1 May

The Portella della Ginestra Massacre

Conspiracy theories behind murder of peasants

Sicily and the whole of Italy was horrified on this day in 1947 when gunmen opened fire on defenceless peasants gathered for a Labour Day celebration in the hills above Palermo, killing 11 and wounding more than 30 in what became known as the Portella della Ginestra Massacre.  The victims included four children between the ages of seven and 15, who were cut down indiscriminately by a gang of men, some on horseback, who appeared suddenly and began firing machine guns as the peasants, numbering several hundred, congregated on a plain along a remote mountain pass between the towns of Piana degli Albanesi and San Giuseppe Jato, where a Labour Day rally had taken place every year since 1893.  Salvatore Giuliano, an outlaw wanted in connection with the killing of a police officer in 1943, was held responsible although many people believed that Giuliano and his gang of bandits were set up as scapegoats in a conspiracy involving the Mafia, wealthy landowners and politicians.  The outrage came only 10 days after a surprise victory by the so-called People’s Block - a coalition of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party - in Sicilian local elections.  Read more…

__________________________________

Laura Betti - actress and jazz singer

Long-time companion of director Pier Paolo Pasolini

The actress and singer Laura Betti, who appeared in a number of important Italian films in the 1960s and 1970s, including Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, was born on this day in 1927 in Casalecchio di Reno, in Emilia-Romagna.  In addition to Teorema, which won her the coveted Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1968 Venice Film Festival, Betti appeared in six other Pasolini films as the two developed a special and unlikely relationship.  Betti, a vivacious blonde with striking good looks, had no shortage of suitors among the authors, artists, singers and aspiring actors that made up her circle in Rome in the 1950s, but Pasolini was gay and had no interest in her in a romantic sense.  Yet he became a regular guest at her apartment near the Palazzo Farnese and she wrote many years later that a kind of love developed between them. They met while he was an unknown poet and it was with her encouragement that he realised his aspiration to become a director.  Over time she effectively became his cook and housekeeper.  Read more…

Ignazio Silone – politician and author

Socialist leader became famous for anti-Fascist novels

Writer and political leader Ignazio Silone was born Secondino Tranquilli on this day in 1900 in Pescina dei Marsi in the region of Abruzzo.  Tranquilli became famous under the pseudonym, Ignazio Silone, during World War II for his powerful anti-Fascist novels and he was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature ten times.  Silone’s father, Paolo Tranquilli, died when he was 11 and he lost his mother, Marianna, and other members of his family four years later in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915.  Two years afterwards he joined the Young Socialist group of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), eventually becoming their leader and editor of their newspaper Avanguardia.  He was a founding member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (PCI) party in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime, editing their newspaper in Trieste, Il Lavoratore. His brother, Romolo Tranquilli, was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the PCI and died in prison in 1931 as a result of the severe beatings he had received from the Fascist police.  Silone went to live in Switzerland in 1930 where he declared his opposition to Joseph Stalin and was expelled from the PCI.  Read more…

____________________________________

Uberto Pasolini - film producer and director

Roman count who found unexpected fame with The Full Monty

The film director and producer Uberto Pasolini, who gained international recognition when his British comedy The Full Monty became one of UK cinema’s biggest commercial success stories in 1997, was born on this day in 1957 in Rome.  A nephew of the great Italian director Luchino Visconti, Pasolini worked for 12 years as an investment banker in England before following his dream to work in the film industry, abandoning his career to work, initially without pay, on the set of the David Puttnam-Roland Joffé film, The Killing Fields, in Thailand.  Puttnam took him on, at first as a location scout, before Pasolini moved to America to become part of Puttnam’s production team in Los Angeles. He set up his own company in London in 1994 and went on to direct some of his own productions, including the critically acclaimed 2008 movie Machan, based on a true story about a group of would-be immigrants from Sri Lanka who overcome visa problems stopping them from moving to the West by pretending to be their country’s national handball team.  Like Luchino Visconti, who was a descendant of the same Visconti family that ruled Milan between the 13th and 15th centuries, Pasolini was from a noble background.  Read more…

