Theft of Caravaggio masterpiece

Fate of Nativity taken from Palermo church remains a mystery

Caravaggio's painting Nativity with
St Lawrence and St Francis

One of the most notorious art crimes in history was discovered on this day in 1969 when a housekeeper at the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo arrived for work to find that the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted by the Renaissance master Caravaggio in 1609, had been stolen.

The painting sat above the altar in the Oratory, which is situated in Via Immacolata in the centre of the Sicilian capital, adjacent to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, but when the housekeeper, Maria Gelfo, opened up with her sister on the morning of 18 October, they were confronted with an empty frame.

Worth an estimated £20 million (€23.73 million; $27.52 million), the painting has never been found, leaving half a century’s worth of theories about its fate to remain unproven.  Most of the theories link the theft to the Sicilian Mafia.

It is assumed that the painting was taken during the night of the 17-18 October, although the weather was reportedly awful, with a lightning storm raging for much of the night and Palermo suffering a deluge of rain, hardly ideal conditions for carrying a valuable work of art from a church to a waiting vehicle.

The thieves broke into the Oratory and seemingly headed straight for the Caravaggio. The painting appeared to have been cut from its frame using a sharp blade. Maria Gelfo also told police that a rug was also missing, which led to speculation that the canvas was removed from the church rolled up inside the rug.

The empty frame above the altar, 
pictured soon after the theft

Yet what happened to the painting is shrouded in mystery, not least because files containing statements made to police by key witnesses mysteriously disappeared, along with a report on the state of the premises ordered after Benedetto Rocco, the parish priest at the time of the theft, had raised concerns about security with the local state official for works of art, Vincenzo Scuderi.

Rocco had also raised concerns about Scuderi allowing RAI, the state broadcaster, to film a programme on hidden treasures inside the oratory - including Caravaggio’s painting - which was broadcast in August 1969. 

Gelfo, meanwhile, had expressed her worries about the security of a street-level window that could have been forced by an intruder, as well as reporting an unusually large number of strangers wanting to see the Caravaggio in the weeks leading up to its disappearance.

When the investigation into the crime was reopened in 2017 by the government’s anti-Mafia commission, following supposedly credible information supplied by Mafia pentiti Marino Mannoia and Gaetano Grado, the statements from Rocco and Gelfo had vanished.

Mannoia and Grado said that the painting was in Switzerland, albeit having been cut up, after Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, who had made his money from trafficking heroin to the United States and had supposedly commissioned its theft, decided he no longer wanted it on his hands. The involvement of Badalamenti tallied with an interview given by Rocco in 2001 in which he claimed that Badalamenti was the perpetrator and had attempted to open a negotiation with the Catholic Church for its return, cutting off a small section of the canvas and sending it to Rocco to prove he had it.

Gaetano Badalamenti, a Mafia
boss accused of ordering the theft

However, the police were unable to find the files relating to the crime, including Rocco’s statements. Rocco, Gelfo and Badalamenti are all now dead.

Mannoia had previously told the anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone that the Mafia had commissioned the theft after agreeing a price with a buyer, but that when the buyer saw the painting, it was so badly damaged he called the deal off.  Experts have since said that, had the painting been rolled up to be smuggled out inside a rug, it is likely that large amounts of paint would have cracked and fallen off.

Other explanations of its fate are that the painting was eaten by pigs after being kept in a barn, that it was buried by another mafioso, Gerlando Alberti, after he had failed to sell it, and that it was transported to Campania to be sold to the Naples Camorra only to be buried under rubble during the 1980 earthquake.

Another theory, put forward by a Mafia expert in Palermo, is that the theft was actually carried out by highly-skilled professional art thieves working independently of the local Mafia and that the multiple claims of Cosa Nostra responsibility were false, issued somewhat in panic by local gang bosses embarrassed that a crime of such magnitude had taken place under their noses without their knowledge. 

