20 May

Pietro Bembo – poet and scholar

Lucrezia Borgia’s lover helped with the development of modern Italian

Pietro Bembo, a writer who was influential in the development of the Italian language, was born on this day in 1470 in Venice.  He is probably most remembered for having an affair with Lucrezia Borgia while she was married to the Duke of Ferrara and he was living at the Este Court with them. His love letters to her were described by the English poet, Lord Byron, centuries later, as ‘the prettiest love letters in the world.’  As a boy, Bembo visited Florence with his father where he acquired a love for the Tuscan form of Italian which he was later to use as his literary medium. He later learnt Greek and went to study at the University of Padua.  He spent two years at the Este Court in Ferrara where he wrote poetry that was reminiscent of Boccaccio and Petrarch.  It was when he returned to the court at Ferrara a few years later that he had an affair with Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Read more…

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Gabriele Muccino - film director

Enjoyed box office success in US after partnering with Will Smith

The film director Gabriele Muccino, whose best-known work so far has been the Oscar-nominated 2006 Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness, was born on this day in 1967 in Rome.  He is the older brother of the actor, Silvio Muccino.  Muccino, who also directed Smith in Seven Pounds (2008), spent several years in Hollywood following his success in Italy with L’ultimo bacio (The Last Kiss), which won him a David Di Donatello award as Best Director and for Best Screenplay.  His most recent work has been in Italy, with Gli anni più belli (The Most Beautiful Years) released in February 2020.  The son of Luigi Muccino, an executive at the state television company Rai, and painter and costume designer Antonella Cappuccio, Gabriele enrolled at Rome’s Sapienza University to study literature, but was already fascinated with the cinema. Read more…

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Ondina Valla - ground-breaking athlete

Italy’s first female Olympic champion

Trebisonda ‘Ondina’ Valla, the first Italian woman to win an Olympic gold medal, was born on this day in 1916 in Bologna.  Known as Ondina reputedly after a journalist misspelled her unusual name, Valla won the 80m at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where she also set a world record time in the semi-final.  The victory established Valla as an icon for Italy’s Fascist regime and as a heroine for Italian girls with sporting ambitions, her success breaking new ground for women in the face of considerable opposition to female participation in sport.  The Catholic Church’s attitude was that sport was not compatible with the standards of morality, modesty and domesticity they expected of women, while the view of Italy’s medical profession was that women should take only basic physical exercise if they wanted to maintain the level of health required for motherhood.  Read more…

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Hieronymus Fabricius - anatomist and surgeon

Research pioneer known as “Father of Embryology”

The pioneering anatomist and physiologist known in academic history as Hieronymus Fabricius, whose Italian name was Girolamo Fabrizio, was born on this day in 1537 in Acquapendente, in Lazio.  Fabrizio, who designed the first permanent theatre for public anatomical dissections, advanced the knowledge of the make-up of the human body in many areas, including the digestive system, the eyes and ears, and the veins.  But his most significant discoveries were in embryology.  He investigated the foetal development of many animals and humans and produced the first detailed description of the placenta. For this he became known as the "Father of Embryology".  Fabrizio spent most of his life at the University of Padua, where he was a student under the guidance of Gabriele Falloppio, who discovered the tube connecting the ovaries with the uterus that became known as the Fallopian tube.  Read more…

Giovanni Paolo Cavagna – artist

Prolific painter left a rich legacy of religious canvases

Late Renaissance painter Giovanni Paolo Cavagna, who became famous for his religious scenes, died on this day in 1627 in his native city of Bergamo.  Cavagna was mainly active in Bergamo and Brescia, another historic city in the Lombardy region, for most of his career, although he is believed to have spent some time training in Venice in the studio of Titian. The artist was born in Borgo di San Leonardo in Bergamo’s Città Bassa in about 1550. The painter Cristoforo Baschenis Il Vecchio is believed to have taken him as an apprentice from the age of 12. Cavagna is also thought to have spent time as a pupil of the famous Bergamo portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni.  Cavagna’s work can still be seen in many churches in Bergamo and villages in the surrounding area. In the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo’s Città Alta there are paintings by him of the Assumption of the Virgin, the Nativity, and Esther and Ahasuerus.  Read more…