___________________________________

Giovanni Guareschi – writer

Satirical magazine editor first used Don Camillo to fill a gap

Author Giovanni Guareschi, the creator of the fictional character, Don Camillo, was born on this day in 1908 in Roccabianca in Emilia-Romagna.  The popular stories featuring his famous comic creations, the stalwart Italian priest, Don Camillo, and the Communist mayor, Peppone, have since been made into many radio and television programmes and films.  Guareschi, who was christened Giovannino, started his career writing for the Gazzetta di Parma and then became a magazine editor.  He was called up to serve in the army in 1943 but was quickly taken prisoner, along with other Italian soldiers, by the Germans. He wrote a secret diary while he was in the prison camp, Diario Clandestino.  After the war Guareschi founded a weekly satirical magazine, Candido, where his Don Camillo stories first appeared. He had written the introductory story for another publication but lifted it to fill a gap in Candido at the last minute.  His magazine criticised and satirised the Communists but after they were beaten in the 1948 elections he turned his attention to the Christian Democrats instead.  Read more…

____________________________________

Book of the Day: Italian Rebels: Mazzini, Gramsci, and Giuliano, by Raymond Angelo Bellotti

Italian Rebels philosophically analyses the role of positive duties in moral theory, the efficacy of theocratic republicanism, viable strategies for political revolutions, the implications of an enduring Sicilian ethos, and the profits and perils of the individual-community continuum, in service of distinctive interpretations of the lives and ideologies of Giuseppe Mazzini, Antonio Gramsci, and Salvatore Giuliano.  Il Risorgimento Italiano, the national unification movement, refers to the period from 1821, the initial unsuccessful Milanese and Piedmontese insurrections against Austria, to 1870, the annexing of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy, which itself was established in 1861. The movement and its aftermath hovered over the lives of the Genoese republican prophet of Italian liberation and unification, the Sardinian communist political theorist imprisoned by The Black Shirts, and the Sicilian separatist murdering and fighting for his life and the honour of his island.  By dissecting the lives and philosophies of Mazzini, Gramsci, and Giuliano, by extracting moral, political, and existential lessons from their aspirations and enterprises, by reflecting on their ideals from our divergent social context, by evaluating their virtues and vices from a wider perspective, we may confront the people that we are and reimagine the people we might become.  

Raymond Angelo Belliotti is State University of New York Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and author of 26 books. 

Buy from Amazon

Home

30 April

NEW - Francesco Primaticcio - painter, sculptor and architect

Italian who had major influence on French art 

The Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor Francesco Primaticcio, who played an important role in shaping the artistic landscape of France during the 16th century, was born on this day in 1504 in Bologna.  Primaticcio spent almost two thirds of his life in France, where he rose to be superintendent of works at the Château de Fontainebleau, the former medieval castle that was turned into an opulent Renaissance-style palace by François I of France.  Primaticcio trained as an artist in Bologna under Innocenzo da Imola before moving to Mantua to study with Giulio Romano, a former pupil of Raphael whose style helped define Mannerism.  He assisted Romano in his work on the decorations of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, a project that refined his skills in fresco painting and architectural ornamentation.  Romano’s trust and belief in Primataccio’s talent was such that when François I invited Romano to assist in the redecoration of his expanded Fontainebleau palace in 1532, seeking to enrich the artistic grandeur of his court, Romano sent Primaticcio in his place.  Read more…

____________________________________

Luigi Russolo – painter and composer

Futurist artist who invented 'noise music'

