NEW - Alessandro Tassoni – poet
Writer famed for legendary bucket in a belfry
The writer Alessandro Tassoni, who became famous for a poem about an historic battle which included a story about a stolen bucket, was born on this day in 1565 in Modena in Emilia Romagna. Tassoni’s bucket, which inspired his mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita (The Rape of the Bucket), is still on public display to this day in the belfry of Modena Cathedral. According to some critics, his poem was one of the earliest - and best - Italian poems of its type, and it became very popular in Italy and abroad. Tassoni, who also wrote about politics and was a literary critic, was born into a noble family. He lost both of his parents at an early age and was brought up by his grandfather. He first saw the bucket in Modena Cathedral when he was taken there by his grandfather. At the age of 13, he was taught Latin and Greek and he went on to study philosophy, law, and rhetoric at the universities of Bologna, Pisa, and Ferrara. In 1597 he entered the service of Cardinal Ascanio Colonna and went with him to Spain as his first secretary. After his return to Italy, Tassoni went to live in Rome. Read more…
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Filippo Illuminato - partisan
Teenager who gave his life for his city
The partisan fighter Filippo Illuminato died on this day in 1943 in Naples. He was among more than 300 Italians killed in an uprising known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli - the Four Days of Naples - which successfully liberated the city from occupying Nazi forces ahead of the arrival of the first Allied forces in the city on 1 October. Illuminato’s memory has been marked in a number of ways in the southern Italian city, honoured because he was only 13 years old when he was killed by German gunfire in a street battle in the famous Piazza Trieste e Trento, just a few steps from the Royal Palace. His last act had been to blow up a German armoured car. Born into a poor family, Illuminato was working as an apprentice mechanic when he decided to join the uprising, which was sparked by a brutal crackdown imposed by the Nazis in response to the Italian government’s decision to surrender to the Allies, confirmed in the signing of the Armistice of Cassabile on 3 September on the island of Sicily. The German forces, which had numbered 20,000, had responded to the news by banning all assemblies and introducing a curfew. Read more…
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Pietro Badoglio - soldier and politician
Controversial general who turned against Mussolini
Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was a general in the Italian Army in both World Wars and became Italy’s wartime prime minister after the fall of Mussolini, was born on this day in 1871 in the village of Grazzano Monferrato in Piedmont. He was Mussolini’s Chief of Staff between 1925 and 1940, although his relationship with the Fascist dictator was fractious. Indeed, he ultimately played a key part in Mussolini’s downfall in 1943, encouraging the Fascist Grand Council to remove him as leader and advising King Victor Emmanuel III in the lead-up to Mussolini’s arrest and imprisonment in July of that year, after which he was named as head of an emergency government. It was Badoglio who then conducted the secret negotiations with the Allies that led to an armistice being signed barely five weeks later. However, historians are divided over whether he should be seen as an heroic figure, in part because of his role in the disastrous defeat for Italian forces at the Battle of Caporetto in the First World War, at a cost of 10,000 Italian deaths and 30,000 more wounded. Badoglio hailed from a middle-class background. His father, Mario, was a small landowner. Read more…
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Marcello Mastroianni – actor
Film star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, who grew up to star in some of the most iconic Italian films of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1924 in Fontana Liri, in the province of Frosinone in Lazio. He was the son of Ida Irolle and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop. His uncle, Umberto Mastroianni, was a sculptor. At the age of 14, Marcello Mastroianni made his screen debut as an extra in a 1939 film called Marionette. His career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he was interned in a German prison camp until he managed to escape and go into hiding in Venice. He made several minor film appearances after the war until he landed his first big role in Atto d’accusa, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo, in 1951. Ten years later, Mastroianni had become an international celebrity, having starred in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita opposite Anita Ekberg. He played a disillusioned tabloid journalist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome’s high society. The film is most famous for the scene in which Ekberg's character, Sylvia, wades into the Trevi Fountain. Read more…
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Book of the Day: The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, edited by Michael Wyatt
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