3 June

Roberto Rossellini - film director

Roman movie pioneer whose 'neorealism' had lasting influence

Film director Roberto Rossellini died on this day in 1977 in Rome, the city that provided the backdrop to his greatest work and earned him the reputation as the 'father of neorealism'.  Rossellini had been associated with the Fascist regime during the early part of the Second World War, in part due to his friendship with Vittorio Mussolini, the film producer son of the dictator, Benito Mussolini.  His three wartime movies, The White Ship, A Pilot Returns and The Man with a Cross, all had elements of pro-Fascist propaganda.  But after Mussolini’s government was ousted in 1943, Rossellini began work on the anti-Fascist film Rome, Open City, which he described as a history of Rome under Nazi occupation.  It starred the popular actor Aldo Fabrizi in the role of a priest and the actress Anna Magnani as the heroine, Pina, but also featured footage of real Roman citizens originally intended to be used in documentary films.  Read more…

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Pietro Paolini – artist

Follower of Caravaggio passed on his techniques to the next generation

Pietro Paolini, a painter in the Baroque period in Italy, was born on this day in 1603 in Lucca in Tuscany.  Sometimes referred to as Il Lucchese, Paolini was a follower of the controversial Italian artist Caravaggio.  He also founded an academy in his native city and taught the next generation of painters in Lucca.  Paolini’s father, Tommaso, sent him to Rome when he was 16 to train in the workshop of Angelo Caroselli, who was a follower of Caravaggio.  Paolini had the opportunity to study various schools and techniques, which is reflected in the flexible style of his work. He was exposed to the second generation of painters in the Caravaggio tradition such as Bartolomeo Manfredi, Cecco del Caravaggio and Bartolomeo Cavarozzi.  The principal themes of Paolini’s work were the subjects popularised by Caravaggio around the turn of the 17th century.  Read more…

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Domenico Antonio Vaccaro - painter, sculptor and architect

Creative genius whose legacy is still visible around Naples

The painter, sculptor and architect Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, who created some notable sculptures and designed some of the finest churches and palaces around Naples in the early 18th century, was born in the great southern Italian city on June 3, 1678.  Vaccaro was also an accomplished painter, but it is his architectural legacy for which he is most remembered.  Among the famous churches attributed to Vaccaro are the Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo, which overlooks Piazza Dante, and the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario, which can be found in the Spanish Quarter, while he completed the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Stella in the district of the same name.  His notable palaces included the Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, just off Via Toledo, and the beautiful late Baroque palace, the Palazzo dell’Immacolatella, built on the water’s edge in the 1740s. Read more...

Boldrino da Panicale - condottiero

Fierce fighter murdered in act of treachery

The soldier of fortune known as Boldrino da Panicale, one of the most feared yet respected of Italy’s many condottieri in the second half of the 14th century, was killed on this day in 1391 near the town of Macerata in what is now the Marche region.  He had been lured to a banquet, thought to have been staged at the Castello della Rancia, a castle about 13km (8 miles) west of Macerata, by Andrea Tomacelli, brother of Pope Boniface IX and Rector of the Duchy of Spoleto.  During an era when towns and neighbouring land changed hands regularly as rival leaders fought for territorial gains, Boldrino had been employed by Boniface IX to retake some captured parts of the Marche for the Papal States.  He handed back some of the papal territory but decided to keep other areas for himself, using the threat of violence to extract payments from local governors. Read more…

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The Blessed Vincent Romano

Priest who devoted himself to helping the poor

The Blessed Vincent Romano, a priest from Torre del Greco on the Bay of Naples who became known for his tireless devotion to helping the poor, was born on this day in 1751.  Admired for his simple way of life and his efforts in particular to look after the wellbeing of orphaned children, he was nicknamed “the worker priest” by the local community. His commitment to helping poor people extended across the whole Neapolitan region.  He would demonstrate his willingness to roll up his sleeves in a different way in 1794 after his church – now the Basilica of Santa Croce – was all but destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.  Not only did Romano devote many hours to organising the rebuilding he actually cleared a good deal of rubble with his own hands.  He was born Vincenzo Domenico Romano to poor parents in Naples. He developed a strong faith as a child. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Films of Roberto Rossellini, by Peter Bondanella