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Albano Carrisi - singer

Performer best known as Al Bano has sold more than 25 million records

The singer Albano Carrisi, better known as Al Bano, was born on this day in 1943 in Cellino San Marco, a town in Puglia about 30km (19 miles) from Lecce.  He enjoyed considerable success as a solo artist in the late 1960s but became more famous still in Italy and across mainland Europe for his collaboration with the American singer Romina Power – daughter of the actor Tyrone Power.  They met during the shooting of a film - one of several, mainly romantic comedies and a vehicle for his songs, in which he starred during the 1970s.  They not only formed a professional partnership but were married for almost 30 years.  They twice performed as Italy’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing seventh on both occasions, and appeared several times at Italy’s prestigious Sanremo Music Festival, winning the top prize in 1984.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Prettiest Love Letters in the World: Letters Between Lucrezia Borgia & Pietro Bembo 1503 to 1519. Translated and prefaced by Hugh Shankland

If history remembers Lucrezia Borgia at all, it is as a woman of extravagant vices whose name has become synonymous with political intrigue and poison. Cardinal Bembo is remembered primarily as the namesake of a popular typeface. But as The Prettiest Love Letters in the World reveals, there was real substance, and real faces, to both of them. Borgia, a child bride who was ruthlessly exploited for political advantage by her three husbands, proved to be a girl of surprising resilience and cunning, anything but a monster. Pietro Bembo, the learned and (as demonstrated here) surpassingly gentle scholar, was the perfect product of the Renaissance. The covert love affair they conducted over 16 years under the nose of Borgia’s ruthless brother, Cesare, was as dangerous as it was impassioned and their letters, which provide a unique record of life during the Italian Renaissance, are a testament both to a relationship of rare beauty and to a feudal society of strict boundaries, dark dynastic drives, boundless political ambition, and extraordinary gallantry. Set in (what else?) Monotype Bembo, illustrated with the charming and delicate wood engravings of Richard Shirley Smith, this elegant paperback will be a memorable gift for modern lovers.

Hugh Shankland worked for several years in Italy as a teacher and painter. In 1966 he founded Italian Studies at Durham University, retiring as head of the Italian Department there in 1998. He has published books and articles on Italian language, literature and general culture, as well as several literary translations.

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19 May

Baccio d’Agnolo - architect and woodcarver

Florentine who influenced the look of his home city

The woodcarver, sculptor and architect Baccio d'Agnolo, whose work significantly influenced the architectural landscape of his home city in the Renaissance period, was born in Florence on this day in 1462.  His birth name was Bartolomeo Baglioni but he came to be referred to as d’Agnolo in a reference to the name of his father, Angelo, while Baccio was a popular short form for Bartolomeo. His father was also a woodcarver, which explains the direction of his early career.  Between 1491 and 1502, Baccio executed much of the decorative carving in the church of Santa Maria Novella and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence before turning to architecture.  He worked alongside Simone del Pollaiolo in restoring the Palazzo Vecchio, and in 1506 was commissioned to complete the drum of the cupola of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Read more…

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Pompeo Coppini - sculptor

Italian emigrant famous for Texas monument

The sculptor Pompeo Coppini, best known for the Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio, Texas, was born on this day in 1870 in Moglia, a village in Lombardy a few kilometres south of the city of Mantua.  Coppini emigrated to the United States at the age of 26 and after initially working in New York moved to Texas, where the majority of his work can be found.  The Alamo Cenotaph, also known as The Spirit of Sacrifice, consists of a 60ft high sloping shaft of grey Georgia marble resting on a base of pink Texas granite. Carved into the sides of the monument, erected near the scene of the siege of the Alamo Mission during the Texas Revolution in 1836, are images of the Alamo defenders including William B Travis, Jim Bowie, David Crockett and James Bonham, while the names of those who died at the Alamo were etched along the base.  Read more…

