15 August

NEW - Luigi Pulci - Renaissance poet

Medici favourite behind milestone work

Luigi Pulci, a major Italian poet of the early Renaissance best known for his epic comic poem, Morgante, was born in Florence on this day in 1432.  Morgante, which featured a real-life Frankish military leader under Emperor Charlemagne who became legendary after dying heroically in battle, was significant in that it could be said to have created the mock-heroic epic genre in Western literature. Luigi was the youngest son among nine children of Jacopo di Francesco Pulci, an impoverished nobleman. After a difficult childhood caused by his family's poverty, he was introduced to the Medici family in 1461 and came under the patronage of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, otherwise known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. The de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo became the most powerful supporter of Renaissance culture.  Read more…

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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.  Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.  At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature.  Read more…

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Carlo Cipolla - economic historian

Professor famous for treatise on ‘stupidity’

Carlo Maria Cipolla, an economic historian who for many years was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was born on this day in 1922 in Pavia.  One of the leading economic historians of the 20th century, he wrote more than 20 academic books.  Yet it was for his bestselling humorous treatise, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, that he became famous. In the book, Cipolla divided the human species into four types, each sharing one characteristic of another type.  They were either (a) bandits, whose actions bring benefits for themselves but losses for others; (b) intelligent people, whose actions bring benefits for themselves and for others; (c) naive or helpless people, whose actions bring benefits for others but who tend to be exploited and therefore incur losses for themselves; or (d) stupid people, whose actions result not only in losses for themselves but for others too.  Read more…

Francesco Zuccarelli - landscape painter

Tuscan-born artist appealed to English tastes

Francesco Zuccarelli, who was considered to be the most important landscape painter to emerge from Venice in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1702.  Zuccarelli’s picturesque Arcadian landscapes were especially appealing to English buyers, and he was more famous in England even than his contemporary, Canaletto.  His fame in England prompted Zuccarelli to spend two periods of his life there. He settled in London for the first time at the end of 1752 and remained for 10 years, enjoying great success.  After returning to Italy after being elected to the Venetian Academy, he went back to England from 1765 to 1771, during which time he was a founding member of the Royal Academy and became one of George III’s favourite painters.  Born in Pitigliano in southern Tuscany, Zuccarelli received his early training in Florence. Read more…

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Ferragosto

A chance to enjoy quieter cities while Italians take a holiday

Italy, San Marino and the Italian speaking region of Switzerland all celebrate Ferragosto on this day every year with a public holiday.  This day of celebration originated during Roman times, when Feriae Augusti, the festival of the Roman Emperor Augustus, took place on 1 August. It was a day of rest for working people to signal the culmination of weeks of hard work by labourers on the land.  The month of August itself is named after Augustus. Its original name was sextilis, as it was the sixth month in the Roman calendar. Just as Julius Caesar had previously renamed quintilis - the fifth month - Iulius after himself, it was only natural for Augustus, as Julius Caesar’s chosen heir, to follow suit.  Over the centuries, it became traditional for workers to wish their employers ‘Buon Ferragosto, and to receive a bonus of extra money from their bosses in return.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Italian Renaissance: A Cultural History, by Virginia Cox 

The extraordinary creative energy of Renaissance Italy lies at the root of modern Western culture. In this magisterial study, Virginia Cox offers a fresh vision of this iconic moment in cultural history. Her lucid and absorbing book explores key artistic, literary and intellectual developments, as well as histories of food and fashion, map-making, exploration and anatomy. Alongside towering figures from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Leonardo, Machiavelli, and Isabella d'Este, Cox unveils lesser-known Renaissance protagonists including printers, travel writers, actresses, courtesans, explorers-even celebrity chefs. In this extensively revised and expanded edition, The Italian Renaissance: A Cultural History includes an incisive overview of Italy's relationship with the European and non-European worlds, embracing ethnic and religious diversity within Italy, the global dissemination and hybridisation of Italian Renaissance culture, and Italian global encounters, including Jesuit missions to Asia. Pulling together the latest scholarship with original research and insight, Cox's book speaks both to general readers and specialists in the field.

Virginia Cox taught at the universities of Edinburgh, UCL, and Cambridge before moving to the Department of Italian Studies at New York University in 2003.

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Luigi Pulci - Renaissance poet

Luigi Pulci wrote his epic poem for
the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent

Medici favourite behind milestone work

Luigi Pulci, a major Italian poet of the early Renaissance best known for his epic comic poem, Morgante, was born in Florence on this day in 1432.