The Films of Roberto Rossellini traces the career of one of the most influential Italian filmmakers through close analysis of the seven films that mark important turning points in his evolution: The Man with a Cross (1943), Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Machine to Kill Bad People (1948–52), Voyage in Italy (1953), General della Rovere (1959) and The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966). Beginning with Rossellini's work within the fascist cinema, it discusses his invention of neorealism, a new cinematic style that resulted in several classics during the immediate postwar period. Almost immediately, however, Rossellini's continually evolving style moved beyond mere social realism to reveal other aspects of the camera's gaze, as is apparent in the films he made with Ingrid Bergman during the 1950s; though unpopular, these works had a tremendous impact on the French New Wave critics and directors. Rossellini's late career marks a return to his nonrealist period, now critically reexamined, in such works as the commercially successful General della Rovere, and his eventual turn to the creation of didactic films for television.

Until his retirement in 2007, the late Peter Bondanella was Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, Film Studies, and Italian at Indiana University.  Bondanella wrote numerous books and articles on Italian literature and cinema, notably his acclaimed History of Italian Cinema, and translated or edited a number of Italian literary classics, including works by Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Cellini and Vasari. 

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2 June

Roberto Visentini - cyclist

One half of the Giro d’Italia’s most controversial duel

Roberto Visentini, the Italian road racing cyclist who won the 1986 Giro d’Italia but the following year was a central figure in the most controversial race since the historic tour of Italy began, was born on this day in 1957 in Gardone Riviera.  The son of a wealthy undertaker from Brescia, Visentini had been an Italian and a world champion at junior level in 1975 and won the Italian national time-trial championship in 1977 as an amateur, before turning professional in 1978. Despite his success, he was not universally respected by his peers, some of whom felt his penchant for fast cars and a playboy lifestyle were not in keeping with what was traditionally a working-class sport.  The Giro was always his focus. Riding for the Inoxpran team, he was runner-up in the 1983 edition behind his fellow countryman Giuseppe Saronni and looked set to win the event two years later. Read more…

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Festa della Repubblica

Parades and parties celebrate the birth of the republic

Italy is today celebrating the anniversary of becoming a republic on this day in 1946. Each year the country has a national holiday to commemorate the result of the referendum which sent the male descendants of the House of Savoy into exile.  Following the Second World War and the fall of Fascism, the Italian people were called to the polls to vote on how they wanted to be governed. The result signalled the end for the monarchy.  A grand military parade takes place in Rome, attended by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister.  Many cities throughout Italy hold their own celebrations as the day is an official bank holiday.  In April 1944, the reigning King, Victor Emmanuel III, had relinquished many of his powers to his heir, Crown Prince Umberto.  He finally abdicated in 1946 and Umberto II ascended the throne.  Read more…

The death of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Unification hero spent last days on his island off Sardinia

The Italian revolutionary and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi died on this day in 1882 on the Sardinian island of Caprera.  The 74-year-old former military general and left-wing politician, whose Expedition of the Thousand was a major factor in completing the unification of Italy, had spent much of the last 27 years of his life on the island.  Increasingly confined to bed because of crippling arthritis, he was living on his farm with his third wife, Francesca Armosino, when he passed away.  Knowing he was fading, in the days before his death Garibaldi had asked for his bed to be moved close to a window, from which he could gaze at the emerald and sapphire sea.  He has asked for a simple funeral and cremation, and had even nominated the place on the island where he wished his body to be burned, in an open coffin, with his face to the sun.  Read more…