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Andrea Pirlo - footballer and winemaker

Midfielder who won multiple honours with AC Milan and Juventus

The footballer Andrea Pirlo, who some commentators bracket with Roberto Baggio as one of the two best Italian footballers of the last 30 years, was born on this day in 1979.  The midfielder won the Italian Serie A championship six times with two clubs, and is double winner of the Champions League.  In international football he has a World Cup winner’s medal as a member of the 2006 Italian national team that lifted the trophy in Germany.  In 2019, he was recognized by the Italian Football Hall of Fame.  Pirlo has also enjoyed success as a coach but lately has also been focusing on his sustainable wine company, Pratum Coller, which aims for eco-friendly wine production with minimal environmental impact.  As a strong advocate for protecting nature, Pirlo has helped spark environmental discussions around popular Italian passions, such as wine and football. Read more…

Vittorio Orlando - politician

Prime minister humiliated at First World War peace talks

Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the Italian prime minister best known for being humiliated by his supposed allies at the Paris peace talks following the First World War, was born on this day in 1860 in Palermo.  Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1897, Orlando had held a number of positions in government and became prime minister in 1917 following Italy’s disastrous defeat to the Austro-Hungarian army at Caporetto, which saw 40,000 Italian soldiers killed or wounded and 265,000 captured. The government of Orlando’s predecessor, Paolo Boselli, collapsed as a result.  Orlando, who had been a supporter of Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies, rebuilt shattered Italian morale and the military victory at Vittorio Veneto, which ended the war on the Italian front and contributed to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, saw him hailed as Italy’s ‘premier of victory’.  Read more…

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Michele Placido – actor and director

Role of anti-Mafia police inspector turned actor into a TV star

Actor and director Michele Placido was born on this day in 1946 in Ascoli Satriano in Apulia.  Placido is best known for his portrayal of the character, Corrado Cattani, in the Italian television series, La piovra.  Cattani, a police inspector investigating the Mafia, was the lead character in the first four series of La piovra (meaning The Octopus, a name that referred to the Mafia). It was popular on television in the 1980s and the first three series were shown in the UK on Channel Four.  Placido’s family were originally from Rionero in Vulture in Basilicata and he is a descendant of the folk hero, Carmine Crocco, sometimes also known as Donatello. Crocco had fought in the service of Garibaldi but, after Italian unification, he became disappointed with the new Government and formed his own army to fight on behalf of the deposed King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Art of Renaissance Florence: A City and Its Legacy, by Scott Nethersole

In this vivid account Scott Nethersole examines the remarkable period of cultural, artistic and intellectual blossoming in Florence from ca.1400 to 1520 – the period traditionally known as the Early and High Renaissance. He looks at the city and its art with fresh eyes, presenting the well-known within a wider context of cultural reference. Art of Renaissance Florence: A City and Its Legacy showcases key works of art – from painting, sculpture and architecture to illuminated manuscripts – by artists such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Botticelli and Brunelleschi, alongside the unexpected and less familiar. 

Scott Nethersole is Senior Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art, 1400–1500, at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

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18 May

NEW - Frank Capra - film director

Giant of American cinema from humble roots in Sicily

The film director Frank Capra, one of the most celebrated figures of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, was born on this day in 1897 in Bisacquino, a hilltop village about 80km (50 miles) south of the Sicilian capital of Palermo.  Capra, whose films often championed the cause of society’s underdogs in the face of greedy, powerful elites, were hugely popular with audiences and critics in the 1930s, their stories seen as personifying the American Dream.  He won the Oscar for Best Director three times, starting with his breakthrough movie It Happened One Night (1934), starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, followed by Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and You Can’t Take it With You (1938).  While initially less well received by the critics and filmgoers, his 1946 tearjerker It’s A Wonderful Life, which starred James Stewart, has come to be regarded as one of the most heartwarming Christmas films of all time. Read more… 