Luigi Russolo, who is regarded as the first ‘noise music’ composer, was born on this day in 1885 in Portogruaro in the Veneto.  Russolo originally chose to become a painter and went to live in Milan where he met and was influenced by other artists in the Futurist movement.  Along with other leading figures in the movement, such as Carlo Carrà, he signed both the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting as the artists set out how they saw Futurism being represented on canvas, and afterwards participated in Futurist art exhibitions.  Russolo issued his own manifesto, L’arte dei rumori - The Art of Noises - in 1913, which he expanded into book form in 1916.  He stated that the industrial revolution had given modern man a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. He found traditional, melodic music confining and envisioned noise music replacing it in the future.  Russolo invented intonarumori - noise-emitting machines - and conducted concerts using these machines. The audiences reacted with either enthusiasm or hostility to the style of music he produced.  None of these machines survived although they have since been reconstructed for use in performances.  Read more…

____________________________________

Andrea Dandolo - Doge of Venice

Reign tested by earthquake, plague and war

Andrea Dandolo, the fourth member of the same patrician Venetian family to serve as Doge of the historic republic, was born on this day in 1306.  A notably erudite scholar, Dandolo wrote two chronicles of the history of Venice in Latin and reformed the Venetian legal code by bringing together all of the diverse laws applicable to the Venetian Republic within one legal framework.  He achieved these things despite his reign being marked by a devastating earthquake, a catastrophic outbreak of the Black Death plague and two expensive wars, against Hungary and then Genoa.  Dandolo studied at the University of Padua, where he became a professor of law, a position he maintained until he was elected Doge. He quickly rose to a position of prominence in Venetian life, being appointed Procurator of St Mark’s Basilica, the second most prestigious position in the Venetian hierarchy after the Doge, at the age of just 25.  He was elected Doge in 1343, aged 37.  It was a particularly young age at which to be given the leadership of the Republic, but his family history and the manner in which he had conducted himself as Procurator gained the respect of the Republic’s aristocratic elders.  Read more…

Antonio Sant’Elia - architectural visionary

Futurist’s ideas were decades ahead of his time

The architect Antonio Sant’Elia, best known for producing hundreds of drawings based on his vision of an idealised modern industrial city, was born on this day in 1888 in Como in Lombardy.  Sant’Elia’s life was short - he died in battle barely a year after signing up for military service in the First World War - and his physical legacy comprised only one completed building, a modest villa in the hills above his home city.  Yet, thanks to the boldly imaginative designs he captured in dozens of sketches illustrating how he saw the cities of the future, Sant’Elia is still seen as one of modern architecture’s most influential figures, more than a century after his death.  A builder by trade, in 1912 Sant’Elia set up a design office in Milan with fellow architect Mario Chittone.  He was already a follower of Futurism, the avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that had been launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  The Futurists’ admiration for the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention, aligned with his own rejection of traditional design.  Read more…

____________________________________

Pope Pius V - Saint

Pontiff dismissed jester and clamped down on heretics

The feast day of Pope Saint Pius V is celebrated every year on this day, the day before the anniversary of his death in 1572 in Rome.  Pius V, who became Pope in 1566, is remembered chiefly for his role in the Counter Reformation, the period of Catholic resurgence following the Protestant Reformation.  He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and for persecuting English Catholics and he formed the Holy League, an alliance of Catholic states against the Turks.  Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri in Bosco, now Bosco Marengo, in Piedmont. At the age of 14 he entered the Dominican Order, taking the name of Michele. He was ordained at Genoa in 1528 and then sent to Pavia to lecture.  He became a bishop under Pope Pius IV but after opposing the pontiff was dismissed. After the death of Pius IV, Ghislieri was elected Pope Pius V in 1566. His first act on becoming Pope was to dismiss the court jester and no Pope has had one since.  Protestantism had by then conquered many parts of Europe and Pius V was determined to prevent it getting into Italy. He therefore took a personal interest in the activities of the Inquisition in Rome and appeared to be unmoved by the cruelty practised.  Read more…