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Battle of Marino

Bloody fight that entrenched rival factions in Catholic Church

Giacomo Orsini, a member of the Orsini family of Rome that produced five popes between the eighth and 18th centuries, stormed the Castle of Marino - in the area south of Rome known as the Castelli Romani - on this day in 1379, bringing a decisive conclusion to a military battle that would end any hopes that the 1378 split in the Catholic Church might be quickly resolved. The Battle of Marino was fought between armies loyal to Pope Urban VI, the former Archbishop of Bari who had been elected as successor to Pope Gregory XI, and the antipope Clement VII, who had set up rival courts a year earlier following the split that became known as the Great Schism or Western Schism.  The papacy had only just been returned to Rome by Gregory XI from Avignon in France following a fragmentation that had occurred 70 years earlier but the election of Bartolomeo Prignano to rule as Urban VI reignited the division. Read more...

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Book of the Day: Giro d'Italia: The Story of the World's Most Beautiful Bike Race, by Colin O'Brien

Born of tumult in 1909, the Giro d'Italia helped unite a nation. Since then it has reflected it too; the race's capricious and unpredictable nature matching the passions and extremes of Italy itself. A desperately hard race through a beautiful country, the Giro has bred characters and stories that dramatise the shifting culture and society of its home: Alfonsina Strada, who cropped her hair and raced against the men in 1924. Ottavio Bottecchia, expected to challenge for the winner's Maglia Rosa in 1928, until killed on a training ride, probably by Mussolini's Black Shirts. Fausto Coppi, the metropolitan playboy with amphetamines in his veins, guided by a mystic blind masseur; and his arch rival Gino Bartali; humble, pious and countrified (and brave: recently it emerged he smuggled papers for persecuted Jewish Italians). The Giro's most tragic hero - Marco Pantani, born to climb but fated to lose. Giro d'Italia: The Story of the World's Most Beautiful Bike Race describes how Italy's equivalent of the Tour de France - its superior in the eyes of many - combines heroism, suffering, feuds and betrayals, tradition under threat from modernity, all playing out against a timeless landscape.

Colin O’Brien is a sports writer based in Dublin, having previously worked in Rome for ten years. He has written for some of the leading sports publications globally, and contributed to national newspapers in Ireland and the UK.

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1 June

Arrigo Benedetti - journalist and author

Founder and editor of three major news magazines

Arrigo Benedetti, one of the most influential figures in postwar Italian news journalism, was born on this day in 1910 in Lucca.  Benedetti was the founding editor of three of Italy’s most important news magazines, one of which, L’Espresso, still ranks as one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies, alongside Panorama.  Of the other two, L’Europeo, which was launched in 1945, ceased publication in 1995, although the title was briefly revived in the 2000s, while Oggi continues to be published some 82 years after its inception, making it one of Italy’s oldest still-active magazines.  Arrested by the Fascist regime during World War Two, Benedetti escaped after the prison in which he was being held was bombed during an Allied air strike.  Born Giulio Benedetti, the son of a sales representative, he studied literature and philosophy at the University of Pisa. Read more…

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Alice Barbi - singer

Mezzo-soprano who became close friend of Brahms

Alice Barbi, who enjoyed a short but successful career as a singer after showing a talent for the violin from an early age, was born on this day in 1858 in Modena.  An accomplished mezzo-soprano famed for her sweet, velvety tone, Barbi performed in London, St Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna as well as in her native Italy. She is also known for her friendship with the celebrated German composer Johannes Brahms.  The two met shortly after Barbi had performed in Vienna for the first time in 1888. Brahms was said to be captivated by both her voice and her beauty and they soon began to meet regularly for dinner. Their relationship, which lasted until his death in 1897, was never more than platonic, although the composer - 25 years’ her senior - is said to have confessed to friends that she was the only woman he had met in his later years he would have liked to marry.  Read more…

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Francesco Scipione – playwright