Morgante, which featured a real-life Frankish military leader under Emperor Charlemagne who became legendary after dying heroically in battle, was significant in that it could be said to have created the mock-heroic epic genre in Western literature.

Luigi was the youngest son among nine children of Jacopo di Francesco Pulci, an impoverished nobleman. After a difficult childhood caused by his family's poverty, he was introduced to the Medici family in 1461 and came under the patronage of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, otherwise known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. The de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, Lorenzo became the most powerful supporter of Renaissance culture.

Despite his family’s straitened circumstances, Pulci received a full classical education, which equipped him to navigate the elite literary and political circles of 15th-century Tuscany.

He formed a close personal friendship with Lorenzo when the latter was still a teenager and who found Pulci’s wit and storytelling a welcome distraction from study.

Pulci became a favourite with Lorenzo’s wider circle due to his sharp wit, satirical humour, and talent for popular poetry. It was Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo’s mother, who actively encouraged Pulci to write a poem about Orlando.

The eighth-century paladin had entered popular culture in Italy thanks to The Song of Roland, an 11th-century French epic poem based on his heroic death fighting the Spanish at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass on behalf of Charlemagne in 778. It is the oldest surviving major work of French literature. 

Pulci’s version features a giant, called Morgante, who becomes Orlando's loyal follower after the knight stops him from attacking the monastery of Chiaromonte and converts him to Christianity. 

The front cover page of a 1574
edition of the popular Morgante

It differed from the serious courtly epics of tradition in that Pulci filled his work with slapstick humour, popular Tuscan slang, and theological parody. The poem features the gluttonous Margutte, a comic character who proudly boasts of his many sins and eventually dies in a fit of laughter.

Morgante himself is killed by a bite from a crab. The poem ends with an account of Orlando's defeat and death at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

At Tornabuoni’s request, the poem was read aloud in the Medici court as it progressed. The first edition containing 23 cantos appeared around 1478, and the final 28-canto version was published in 1483.

As a result of its success and popularity, Pulci’s chosen ottava rima rhyming stanza form became the standard for epic poems. Orlando featured in later epic Renaissance poems such as Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (1495) and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516).

Pulci’s position in the Medici court eventually deteriorated. His irreverent attitude toward religion and his fascination with the occult drew sharp criticism from prominent court humanists, most notably Marsilio Ficino and Matteo Franco.

Pulci engaged in fierce, bitter poetic public feuds with Franco, a priest who accused him of dabbling in black magic. They traded insults in a series of sonnets.

Eventually, his coarse, popular style fell out of favour, and he grew increasingly isolated. Politically sidelined and in need of money - he had some business interests that saddled him with large debts - he left Florence some time around 1470 and entered the service of Robert Sanseverino, a powerful condottiero. 

A plaque remembering Luigi Pulci in
the area of Padua where he was buried

Pulci travelled extensively on missions for Sanseverino throughout northern Italy. During a journey to Venice, he became ill and died in Padua in November 1484. 

Before that, in 1478, following the assassination of Lorenzo's brother Giuliano during the Pazzi Conspiracy, amid a climate of anti-clericalism in Florence, Pulci wrote a poem in which he fulminated against the Rome of Pope Sixtus IV, dedicating it to Lucrezia Tornabuoni.

It reinforced the church’s view of Pulci as a heretic, as a result of which after his death in Padua, the local clergy refused to give him his last rites and denied him burial in consecrated ground. His body instead was buried in an unmarked grave just outside the churchyard wall of the Chiesa di San Tommaso Apostolo in Padua, which was demolished in the early 20th century. 

There is a plaque commemorating the life of Luigi Pulci on a wall in Via San Tomaso, close to where the church stood.

The church's hostility toward Pulci did not end there. In 1497, a decade after his death, the radical friar Girolamo Savonarola, who led the infamous Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, deemed Pulci’s comedic epic morally corrupt and dangerous.

Savonarola campaigned against what he considered to be the artistic and social excesses of the Renaissance, preaching with fanatical passion against any material possession that might tempt the owner towards sin. Copies of Morgante were seized and thrown into the public fires.

Nonetheless, Pulci’s legacy endured through his influence on the evolution of the European epic after his blending of high literary culture with low-brow street comedy broke rigid medieval traditions. By elevating the vernacular Tuscan dialect, he helped shape the future of Italian literature. 