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Ezio Pinza - opera and Broadway star

Poor boy from Rome who made his home at the Met

The opera star Ezio Pinza, who had 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1926 to 1948 and sang to great acclaim at many other of the world’s most famous opera houses, was born on this day in 1892 in Rome.  Pinza, a bass who was blessed with a smooth and rich bass voice and matinee idol looks, also had a successful career in musical theatre on Broadway and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.  Born Fortunio Pinza in relative poverty in Rome, he was the seventh child born to his parents Cesare and Clelia but the first to survive.  He was brought up many miles away in Ravenna, which is close to the Adriatic coast, about 85km (53 miles) from Bologna and 144km (90 miles) from Venice.  He dropped out of Ravenna University but studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini and made his opera debut at Cremona in 1914 in Bellini’s Norma.  Read more…

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Giovanni Falcone - anti-Mafia crusader

Sicilian lawyer made life's work of taking on Cosa Nostra 

Giovanni Falcone, who would become known as an anti-Mafia crusader during his career as a judge and prosecuting magistrate, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo.  The son of a state clerk, he was raised in a poor district of the Sicilian city. Some of the boys with whom he played football in the street would go on to become Mafiosi but Falcone was determined from an early age that he would not be drawn into their world.  Educated at the local high school, he studied law at Palermo University. In 1966, at the age of 27, he was appointed a judge in Trapani, a crime-ridden port on the west coast of Sicily and began his lifelong quest to defeat the criminal organisation.  In time, Falcone became the Mafia's most feared enemy, appointed the chief prosecutor at the so-called 1987 Maxi Trial in Palermo which convicted 342 members of the so-called Cosa Nostra. Read more…

Domenico di Pace Beccafumi – artist

Painter from Siena experimented with rich colour 

Considered one of the last true representatives of the Sienese school of painting, Domenico di Pace Beccafumi died on this day in 1551 in Siena.  He is remembered for his direction of the paving of the Duomo - cathedral - of Siena between 1517 and 1544, when he made ingenious improvements to the technical processes employed for this task, which in the end took more than 150 years to complete.  Domenico was born in Montaperti near Siena in about 1486. His father, Giacomo di Pace, worked on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi, whose surname he eventually took.  Seeing his talent for drawing, Lorenzo had taken an interest in him and recommended that he learn painting from the Sienese artist, Mechero.  In 1509 Di Pace Beccafumi travelled to Rome for a short period, where he learned from artists working in the Vatican.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Ayala – politician and magistrate

Judge who was part of struggle against the Mafia

Anti-Mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Ayala was born on this day in 1945 in Caltanissetta in Sicily.  Ayala became well known as an anti-Mafia magistrate and anti-Mafia judge. He was a prosecutor at the so-called Maxi Trial in Palermo in 1987, which resulted in the conviction of 342 Mafiosi.  He has continually raised doubts about whether it was the Mafia working alone who were responsible for the killing of his fellow anti-Mafia investigator Giovanni Falcone in 1992.  The deaths of Falcone and another prominent anti-Mafia magistrate, Paolo Borsellino, also murdered by the Mafia, came a few months after the killing of Christian Democrat politician, Salvatore Lima, who was thought to be the Mafia’s man on the inside in Rome and had close links with Italy’s three-times prime minister, Giulio Andreotti.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, by Joseph McBride

Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra's life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as Joseph McBride reveals in this meticulously researched, definitive biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. The Catastrophe of Success describes Capra's immigrant origins, his rise to fame during Hollywood's golden era, his working relationships with screen legends, to which McBride, using newly declassified US government documents about Capra's response to being considered a possible "subversive" during America's post-World War II anti-communist paranoia, adds a final chapter to his unforgettable portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.

Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter and author. He has written books on a variety of subjects including notable film directors, screenwriting, the JFK assassination, and a memoir of his youth. He is a professor at the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. 

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Frank Capra - film director

Giant of American cinema from humble roots in Sicily

The huge popularity of Frank Capra's films was
to influence generations of movie-makers 

The film director Frank Capra, one of the most celebrated figures of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, was born on this day in 1897 in Bisacquino, a hilltop village about 80km (50 miles) south of the Sicilian capital of Palermo.

Capra, whose films often championed the cause of society’s underdogs in the face of greedy, powerful elites, were hugely popular with audiences and critics in the 1930s, their stories seen as personifying the American Dream.

He won the Oscar for Best Director three times, starting with his breakthrough movie It Happened One Night (1934), starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, followed by Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and You Can’t Take it With You (1938).

While initially less well received by the critics and filmgoers, his 1946 tearjerker It’s A Wonderful Life, which starred James Stewart, has come to be regarded as one of the most heartwarming Christmas films of all time.

Yet Capra’s story started in the most humble beginnings in Bisacquino, a town 744m (2,441ft) above sea level at the foot of Monte Triona in the rugged Sicani Mountains, less than 20km (12 miles) from Corleone, which would become a notorious Mafia stronghold.

Born Francesco Rosario Capra, he was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, and his wife, Rosaria.  Salvatore struggled to make much money and Francesco had to help on the farm even as a small child.

As the 20th century dawned, in common with many Sicilians, Salvatore joined the long procession of disillusioned Italians, mainly from the south, who were tempted to emigrate to the United States, often at huge personal cost as their desperation was exploited by criminals and fraudsters.

In 1903, the family boarded a boat to Naples, where they crammed into the steerage compartment of the SS Germania, a steamship built in France that had up to 60 comfortable cabins but was fitted out mainly to house large numbers of emigrants in the lower decks, which could accommodate up to 1,400 passengers, albeit in dreadful conditions.

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in a scene from It 
Happened One Night, which won Capra his first Oscar

The Capra family left Naples for the 13-14 day passage to New York on May 10, which meant that the future film director turned six about halfway through the journey. 

Frank Capra wrote about the experience later in life. “You're all together - you have no privacy.  Very few people have trunks or anything that takes up space. They have just what they can carry in their hands or in a bag. Nobody takes their clothes off. There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be.”

Yet he recalled his father’s excitement at seeing the Statue of Liberty, describing the statue’s upheld torch as “the greatest light since the Star of Bethlehem”.

From New York, the Capra family travelled by train to Los Angeles, where they settled in an Italian community in the East Side in what is now the Lincoln Heights area. Salvatore found work as a fruit picker.

 It's A Wonderful Life became
one of Capra's best-loved films 

The young Francesco’s route into the film industry that would define his life was a long and difficult one. Throughout his school and college years, he simultaneously worked in low-paid jobs to help the family, sometimes as a street-corner newspaper boy, or playing music in bars. Some backstage theatre work at this time may have sparked his interest in storytelling.

National service followed, with Capra deployed teaching maths at a military base in San Francisco. After his father died in 1916, Capra contracted Spanish Flu but fortunately survived what became a deadly pandemic. Discharged, he became an American citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra.

After struggling to find work, he made friends with an actor, with whose help he persuaded a small studio in San Francisco to allow him to direct a short film. Impressed enough, the studio took him on and his movie career began.

Showing a talent for comedy, Capra became a gag writer for the producer and director Hal Roach and then joined Mack Sennett’s Keystone Company, where he directed silent comedian Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927). 

He and Langdon parted ways over a difference of opinion, but that led to what would be Capra’s big break, his move to Columbia Pictures.