Erudite marquis revitalised Italian drama

Dramatist Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, was born on this day in 1675 in Verona.  His most famous work was his verse tragedy, Merope, which attempted to introduce Greek and French classical simplicity into Italian drama. This prepared the way for the dramatic tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri and the librettos of Pietro Metastasio later in the 18th century.  After studying at Jesuit colleges in Parma and Rome, Scipione went to fight on the side of Bavaria in the War of the Spanish Succession. He saw action in 1704 at the Battle of Schellenberg, near Donauworth, when his brother, Alessandro, was second in command at the battle.  In 1710, Scipione was one of the founders of an influential literary journal, Giornale dei letterati, a vehicle for his ideas about reforming Italian drama. He founded a later periodical, Osservazioni letterarie, to promote the same cause.  Read more…

Iolanda of Savoy - banished princess

Sister of Italy’s last monarch lived quiet life in seaside villa

Princess Iolanda of Savoy, the eldest daughter of Italy’s wartime king Vittorio Emanuele III, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.  Along with the other members of the Italian royal family, she left the country in 1946 after a referendum over whether to turn Italy into a republic gained the support of 54 per cent of those who voted.  The new constitution specifically banned the male heirs of the House of Savoy from setting foot on Italian soil.  Her brother, Umberto II, who had been made king when his father abdicated in May 1946, shortly before the vote, had the crown for just 27 days. He left for Portugal, never to return to his homeland.  The decision to send male members of the family into exile was essentially the new republic’s punishment for Vittorio Emanuele having allowed the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini to run the country as a dictator.  Read more…

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Francis V – Duke of Modena

Jacobite claimant was forced to flee his own duchy

The last reigning Duke of Modena, Francis V, was born on this day in 1819 in Modena.  He was the son of Francis IV of Modena and Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy.  After the death of his mother in 1840, Francis was considered by Jacobites to be the next legitimate heir to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland.  He succeeded as Duke of Modena in 1846 on the death of his father and also held the titles of Archduke of Austria and royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia.  During the 1848 revolutions in Italy, Francis was forced to flee from Modena after an uprising, but he was restored to his duchy backed by Austrian troops the following year.  He had to flee again in 1859 after the duchy was invaded by the armies of France and Piedmont. In March 1860, the new King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, ordered Modena to be incorporated into his new kingdom.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Media in Italy, by Matthew Hibberd

The Italian media - the press, cinema, radio and television - is one of the largest and most controversial media industries in mainland Europe. In this introductory text Matthew Hibberd explores the key historical processes and events in the growth and development of Italy's main media and considers it in the context of the economic, political, socio-cultural and technological movements that have affected Italy. Featuring a timeline of key Italian events, The Media in Italy begins with the Unification - or Risorgimento - of Italy in 1861, and charts the rise of Italy from a fragmented and rural-based society through to a leading industrialised and urbanised world power. It details Fascism's reliance on the exploitation of the mass media, analyses Italy's remarkable post-war recovery, the development of democratic institutions and the contribution that a pluralistic media has made to this. Finally, it examines Silvio Berlusconi's rise to high political office and questions whether the involvement of Italy's leading media mogul in politics has harmed Italy's international reputation.

Matthew Hibberd is a professor specialising in media management, media economics and media and cultural industries at Università Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. He was previously Professor of Communications at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

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31 May

NEW - Alessandro Allori – painter

Artist was Bronzino’s favourite pupil

Prolific painter Alessandro Allori, whose style of painting was to influence many other famous artists in the late 16th century, was born on this day in 1535 in Florence.  His father, who was a sword maker, died when he was five. The painter Agnolo Bronzino became guardian of the Allori family and little Alessandro spent a lot of his time in the artist’s workshop while he was growing up.  Bronzino was the court painter for Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He painted mainly portraits, but also some religious and allegorical subjects. It is said that Allori was his favourite pupil.  Allori was so close to him that he incorporated Bronzino’s name into his own, as can be seen on the inscription on one of his paintings that was dated 1552  – Alessandro Allori, foster son of Agnolo Bronzino. He even sometimes signed himself Alessandro Bronzino or Alessandro Bronzino-Allori.  Read more…

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Andrew Grima - royal jeweller