________________________________________

Book of the Day: A Day at Château de Fontainebleau, by Guillaume Picon

Imbued with more than eight centuries of history, A Day at Château de Fontainebleau offers unique historical insight into the lives of more than 34 French sovereigns who inhabited and enhanced this great architectural monument. A visit to the exceptionally well-preserved Fontainebleau - one of the few royal residences left intact during the French Revolution - offers unparalleled access to French history, art, and architecture. From François I to Napoleon, and from Marie-Antoinette to Joséphine, Fontainebleau sweeps the reader back in time to experience the traditions and customs of great figures throughout the history of France. Comprising more than 1,500 rooms on 130 acres of parkland and gardens, and situated 37 miles south of Paris, Fontainebleau welcomes more than 500,000 visitors a year. This book features superb images illustrating the artisanal decorative details of the château and the spectacular works of art still housed within. From hunting excursions to the grand parties and spectacles that took place at Fontainebleau, A Day at Château de Fontainebleau is a private invitation inside a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of France’s most beautiful historical monuments. Exquisite photographs by Eric Sander offer rare access to parts on the chateau usually closed to the public, including the Napoléon III’s office, Marie-Antoinette’s Turkish-style boudoir, Madame de Maintenon’s apartments, the Imperial Theater, the medieval keep, François I’s Cour Ovale, Henri IV’s Gallery of Stags, the Salle des Colonnes, Diana Gallery, and many rare objects from the impeccably well-preserved monument.

Guillaume Picon is a French historian, author and cultural projects manager based in Paris. He is the author of many books including The History of France Explained by Painting and Orient Express: The Story of a Legend.

Buy from Amazon

Home

Francesco Primaticcio - painter, sculptor and architect

Italian who had major influence on French art 

A woodcut  portrait of Francesco
 Primaticcio from about 1648

The Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor Francesco Primaticcio, who played an important role in shaping the artistic landscape of France during the 16th century, was born on this day in 1504 in Bologna.

Primaticcio spent almost two thirds of his life in France, where he rose to be superintendent of works at the Château de Fontainebleau, the former medieval castle that was turned into an opulent Renaissance-style palace by François I of France.

Primaticcio trained as an artist in Bologna under Innocenzo da Imola before moving to Mantua to study with Giulio Romano, a former pupil of Raphael whose style helped define Mannerism.

He assisted Romano in his work on the decorations of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua, a project that refined his skills in fresco painting and architectural ornamentation.

Romano’s trust and belief in Primataccio’s talent was such that when François I invited Romano to assist in the redecoration of his expanded Fontainebleau palace in 1532, seeking to enrich the artistic grandeur of his court, Romano sent Primaticcio in his place.

Primaticcio soon became one of the leading artists at Fontainebleau, where he worked alongside Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, the Florentine painter also known as Rosso Fiorentino.

Following Fiorentino's death in 1540, Primaticcio took control of the artistic direction at Fontainebleau, overseeing the decoration of its grand halls and galleries.

His work at Fontainebleau was characterized by stucco reliefs, elaborate frescoes, and mythological themes, which became hallmarks of the French Mannerist style. Niccolò dell'Abbate, a Mannerist painter from Modena, was one of his team.

The Château de Fontainebleau, southeast of Paris,
where Primaticcio spent much of his working life

Primataccio’s compositions featured elongated figures, dynamic movement, and intricate detailing, influencing generations of French artists to follow.

He returned to Rome for a couple of years to purchase artworks for François I. He also took casts of the best Roman sculptures in the papal collections, some of which were recreated in bronze to decorate the parterres at Fontainebleau.

Primaticcio’s crowded compositions and graceful figures set a precedent for French painting. His masterpiece, the Salle d’Hercule, occupied him and his team for decades, showcasing his ability to blend classical mythology with courtly elegance.

Other notable works at Fontainebleau included scenes from the Life of Alexander the Great, for the bedchamber of the duchesse d’Étampes, and eight mythological scenes for the ceiling of the Galerie d’Ulysse. He is noted as one of the first artists in France to replace religious themes with those of classical mythology.