Detail from Giacomo Serpotta's
stucco work in the Oratory

Travel tip:

The Oratory of Saint Lawrence was founded in around 1570 by the Company of Saint Francis of Assisi, a baroque church built over the remnants of an ancient church dedicated to Saint Lawrence (San Lorenzo). It is located in the La Kalsa or Tribunali district of Palermo near Corso Vittorio Emanuele, next door to the basilica of Saint Francis (San Francesco d'Assisi).  In addition to Caravaggio’s masterpiece, the setting of which, above the altar, is now occupied by a reproduction of the original, the Oratory is also notable for the brilliant stucco decorations by Giacomo Serpotta, born in the neighbourhood but considered by many to be one of Sicily’s greatest artists.

Palermo's beautiful cathedral, viewed across the
its square in the Monte di Pietà district of the city

Travel tip:

Although the Mafia have long cast an unwanted shadow over Palermo, thankfully most visitors know it as an attractive tourist destination, a vibrant city with a wealth of history, culture, art, music and food. It has many outstanding restaurants as well as fine examples of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches, palaces and buildings.  Attractions include the extraordinary Cappella Palatina, featuring Byzantine mosaics decorated with gold leaf and precious stones, the Teatro Massimo, the largest opera house in Italy and the third biggest in Europe, and a beautiful cathedral that blends Norman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and Neoclassical styles.  Although the Sicilian Baroque style is strongly represented in the city’s architecture, the streets around Via Libertà and the seaside resort of Mondello, just outside the city, feature many examples of Stile Liberty, the Italian variant on Art Nouveau, in villas built for the well-to-do of Palermo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Also on this day: 

1634: The birth of painter Luca Giordano

1833: The birth of entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi

1933: The birth of racing driver Ludovico Scarfiotti

The Feast Day of St Luke the Evangelist

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Agostina Segatori – artist’s model and restaurateur

Van Gogh paid Italian café owner with works of art in exchange for meals

Agostina Segatori, painted by Jean-
Baptiste-Camille Corot in 1866 

Agostina Segatori, whose Italian looks inspired many of the top French painters in the 19th century, was born on this day in 1841 in Ancona, a seaport city in the region of Le Marche.

Little is known about Agostina’s early life, but she had moved to Paris before she was 20, because she posed for Edouard Manet’s painting, L’Italienne, there in 1860.

Over the next three decades she was to model for Edouard Joseph Dantan, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Jean-Leon Gerome, Eugene Delacroix and Vincent van Gogh.

Agostina had a relationship with Dantan that lasted 12 years. He is reputed to have referred to her as Madame Segatori-Morière, which implied she was married to a Monsieur Morière. She had an illegitimate son, Jean-Pierre, with Dantan. Their relationship was stormy and ended in 1884.

Despite having a failed relationship and becoming a single mother, Agostina continued to work as an artist’s model and carefully saved the money she earned.

In 1885 she invested her savings in a café with an Italian theme, the Café du Tambourin. It became a hotspot for artists, writers and critics. The Café du Tambourin was originally at 27 Rue de Richelieu, but it reopened later the same year at 62 Boulevard de Clichy.

Van Gogh's painting of Agostina
Segatori in the Café du Tambourin

Regular visitors included Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. Poster artist Jules Cheret created a poster for the café featuring Agostina. In the picture, she is holding a tambourine-shaped tray in her hands.

The artists who were regulars at Café du Tambourin were to transform the interior into a fascinating gallery of paintings. Vincent van Gogh frequented the café after moving to Paris in 1886 and embarked on a romance with Agostina, presenting her with still life paintings in exchange for food. His painting of Agostina sitting at a table in the Café du Tambourin is now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Agostina’s business later declined and she fell into debt. The café, along with the artworks on its walls, was repossessed. Agostina never recovered from her financial downfall and suffered ill health until her death in Paris in 1910.

Travel tip:

Ancona, where Agostina Segatori was born, is a port city surrounded by medieval villages. Ancona’s Cathedral dates back to the 11th century and the city still has a fine Roman monument, the Arch of Trajan, which was built in about 114 AD to honour Trajan, the emperor who ordered Ancona’s harbour to be built.  Ancona’s harbour contains the Lazzaretto, a pentagonal building constructed on an artificial island in the 18th century as a quarantine station designed to protect the city from diseases carried by infected travellers.