Centuries later, Lord Byron, the British romantic poet and adventurer, translated portions of Morgante, cementing Pulci's reputation as a pioneer of the romantic-comic narrative style.

The beautiful Boboli Gardens were a Medici
addition to their newly-acquired Palazzo Pitti

Travel tip:

The Medici family’s dominance of Florence for approximately 300 years can be seen in numerous reference points across the city. The early years of their rule brought the construction, between 1444 and 1460, of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, in present-day Via Camillo Cavour, which was the family’s original power base, commissioned by Cosimo il Vecchio and home to Lorenzo il Magnifico.  The same period saw Medici funding of improvements to the Basilica di San Lorenzo, to which Michelangelo’s New Sacristy was added from 1520, at the behest of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (later Pope Clement VII). The rulership of Cosimo I saw the construction of the Uffizi (1560–1581), originally an administrative complex designed by Giorgio Vasari, the addition of Medici apartments to the medieval Palazzo Vecchio, and the construction in 1565 of the Vasari Corridor, the 750m elevated corridor built to facilitate Cosimo I’s safe passage between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Palazzo Pitti, which had become the ceremonial residence of the Medici family and the seat of the Grand Duchy of Florence in around 1550. The Palazzo Pitti was purchased by Eleonora of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I, in 1549, having previously been the home of Luca Pitti, a Florentine banker. The Boboli gardens were a Medici addition. 

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The Basilica di Sant'Antonio, one of Padua's
main attractions, was built in the 13th century

Travel tip:

Many of the major sights that attract visitors to Padua had already been built when Luigi Pulci died there in 1484. For example, the Palazzo della Ragione, which still dominates Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta, was built in 1218 and enlarged between 1306 and 1309, while the Scrovegni Chapel, one of the best preserved medieval chapels in Italy and decorated with stunning frescoes by Giotto, was built between 1300–1303. The nearby Church of the Eremitani, built for the hermit friars of Saint Augustine and dedicated to the saints Philip and James, has stood since the 13th century, as has the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, with its eight domes. The Baptistery adjoining the Duomo would have been as it is today. The city’s walls, which existed in Pulci’s time, are not fully intact, although sections remain, along with the Porta Altinate and Porta Molino gates. The city already had a university, which was established in 1222 and is one of the oldest in the world, second in Italy only to the University of Bologna . The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. The history of Padua itself goes back much further: it is believed to be one of the oldest cities in northern Italy, founded in about 1183 BC by the Trojan prince, Antenor. 

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More reading:

Ludovico Ariosto, the poet credited with coining the term humanism and author of the epic poem, Orlando furioso

How Tuscan writer Francesco Berni’s satirical verses poked fun at two Popes

The bucket that inspired Alessandro Tassoni’s mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita

Also on this day:

1702: The birth of landscape painter Francesco Zuccarelli

1922: The birth of economic historian and writer Carlo Cipolla

1944: The birth of fashion designer Gianfranco Ferré

Ferragosto - Italy’s great summer escape

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14 August

Giorgio Chiellini - footballer

Juventus star renowned for defensive excellence

The footballer Giorgio Chiellini - captain of the Italy team that won the 2020 European Championships and renowned as one of the world’s best defenders - was born on this day in 1984 in Pisa.  Chiellini, who retired as a player in 2023, spent much of his career at Juventus, winning an incredible nine consecutive Serie A titles from 2012 to 2020, as well as numerous other trophies.  He was Serie A Defender of the Year in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and in 2017 was named in Juventus’s Greatest XI of All Time. He also earned 117 caps for the Italy national team - 20 after he had announced his retirement from international football in 2017 only to change his mind. He established himself as an automatic choice in a back three or four under seven different coaches.  Until he captained the national team to success in the 2020 Euros, all of Chiellini’s successes were in domestic football.  Read more…

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The Martyrs of Otranto

Victims of massacre made saints

More than 800 male inhabitants of the southern Italian city of Otranto were beheaded on this day in 1480 by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.  Legend has it that these men - 813 in total from the age of 15 upwards - were the only male survivors after Otranto, a port city some 35km (22 miles) southeast of Lecce, was captured by the Ottomans at the end of a 15-day siege.  According to some accounts, a total of 12,000 people were killed and 5,000 mainly women and children were enslaved, including victims from the territories of the Salentine peninsula around the city.  The 813 were supposedly offered clemency in return for their conversion to Islam but all refused, taking their lead from a tailor called Antonio Primaldi, who is said to have proclaimed: "Now it is time for us to fight to save our souls for the Lord. And since he died on the cross for us, it is fitting that we should die for him."  Read more… 