Primataccio’s design for the ceiling of the chapel of the Hotel de Guise in Paris, executed in 1557, was his last major work. For the last decade of his life, he worked with the sculptor Germain Pilon on the tomb of Henri II in the abbey church of Saint-Denis near Paris.  He designed the Valois Chapel at Saint-Denis, which was completed after his death. 

After the death of François I in 1547, Primaticcio remained a court painter under Henri II and François II, continuing to shape the artistic direction of France. His stylistic innovations influenced the development of French Mannerism, to which he introduced a quiet French elegance. 

Primaticcio died in 1570 in Paris. His contributions to the School of Fontainebleau cemented his reputation as a master of Mannerism. His ability to merge Italian Renaissance techniques with French artistic traditions ensured his place among the most influential artists of the 16th century.

Mantua's Palazzo del Te was considered
to be Giulio Romano's greatest work

Travel tip:

The Palazzo del Te in Mantua, where Primaticcio worked for part of his time in the city, was designed for Federico Gonzaga as a summer residence. It is a fine example of the Mannerist school of architecture and is considered to be Giulio Romano’s masterpiece. The name for the palace came about because the location chosen had been the site of the Gonzaga family stables at Isola del Te on the edge of the marshes just outside Mantua’s city walls. After the building was completed in about 1535, a team of plasterers, carvers and painters worked on the interior for ten years until all the rooms were decorated with beautiful frescoes.

The porticoed square adjoining the Basilica
di Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna

Travel tip:

In his youth, Primaticcio trained in Bologna, his home city, in the workshop of Innocenzo di Pietro Francucci da Imola, a painter and draughtsman generally known as Innocenzo da Imola. Visitors to Bologna can see some of Innocenzo's work in the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Servi, a great example of Gothic architecture that stands on Strada Maggiore, a street in central Bologna that is part of the Roman Via Emilia. It runs, with its porticoes between medieval houses, buildings and churches, from Piazza di Porta Ravegnana to Porta Maggiore. The church also houses a Madonna enthroned with the Child and angels by Cimabue.

Also on this day:

1306: The birth of Andrea Dandolo, Doge of Venice

1885: The birth of composer Luigi Russolo

1888: The birth of architect Antonio Sant’Elia

The feast day of Pope Saint Pius V (d:1572)

Home

29 April

Sara Errani - tennis champion

Six-times Grand Slam doubles winner reached No 5 in singles

Tennis star Sara Errani, who was born in Bologna on this day in 1987, is one of the most successful Italian tennis players of all time.  She and former partner Roberta Vinci's career record of five Grand Slam doubles titles is unparalleled.  No other Italian combination has won more than one Grand Slam title.  Errani won her sixth Grand Slam title at the US Open in 2024, winning the mixed doubles with an Italian partner in Andrea Vavassori. In the same year, Errani and her new women's doubles partner, Jasmine Paolini, were runners-up in the French Open but returned to the Roland Garros clay courts two months later to win the women's doubles gold medal at the Paris Olympics.  Nicola Pietrangeli, who was ranked the No 3 men's singles player at his peak, won the French Open championship in 1959 and 1960 and was runner-up in Paris on two other occasions, as well as winning the men's doubles at the French in 1959, with fellow Italian Orlando Sirola. Jannik Sinner became the most successful Italian singles player in Grand Slams when his Australian Open triumph in January 2025 gave him his third title at the highest level.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Liberation of Fornovo di Taro