Rome-born craftsman favoured by the Queen of England

The jewellery designer Andrew Grima, whose clients included the British Royal Family, was born on this day in 1921 in Rome.  Grima, whose flamboyant use of dramatically large, rough-cut stones and brilliant innovative designs revolutionised modern British jewellery, achieved an enviable status among his contemporaries.  After the Duke of Edinburgh had given the Queen a brooch of carved rubies and diamonds designed by Grima as a gift, he was awarded a Royal Warrant and rapidly became the jeweller of choice for London’s high society, as well as celebrities and film stars from around the world.  He won 13 De Beers Diamonds International Awards, which is more than any other jeweller, and examples of his work are kept by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.  Read more…

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Angelo Moriondo - espresso machine pioneer

Bar and hotel owner invented way to make coffee faster

Angelo Moriondo, the man credited with inventing the world’s first espresso coffee machine, died on this day in 1914 in Marentino, a town in Piedmont, about 20km (12 miles) east of Turin.  Moriondo, who was 62 when he passed away, was the owner of the Grand-Hotel Ligure in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Felice and the American Bar in the former Galleria Nazionale on Via Roma.  He came up with the idea of a coffee machine essentially in the hope of gaining an edge over his competition at a time when coffee was a hugely popular beverage across Europe and in Italy in particular, but which still depended on brewing methods that required the customer to wait five minutes or more to be able to raise a cup to his mouth.  Moriondo figured that if he could find a way to make multiple cups of coffee simultaneously he would be able to serve more customers more quickly. Read more…

Paolo Sorrentino - film director

Seventh Italian director to win Best Foreign Film at Oscars

The film director Paolo Sorrentino, whose 2013 movie La grande bellezza won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, was born on this day in 1970 in Naples.  The award put him in the company of Federico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica in landing the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, a prize that has been won by only seven Italian directors in the history of the Academy Awards.  Fellini scooped the honour four times and De Sica twice. The other successful Italian directors are Elio Petri, Giuseppe Tornatore, Gabriele Salvatores and Roberto Benigni.  La grande bellezza - released for English-speaking audiences as The Great Beauty - was the first Italian winner since Benigni’s Life is Beautiful was named as Best Foreign Film in 1998.  Sorrentino’s 2021 semi-autobiographical movie The Hand of God - È stata la mano di Dio in Italian - was nominated for an Oscar.  Read more…

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Tintoretto – painter

Dyer’s son whose work still adorns Venice

Renaissance artist Tintoretto died on this day in 1594 in Venice.  Known for his boundless energy, the painter was also sometimes referred to as Il Furioso.  His paintings are populated by muscular figures, make bold use of perspective and feature the colours typical of the Venetian school.  Tintoretto was an expert at depicting crowd scenes and mythological subjects and during his successful career received important commissions to produce paintings for the Scuola Grande di San Marco and the Scuolo Grande di San Rocco.  Tintoretto was born Jacopo Comin, the son of a dyer (tintore), which earned him the nickname Tintoretto, meaning 'little dyer'.  He was also sometimes known as Jacopo Robusti as his father had defended the gates of Padua against imperial troops in a way that was described as ‘robust’ at the time.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  Renaissance & Mannerism, by Diane Bodart

From the 15th to the 16th centuries, Western European culture flourished thanks in part to the astonishing achievements of such Renaissance artists as Da Vinci, Donatello, Raphael, Botticelli, Michelangelo and Mannerist painters including El Greco, Pontormo and Tintoretto. In Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance, artists pursued ancient classical ideals of harmony and naturalism and in architecture, forms of perfection and grandeur. Mannerists, in the early 16th century, valued exaggeration, elongated figures, unnatural lighting and vivid (even lurid) colours, to impact more tension and emotion in their work. Renaissance & Mannerism is a stunning volume that follows these two key movements in art history, providing authoritative background from a top scholar, rich cultural context and a wealth of exquisite reproductions of period paintings, sculptures, churches and palazzos.

Diane Bodart is an art historian born in 1970 in Rome. She is professor of Southern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Columbia University in New York. 

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