial water during its first year of production in 1905 and has now become a multimillion-euro operation. The son of an English teacher, Mazzoni was born in Milan in 1862. He studied Law at the university of Pavia, a course from which he graduated with full marks. He then went to work for a railway company dealing with aspects of commercial law.  Mazzoni founded the Società Anonima delle Terme di San Pellegrino in 1899 and took over the running of the Hotel Terme and Fonte Palazzolo company. Read more…

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Lino Capolicchio - actor

Acclaimed for role in Vittorio De Sica classic

The actor and director Lino Capolicchio, who starred in Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-winning film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, was born on this day in 1943 in Merano, an alpine town in the Trentino-Alto Adige region.  Capolicchio appeared in more than 70 films and TV dramas, and dubbed the voice of Bo Hazzard in the Italian adaptation of the American action-comedy The Dukes of Hazzard.  As a director, he won awards for Pugili, a drama-documentary film set in the world of boxing based on his own storylines, but it is for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, for which he won a David di Donatello award for best actor, that he is best remembered.  The movie is about a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara in the 1930s, whose adult children, Micòl and Alberto, enjoy blissful summers entertaining friends with tennis and parties in the garden of the family’s sumptuous villa. Read more… 

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Giuseppe Meazza - Italy's first superstar

Inter striker who gave his name to the San Siro stadium

Italian football's first superstar, the prolific goalscorer Giuseppe Meazza, died on this day in 1969, two days before what would have been his 69th birthday.  Most biographical accounts say Meazza was staying at his holiday villa in Rapallo, on the coast of Liguria, when he passed away but John Foot, the historian, says he died in Monza, near his home city of Milan.  Meazza, who was equally effective playing as a conventional centre-forward or as a number 10, spent much of his career with Internazionale, the Milan club for whom he scored a staggering 243 league goals in 365 appearances.  A year after his death, the civic authorities in Milan announced that the stadium shared by the two clubs in the San Siro district would be renamed Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in his honour.  Read more…

Emilio Salgari – adventure novelist

Author’s heroes and stories are still part of popular culture

Emilio Salgari, who is considered the father of Italian adventure fiction, was born on this day in 1862 in Verona.  Despite producing a long list of novels that were widely read in Italy, many of which were turned into films, Salgari never earned much money from his work. His life was blighted by depression and he committed suicide in 1911.  But he is still among the 40 most translated Italian authors and his most popular novels have been adapted as comics, animated series and films. Although he was not given the credit at the time, he is now considered the grandfather of the Spaghetti Western.  Salgari was born into a family of modest means and from a young age wanted to go to sea. He studied seamanship at a naval academy in Venice but was considered not good enough academically and never graduated. Read more…

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Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri – violin maker

Luthier’s surviving instruments are now worth millions

Bartolomeo Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri, who is regarded as the greatest of the Guarneri family of violin makers, was born on this day in 1698 in Cremona in Lombardy.   He was the son of Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri and the grandson of Andrea Guarneri, who were both respected violin makers in the city. He learned the craft of violin making in his father’s shop, who in turn had learned from his father, Andrea, who had worked alongside Stradivari in the workshop of Niccolò Amati.  Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri became known as Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ Guarneri because of the religious symbols on the labels he used on the instruments he produced late in his career.  Although Giuseppe ‘del Gesu’ was younger than the celebrated violin maker Antonio Stradivari, he became his rival because of the respect and reverence accorded to the violins he produced.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, by Peter H Gleick

Bottled and Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years. It’s a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than 30 billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales. Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles? With a scientist’s eye and a natural storyteller’s wit, Gleick investigates whether industry claims about the relative safety, convenience, and taste of bottled versus tap hold water. And he exposes the true reasons we’ve turned to the bottle, from fearmongering by business interests and our own vanity to the breakdown of public systems and global inequities.  "Designer" H2O may be laughable, but the debate over commodifying water is deadly serious. In Bottled and Sold, Gleick gets to the heart of the bottled water craze, exploring what it means for us to bottle and sell our most basic necessity.

Peter H Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California, and is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water issues.

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