How Brazilian soldiers hastened Nazi capitulation

The town of Fornovo di Taro in Emilia-Romagna acquired a significant place in Italian military history for a second time on this day in 1945 when it was liberated from Nazi occupation by soldiers from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fighting with the Allies.  Under the command of General João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais, the Brazilians marched into Fornovo, which is situated about 13km (8 miles) south-west of Parma on the east bank of the Taro river, at the conclusion of the four-day Battle of Collecchio.  It was in Fornovo that the 148th Infantry Division of the German army under the leadership of General Otto Fretter-Pico offered their surrender, along with soldiers from the 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the 1st Bersaglieri and 4th Mountain Divisions of the Fascist National Republican Army.  In total, 14,779 German and Italian troops laid down their arms after Fretter-Pico concluded that, with the Brazilians surrounding the town, aided by two American tank divisions and one company of Italian partisans, there was no hope of escape.  Although the total capitulation of the German and Fascist armies in Italy was not officially announced until May 2 in Turin, the surrender in Fornovo effectively brought the war in the peninsula to an end.  Read more…

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini - painter

Venetian artist who made mark in England

The painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who is regarded as one of the most important Venetian painters of the early 18th century, was born on this day in 1675 in Venice.   He played a major part in the spread of the Venetian style of large-scale decorative painting in northern Europe, working in Austria, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.  With a style that had influences of Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese and the Baroque painters Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano, he is considered an important predecessor of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the development of Venetian art.  A pupil of the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani, Pellegrini began travelling while still a teenager, accompanying Pagano to Moravia and Vienna.  After a period studying in Rome, he returned to Venice and married Angela Carriera, the sister of the portraitist Rosalba Carriera.  Soon afterwards, he accepted the commission to decorate the dome above the staircase at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1709.  Pellegrini spent a significant part of his career in England, where he was invited, along with Marco Ricci, the nephew of Sebastiano Ricci, by Charles Montagu, the future Duke of Manchester.  Read more…

______________________________________

Rafael Sabatini – writer

Author of swashbucklers had the ‘gift of laughter’

Rafael Sabatini, who wrote successful adventure novels that were later made into plays and films, was born on this day in 1875 in Iesi, a small town in the province of Ancona in Le Marche.  Sabatini was the author of the international bestsellers, Scaramouche and Captain Blood, and afterwards became respected as a great writer of swashbucklers with a prolific output.  He was the son of an English mother, Anna Trafford, and an Italian father, Vincenzo Sabatini, who were both opera singers.  At a young age he was exposed to different languages because he spent time with his grandfather in England and also attended school in both Portugal and Switzerland, while his parents were on tour.  By the time Sabatini went to live in England permanently, at the age of 17, he was already proficient in several languages. Although his first attempts at writing were in French when he was at school in Switzerland, he is said to have consciously chosen to write in English, saying at the time that all the best stories had been written in English.  Sabatini wrote short stories in the 1890s, some of which were published in English magazines.   Read more…

_______________________________________

Book of the Day: History of Tennis: Legendary Champions and Magical Moments, by Richard Evans

Tennis, the much-loved sport, is a game for the ages dating back to 16th-century royal court matches played by King Henry VIII. History of Tennis captures the sport's long history, never short of theatrics, rivalries, power plays, political controversies, and inspiring personal stories. Beautiful historic and contemporary images of gripping matches like the unforgettable Bjorn Borg versus John McEnroe tie break match in 1980, to behind-the-scenes moments with tennis legends, and never-before-seen shots, grace each page accompanied by Richard Evans’s intriguing stories and unique insight detailing the evolution of this majestic sport by decade. Starting as a European royal pastime and gaining popularity in England and France, the sport made its way to America in the late 1870s as the new game of lawn tennis, creating along the centuries legendary tennis superstars such as Bill Tilden, Suzanne Lenglen and the Four Musketeers, Fred Perry, Billie Jean King, John McEnroe, and Steffi Graf. Now one of the most highly watched sports globally with top-billing icons such as Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, and Naomi Osaka, there is no stopping the power of this all enthralling game. History of Tennis is a must-have volume for lifelong fans and those intrigued by the sporting theatre and grand culture of tennis.

Richard Evans is a British sports journalist, author, and historian. His journalistic career in tennis began at Wimbledon in 1960 and he has written 23 books, including biographies of Ilie Nastase and John McEnroe. In 2024 he was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame for his contributions to the game.

Buy from Amazon

Home