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Enzo Ferrari – car maker

Entrepreneur turned Ferrari into world’s most famous marque

Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari motor racing team and later the Ferrari sports car factory, died on this day in 1988 at the age of 90.  Known widely as Il commendatore, he passed away in Maranello, a town in Emilia-Romagna a few kilometres from Modena, where he had a house, the Villa Rosa, literally opposite Ferrari’s headquarters, where he continued to supervise operations almost to his death. He had reportedly been suffering from kidney disease.  Since the first Ferrari racing car was built in 1947 and the Scuderia Ferrari team’s famous prancing stallion symbol has been carried to victory in 228 Formula One Grand Prix races and brought home 15 drivers’ championships and 16 manufacturers’ championship. Always an exclusive marque, the number of Ferraris produced for road use since the company began to build cars for sale rather than simply to race is in excess of 150,000.  Read more…

Benito Carbone - footballer and coach

Gifted forward sparkled in English Premier League

The footballer and coach Benito Carbone, whose partnership with fellow Italian Paolo di Canio in the colours of Sheffield Wednesday was the highlight of a six-year stay in England’s Premier League, was born on this day in 1971 in Bagnara Calabra, a seaside village in Calabria.  Carbone signed for Sheffield Wednesday from Inter-Milan in 1996 as Italian players arrived in England in large numbers for the first time. The influx included other star names, such as Gianluca Vialli, Gianfranco Zola, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Roberto Di Matteo and Stefano Eranio.  Wednesday paid £3 million for Carbone, spending a further £4.2 million on Di Canio the following year. Between them, they scored 43 goals for the Yorkshire club, Carbone netting 26.   They both enjoyed enormous popularity with supporters. Read more…

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Pope Pius VII

Compromise candidate elected by conclave-in-exile in Venice

Pope Pius VII was born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti on this day in 1742 in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.  He was elected Pope in a conclave that was forced to meet on the island of San Giorgio in Venice in 1799 because Rome was occupied by the French.  He was crowned with a papier mâché version of the Papal tiara in 1800 because the French had seized the original.  It was the last conclave to be held outside Rome.  Chiaramonti was a monk of the order of Saint Benedict as well as being a distinguished theologian. He was granted the title, Servant of God, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.  Chiaramonti had joined the order of Saint Benedict at the age of 14. He was later ordained as a priest and went on to teach at Benedictine colleges in Parma and Rome.  After one of his relatives was elected Pope Pius VI, Chiaramonti had a series of promotions that resulted in him becoming a Cardinal.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Cinque Anni: The Story of the Italian National Football Team: 2017-2022, by Rob Carless

When it comes to international football, Italy dines at the finest tables. Their failure to qualify for consecutive World Cups in 2018 and 2022 sent shockwaves through the footballing world. Yet, incongruously sandwiched between the two failures was success in the European Championship against the backdrop of a world grappling with one of the deadliest pandemics on record. What on earth was going on? Delving into Italian football’s past to make sense of the present, this compelling book includes: in-depth analysis of one of the most fascinating periods in the history of the Italian national football team; stories about how football began in Italy and the important part played by its ports; how the Italian national team was transformed by one man and the journeys to glory experienced in the 1930s; and how the Azzurri stayed relevant for many decades despite the tragedy that befell them in 1949.  Cinque Anni tells the tale of how it all happened - the agony and ecstasy, the tears and the laughter. It is a must-read not only for fans of Italian football, but for anyone fascinated by the fine line that can separate winning and losing.

Rob Carless has written extensively about football and collaborated with former players on their autobiographies. Rob's books include Three Games in May: And a 20-year odyssey that defined Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United, Under the Floodlights!: Sixty Years of the Football League Cup and Sunshine After the Rain: The Story of Aston Villa 2009-2023.

