11 June

NEW - Battle of Campaldino

Victory of Guelphs over Ghibellines established Florentine dominance

The Battle of Campaldino, which is seen as an important turning point in medieval Italian history, took place on this day in 1289 on the Plain of Campaldino, part of the Casentino valley in eastern Tuscany.  Fought between the Guelphs of Florence, approximately 50km (30 miles) to the west, and the Ghibellines of Arezzo, about 35km (21 miles) to the south, it ended in a victory for the former, crushing the aspirations of the Ghibellines to become the dominant force in the region.  It was a milestone moment that solidified Florence as the major economic and military superpower in central Italy, paving the political and financial path that would ultimately create the wealth that underpinned  the Italian Renaissance.  The battle for power between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines was immortalised by the poet Dante Alighieri - himself a combatant on the Guelph side at Campaldino - in his Divine Comedy. Read more…

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Corrado Alvaro - writer and journalist

Novelist from Calabria won Italy's most prestigious literary prize

The award-winning writer and journalist Corrado Alvaro died on this day in 1956 at the age of 61.  Alvaro won the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, in 1951 with his novel Quasi una vita (Almost a Life).  The Premio Strega – the Strega Prize – has been awarded to such illustrious names as Alberto Moravia, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elsa Morante, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco and Dacia Maraini since its inception in 1947.  Alvaro made his debut as a novelist in 1926 but for much of his life his literary career ran parallel with his work as a journalist.  He was born in San Luca, a small village in Calabria at the foot of the Aspromonte massif in the southern Apennines. His father Antonio was a primary school teacher who also set up classes for illiterate shepherds.  Corrado was sent away to Jesuit boarding schools in Rome and Umbria.  Read more…

Antonio Cifrondi – painter

Artist who preserved images of everyday life 

Baroque artist Antonio Cifrondi was born on this day in 1655 in Clusone, just north of Bergamo, in Lombardy.  He is known for his religious works and his genre paintings of old men and women and of people at work, in which he depicts their clothing in great detail.  Some of his work is on display in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. A self-portrait can be seen in the church of Sant' Alessandro della Croce in Via Pignolo in Bergamo.  Cifrondi was born into a poor family in Clusone, the main town in Val Seriana to the northeast of Bergamo.  After training as a painter locally he moved to Bologna, and then to Turin and to Rome, where he stayed for about five years. He also worked briefly at the Palace of Versailles near Paris.  He came back to live in the Bergamo area in the 1680s, after which he painted many of his major works. Read more…

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Giovanni Antonio Giay – composer

Opera composer also wrote religious music for the Savoy family

Opera and music composer Giovanni Antonio Giay was born on this day in 1690 in Turin.  A protégée of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Giay - sometimes spelt Giai or Giaj -  wrote 15 operas, five symphonies and a large quantity of sacred music for the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral.  Giay’s father, Stefano Giuseppe Giay, who was a chemist, died when Giovanni Antonio was just five years old.  At the age of ten, Giovanni Antonio became the first member of his family to study music when he entered the Collegio degli Innocenti at Turin Cathedral to study under Francesco Fasoli.  Giay’s first opera, Il trionfo d’amore o sia La Fillide, was premiered at the original Teatro Carignano during the Carnival of 1715.  At the invitation of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Giay became maestro di cappella at the royal chapel in Turin in 1732, succeeding Andrea Stefano Fiore.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Histories of Medieval Italy, by Oscar Browning 

After the death of Frederick II., an interval of twenty-three years passed without the appointment of a king of the Romans (1250-1273), and an interval of sixty years without the recognition of an emperor in Italy (1250-1309). The country therefore was left to govern itself, but it was not at all the less divided by discords and distracted by dissensions. The parties of Guelph and Ghibelline raged as fiercely as if the lances of the German hosts were ever glimmering on the crest of the Alps, or as if the Lombard leagues were in constant watchfulness against an impending foe. In Histories of Medieval Italy, a reproduction of a classic text originally published in 1893, Browning explains why these two party names occur again and again in history, until the time when both factions were crushed beneath the heel of a common enemy. They represented divergent principles, although in the heat of conflict all questions of principle were too often disregarded. Speaking generally, the Ghibellines were the party of the emperor, and the Guelphs the party of the Pope; the Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or sometimes of oppression, the Guelphs were on the side of liberty and self-government. The Ghibellines were the supporters of an universal empire of which Italy was to be the head, the Guelphs were on the side of national life and national individuality. 

Oscar Browning, born in 1837 and educated at Eton and King’s College, was the son of a prosperous distiller and a noted bon vivant during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He was also an innovator in the early development of professional training for teachers and a prolific author of popular histories and other books. He spent his final years living in Rome, where he died in 1923.

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