Travel tip:

Ancona is the capoluogo - capital city - of Le Marche, which is an eastern region of Italy, located between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic. It is bordered by Emilia-Romagna and the republic of San Marino to the north, Tuscany to the west, Umbria to the southwest and Abruzzo and Lazio to the south. A railway from Bologna to Brindisi runs through the region along the coast.  Urbino, one of the major cities of the region, was the birthplace of Raphael and to the north of Urbino, the seaside resort of Pesaro, was the birthplace of the composer Gioachino Rossini.

Also on this day:

1221: The birth of Salimbene di Adam, friar and historian

1469: The death of Fra’ Filippo Lippi, Renaissance painter

1562: The death of anatomist and physician Gabriele Falloppio 

1963: The Vajont Dam disaster

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Gian Paolo Lomazzo - artist

Painter became leading art historian and critic of the 16th century

Lomazzo's Madonna and the Saints
in the church of San Marco, Milan)

Gian Paolo Lomazzo, a talented painter who went blind when he was 33 and turned to writing instead, was born on this day in Milan in 1538.

He became an expert on the work of Leonardo da Vinci and was given unique access to the artist’s own written work.

Lomazzo, whose first name is sometimes given as Giovan or Giovanni, was born into a family who had just moved to Milan from the town of Lomazzo in the province of Como in Lombardy.

He began training as a painter early in his life with the artists Gaudenzio Ferrari and Giovan Battista della Cerva in Milan.

By 1567 Lomazzo had painted a large Allegory of the Lenten Feast for the Church of Sant’ Agostino in Piacenza. Other notable works by him include an elaborate fresco of a dome with Glory of Angels and a painting depicting The Fall of Simon Magus for the Cappella Foppa in the Church of San Marco in Milan.

Lomazzo was so admired as an artist that the sculptor and medallist Annibale Fontana depicted him on a medallion in 1562.

But by 1571 Lomazzo had become blind and could no longer paint. He adapted to writing about art instead and produced two complex treatises that are regarded as milestones in the development of art criticism.

His first work, completed in 1584, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scultura e architettura, is in part a guide to decorum, contemporary concepts of good taste, which the Renaissance inherited in part from Antiquity. It has been described as the Bible of Mannerism and Lomazzo’s writing made him a central figure in the development of Italian Mannerist theories.

His 1590 work, Idea del tempio della pittura, explained the role of individuality in judgment and artistic invention.

Lomazzo's self-portrait, painted in about 
1568, is in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan

Lomazzo took into account three aspects of art criticism: doctrina, the discoveries made my artists in the course of history; prattica, the personal preferences of the artist; and iconography, the literary element in art. He systematically extracted abstract concepts from art, rather than just recounting the marvels of the works of famous artists in the manner of Giorgio Vasari. He is regarded by historians as a very reliable chronicler of the period and he gave detailed practical instruction on the creation of art.

He is reputed to have had a large collection of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and he spent years amassing every fact that was known about Leonardo.

He wrote about Leonardo: ‘Whenever he began to paint, it seemed that Leonardo trembled, and he never finished any of the works he commenced because, so sublime was his idea of art, he saw faults even in the things that to others seemed miracles.’

Leonardo’s protégé and heir, Francesco Melzi, gave Lomazzo access to the maestro’s own writings.

Scholars have taken from what Lomazzo wrote about the creation of the picture of Mona Lisa, that Leonardo painted two almost identical portraits of the subject, one called Mona Lisa and the other called La Gioconda.

Lomazzo also wrote poetry and had a number of pupil painters during his career, including the artists Giovanni Ambrogio Figino and Cristoforo and Girolamo Ciocca.

Lomazzo died in 1592, at the age of 53, in Milan. His self-portrait, painted in about 1568, is in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

The Arch of Peace
in the town of Lomazzo

Travel tip:

Lomazzo in Lombardy, where Gian Paolo Lomazzo’s family originated, is about halfway between Como and Milan. The historic centre of the town was built upon a hill. The Church of San Siro, built in 1732 in the town, houses a 16th century panel by Morazzone depicting the Adoration of the Magi. In 1286, the town witnessed the signing of one of several peace treaties between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, not all of them successful, and this one was marked by the construction of an Arch of Peace in front of the Church of San Siro.