It Happened One Night, a story about the unlikely relationship between a society heiress and a recently unemployed newspaper reporter who meet on a Greyhound bus from Florida to New York, brought him staggering success. It was the first of only three films in history to win all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Frank Capra, pictured in 1982, reflects on his
career during a television interview

In addition to his other Oscar winners, Capra made Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) while at the peak of his powers, and won another Oscar in 1943 for Prelude to War, part of a documentary series commissioned by the Office of War Information to educate American troops, in the face of relentless Nazi propaganda and disinformation, about the necessity of combating the Axis powers during World War II.

Many years after he retired from film-making - he shot his last movie in 1964 - Capra returned to Bisacquino, aged nearly 80, to see again the house where his mother had lived. 

The visit initially was meant to be secret, largely because Capra felt uncomfortable about the fact that many of his childhood friends and some family members became involved with the Mafia. There was reportedly resentment within local Mafia circles that none of the Capra fortune had found its way back to the village.

One account of the visit claimed that, although he was happy to meet villagers, when a nephew organised a huge family lunch in his honour, Capra was advised by some members of his travelling entourage not to eat anything, fearful he could be poisoned.

Capra died at his home in La Quinta, California at the age of 94. At his peak he was regarded as one of the greatest film-makers in the world. His stories of individual courage triumphing over collective evil had an influence on future generations of writers and directors in cinema and television that still endures. 

The rooftops of Bisacquino, Capra's birthplace,
bathed in the light of a late summer sunset

Travel tip:

The habitation of the area around what is now Bisacquino goes back to the Iron Age and the Sican tribe, who were succeeded by the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans. The village or small town, the population of which peaked at around 10,300 in the early 1900s and 1920s, has a strong Islamic imprint of alleys, courtyards and stone houses, a legacy of the Muslim domination of Sicily in the ninth century, although there is also Baroque architecture, of which a fine example is the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista, known locally as the Chiesa Madre (Mother Church), on Piazza Triona. The house where Capra was born is about 350m away from Piazza Triona on Via Santo Cono, and while now privately owned and no longer open to the public, it remains marked by a small sign mounted on a pole outside. The Capra family were devout Catholics and the nearby church of San Francesco di Paola was their regular place of worship. The Bisacquino Civic Museum, in Via Palmerino, dedicates a permanent section to Capra, where visitors can see original documents from his early years, including his birth certificate, as well as period photographs and newspaper articles, and testimonies from his return to the town in 1977.

Neapolitans eating pasta with their bare hands
was a regular sight in the Naples of the 1900s

Travel tip:

In 1903, when the Capra family arrived in the city to board the SS Germania at the Molo Pisacane, Naples was a bustling, vibrant port city defined by its chaotic streets and deep-rooted culinary traditions. Photographers and early film makers were drawn to its lively urban life, where story tellers and dancers entertained the public and local people ate steaming pasta with their bare hands. At the turn of the 20th century, long pasta - commonly referred to as maccheroni - was an everyday street food, sold by street vendors known as maccheronai. Because forks were uncommon among the working class, locals scooped up the steaming strands of pasta with their bare hands, lifting them high and lowering them straight into their mouths. This informal, theatrical way of eating became a celebrated spectacle that fascinated visitors. In terms of its architectural appearance, the Naples of 1903 did not look much different to the Naples of the 21st century. The famous sights - the Royal Palace, the Castel Nuovo, the Galleria Umberto I, the Teatro di San Carlo and the Castel dell'Ovo, the Duomo and Spaccanapoli, the famous, straight-as-an-arrow street that cuts directly through the historical centre - were already attracting visitors to the city.

More reading: 

The Sicilian behind Oscar-winning film Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

How Dino De Laurentiis put Italian cinema on the world map

The Corleone Mafia boss who dodged police for 43 years

Also on this day:

1551: The death of painter Domenico di Pace Beccafumi

1892: The birth of opera and Broadway star Ezio Pinza

1939: The birth of anti-Mafia crusader Giovanni Falcone

1945: The birth of politician and magistrate Giuseppe Ayala

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