28 August

NEW - Marie Mancini – Princess of Paliano 

Dark Italian beauty won the heart of King Louis XIV

Marie Mancini, an aristocratic Italian woman who once had a love affair with French King Louis XIV, was born on this day in 1639 in Rome.  Anna Maria ‘Marie’ Mancini was the third of five sisters, who were all taken to live in France. They were the nieces of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who was Chief Minister to both Louis XIII and Louis XIV.  Marie grew up in Rome until she was 11 years old, when her father, Baron Lorenzo Mancini, died. Along with her sisters, Marie was taken to Paris by her widowed mother, Geronima, in the hope that Cardinal Mazarin would use his influence to help them all marry advantageously.  Two of Marie’s cousins, who were the daughters of Mazarin’s eldest sister, were also taken to France for the same purpose, and the seven girls were all known at the French court as ‘the Mazarinettes’.  Although Marie was christened Anna Maria, she became known in France as Marie and was said to have grown up as ‘dark, vivacious and beautiful’.  Read more…

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Maurizio Costanzo - talk show host

Journalist whose show was the longest running on Italian TV

Talk show host and writer Maurizio Costanzo was born on this day in 1938 in Rome. Costanzo spent more than 40 years in television.  His eponymous programme, the Maurizio Costanzo Show, broke all records for longevity in Italian television.  Launched on September 18, 1982, the current affairs programme continued for 27 years, alternating between Rete 4 and Canale 5, two of Italy's commercial television networks, part of the Mediaset group owned by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.  Its run came to an end in 2009 but was relaunched on the satellite channel Mediaset Extra in 2014 and returned to terrestrial television in 2015, again on Rete 4.  Costanzo began his media career in print journalism with the Rome newspaper Paese Sera at just 18 years old and by the time he was 22 he was in charge of the Rome office of the mass circulation magazine Grazia. Read more…

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Ugo Mulas - photographer

Images of street life in Milan and of New York art scene won acclaim

The photographer Ugo Mulas, much admired for the way he captured the street atmosphere of post-War Milan and for his portrayals of Andy Warhol and others in the Bohemian New York art scene of the 1960s, was born on this day in 1928 in Pozzolengo, a small town near the southern tip of Lake Garda.  At one time part of Milan’s fashion community, another of Mulas’s claims to fame is having been the photographer who discovered Veruschka, a German aristocrat who became part of the supermodel generation of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton in the 60s.  Known for his meticulous approach to composition and lighting, and for the candid, spontaneous style of his work, illness denied Mulas a long life but he is widely seen as a pioneering figure in photography who had a profound impact on the art form.  Read more…

Lamberto Maggiorani - unlikely movie star

Factory worker who shot to fame in Bicycle Thieves

Lamberto Maggiorani, who found overnight fame after starring in the neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948), was born on this day in 1909 in Rome.  Maggiorani was cast in the role of Antonio Ricci, a father desperate for work to support his family in post-War Rome, who is offered a job pasting posters to advertising hoardings but can take it only on condition that he has a bicycle – essential for moving around the city carrying his ladder and bucket.  He has one, but it has been pawned.  To retrieve it, his wife, Marie, strips the bed of her dowry sheets, which the pawn shop takes in exchange for the bicycle. They are happy, because Antonio has a job which will support her, their son Bruno and their new baby.  However, on his first day in the job the bicycle is stolen, snatched by a thief who waits for Antonio to climb to the top of his ladder before seizing his moment.  Read more…

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Elisabetta Sirani – artist

Sudden death of talented young woman shocked Bologna

The brilliant Baroque painter and printmaker Elisabetta Sirani died in unexplained circumstances at the age of 27 on this day in 1665 in Bologna. The body of the artist was carried to the Chapel of the Rosary in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna to be mourned, not just by her family, but by an entire community as she was loved and respected as an important female painter.  Elisabetta has been described as beautiful, focused and selfless and she became a symbol of the progressive city of Bologna, where the creativity of women was encouraged and they were able to express themselves through art and music.  Elisabetta’s father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, was himself an artist and she was trained in his studio, although contemporary writers have recorded that he was reluctant to teach her to paint in the Bolognese style. Read more…

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Giovanni Maria Benzoni - sculptor

Roman collectors called him the ‘new Canova’

The sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni, who earned such fame in Rome in the mid-19th century that collectors and arts patrons in the city dubbed him the “new Canova” after the great Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, was born on this day in 1809 in Songavazzo, a small mountain village in northern Lombardy.  Benzoni sculpted many allegorical and mythological scenes, but also busts and funerary monuments.  Songavazzo being just outside Clusone in the province of Bergamo, Benzoni was regarded as a bergamasco - a native of that ancient city - even though he spent much of his life in Rome.  As such he was held in similar regard to bergamaschi celebrities such as the composer Gaetano Donizetti, the philologist Cardinal Angelo Mai and the painter Francesco Coghetti, all of whom lived in Rome during Benzoni’s time there.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Memoirs, by Marie Mancini and Hortense Mancini. Translated by Sarah Nelson

The memoirs of Hortense (1646–1699) and of Marie (1639–1715) Mancini, nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin and members of the court of Louis XIV, represent the earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. Both unhappily married - Marie had also fled the aftermath of her failed affair with the king - the sisters chose to leave their husbands for life on the road, a life quite rare for women of their day.  Through their writings, the Mancinis sought to rehabilitate their reputations and reclaim the right to define their public images themselves, rather than leave the stories of their lives to the intrigues of the court - and to their disgruntled ex-husbands. First translated in 1676 and 1678 and credited largely to male redactors, Memoirs is an accessible English translation that chronicles the beginnings of women’s rights to personal independence within the confines of an otherwise circumscribed early modern aristocratic society.

Sarah Nelson is associate professor of French at the University of Idaho.

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