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13 August

Domenico Dolce - fashion designer

One half of hugely successful Dolce & Gabbana company

The designer Domenico Dolce, whose partnership with Stefano Gabbana gave rise to one of the world’s most famous fashion houses, was born on this day in 1958 in Polizzi Generosa, a beautiful town set in the hills of northern Sicily, about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Palermo.  He and Gabbana, who he met in Milan, founded Dolce & Gabbana in 1985. The company took off in 1993 after the pop star Madonna chose them to design the costumes for a concert tour.  The company today generates about €1.3 billion in revenues and employs 5,500 people worldwide.  Dolce was born into the world of clothes. His father was a tailor and his mother worked in retail, at different times selling fabrics and lingerie.  He is said to have learned to sew at the age of six and made costumes for dolls.  After studying at art college in Palermo, Dolce moved to Milan. Read more…

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Giambologna – sculptor

Artist worked for three successive Medici Grand Dukes in Florence

Giambologna, the last in the line of significant Renaissance sculptors, died on this day in 1608 in Florence.  He was considered so important by the Medici family that once he had started working for them, they would never allow him to leave their city. They feared he would be enticed away by either the Austrian or Spanish branches of the Habsburgs to work for them.  His best known works include Abduction of a Sabine Woman - often known as Rape of the Sabine Women - in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, and his Neptune, atop the Fountain of Neptune, in Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore. Although influenced by Michelangelo, Giambologna produced many beautiful works in marble and bronze in his own late-Mannerist style, with perhaps less emphasis on emotion, and more on the elegance of the figures.  Read more…

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Aurelio Saffi – republican activist

Politician prominent in Risorgimento movement

The politician Aurelio Saffi, who was a close ally of the republican revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini during Italy’s move towards unification in the 19th century, was born on this day in 1819 in Forlì.  He was a member of the short-lived Roman Republic of 1849, which was crushed by French troops supporting the temporarily deposed Pope Pius IX, and was involved in the planning of an uprising in Milan in 1853.  Saffi was sentenced to 20 years in jail for his part in the Milan plot but by then had fled to England.  He returned to Italy in 1860 and when the Risorgimento realised its aim with unification Saffi was appointed a deputy in the first parliament of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.  At the time of Saffi’s birth, Forlì, now part of Emilia-Romagna, was part of the Papal States. He was educated in law in Ferrara, but became politically active in his native city. Read more…

Camillo Olivetti - electrical engineer

Founder of Italy’s first typewriter factory 

The electrical engineer Camillo Olivetti, who opened Italy’s first typewriter factory and founded a company that would become a major player in electronic business technology, was born on this day in 1868 in Ivrea in Piedmont.  The Olivetti company that later produced Italy’s first electronic computer was developed by Adriano Olivetti, the oldest of Camillo's five children, but it was his father’s vision and enterprise that laid the foundations for the brand’s success and established the Olivetti name.  Camillo came from a Jewish middle-class background. His father, Salvador Benedetto, was a successful merchant. His mother, Elvira, came from a banking family in Modena but her interests were more cultural. She was fluent in four languages.  Elvira had full care of Camillo after Salvador died when the boy was only one and sent him to boarding school in Milan. Read more… 

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Salvador Luria – microbiologist

Award winning scientist who advanced medical research

Nobel prize winner Salvador Luria was born on this day as Salvatore Edoardo Luria in 1912 in Turin.  The microbiologist became famous for showing that bacterial resistance to viruses is genetically inherited and he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1969.  He studied in the medical school of the University of Turin and from 1936 to 1937 Luria served in the Italian army as a medical officer. He took classes in radiology at the University of Rome and began to formulate methods of testing genetic theory.  When Mussolini’s regime banned Jews from academic research fellowships, Luria moved to Paris but was forced to move again when the Nazis invaded France in 1940. Fearing for his life, he fled the capital on a bicycle, eventually reaching Marseille, where he received an immigration visa to the United States.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Little Book of Dolce & Gabbana: The Story of the Iconic Fashion House, by Jessica Bumpus

Synonymous with glamour and sophistication, the House of Dolce & Gabbana is one of the best-known luxury fashion brands in the world. It was founded in 1985 by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the Italian duo who have been impressing the fashion world from the very beginning with their unique, show-stopping collections, bold and daring designs and detailed embroidery.  Packed with stunning photographs and expertly written text, the Little Book of Dolce & Gabbana pays homage to the brand, from the most-coveted pieces – the sexy floral dress, iconic D&G belt, Miss Sicily bag, statement sunglasses and gorgeous Dolce & Gabbana pumps – to their forward-thinking approach towards body positivity and inclusivity for women.

Jessica Bumpus is a British fashion journalist, author and digital editor. She was previously Fashion Features Editor at British Vogue and has written among other publications for Marie Claire, Vogue.com, ELLE US, Harper's Bazaar, Sunday Times Style and Glamour.

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