The Church of San Marco in Milan,
which has frescoes by Lomazzo

Travel tip:

The Church of San Marco in Milan, which has frescoes by Gian Paolo Lomazzo, dates back to the 13th century. It was dedicated to Saint Mark, the patron saint of Venice, after the help given by the city in the war against Frederick Barbarossa in the 12th century. The building was modified in the Baroque style during the 17th century and became the largest church in Milan after the Duomo.  In early 1770, the young Mozart resided in the monastery of San Marco for three months and in 1874, the Milanese poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni was commemorated in the church by the first performance of Verdi's Requiem, written in his honour.

Also on this day:

1575: The birth of Maria de’ Medici, Queen of France

1925: The birth of Michele Ferrero, the chocolatier who invented Nutella spread

1977: The birth of astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti

(Picture credits: Arch of Peace by Alberto Monti; Church of San Marco by MarkusMark via Wikimedia Commons)

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Jacopo Bassano – painter

Artist loved brilliant colours and drew his inspiration from real life

The statue of Jacopo Bassano in the
town from which he took his name 

The artist who became known as Jacopo Bassano died on this day in 1592 in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto in northern Italy.

He was born in about 1510 in Bassano del Grappa.  According to some accounts, he was christened Jacopo dal Ponte, although the inscription on his statue in the town names him Giacomo da Ponte. His father, Francesco il Vecchio, was already a successful painter in Bassano and had established a workshop that produced mostly religious works.

Jacopo became an apprentice in his father’s workshop while still a young boy. He made his way to Venice when he was about 20, where he studied under Bonifazio de Pitati, who was also known as Bonifazio Veronese.

While in Venice, he met famous artists, such as Titian and il Pordenone, and his work from this period shows Titian’s influence and demonstrates his lifelong appreciation of the great artist’s work.  Jacopo Bassano’s earliest paintings also show his love of the brilliant colours used by Titian.

Bassano’s Supper at Emmaus (1538), originally commissioned for a church, uses rich luminous colours that distinguish the figures from their background. Unusually, he places Christ towards the back of the scene, allowing the figures around him to play a more significant part. He dresses them in 16th century clothes rather than in robes in the classical Roman tradition. He includes food on the table and there is a dog and a cat in the picture, showing he has drawn on contemporary life for his inspiration rather than just sticking to the stylistic conventions of his age.

Bassano's The Last Supper shows the influence
of such artists as Durer and Raphael on his work

After his father’s death in 1539, Jacopo Bassano returned to Bassano del Grappa and took over the running of the family workshop. He married a local woman, Elisabetta Merzari, in 1546.

His painting of The Last Supper in 1542 shows the influence on his work of Mannerism and indicates that he had seen the paintings of Durer and Raphael because his figures seem alive, with muscles and sinews, in the style of those two great artists.

After about 1550 he started experimenting with light and he was one of the first painters to paint a ‘nocturne’, a scene taking place at night time, which was to make his paintings even more highly valued.  He also tended to place his subjects in a natural landscape with carefully painted trees and flowers.

A portrait of Bassano painted
by his son, Girolamo

His four sons, Leandro Bassano, Francesco Bassano the Younger, Giovanni Battista da Ponte and Girolamo da Ponte, all worked in his workshop and followed him closely in style and subject matter.

After Jacopo’s death in 1592, his sons produced numerous works in his style, making it difficult for art historians to establish which pictures were created by Jacopo Bassano himself and which were the work of his sons.

His work is considered unique because it incorporated diverse artistic influences. He is believed to have learnt from Durer, Parmigianino, Tintoretto and Raphael, even though he lived permanently in Bassano del Grappa, mainly by seeing their prints, of which he became an avid collector.

The Ponte degli Alpini was designed by the
great architect Andrea Palladio

Travel tip:

Bassano del Grappa, where Jacopo Bassano was born and died, and from which he got his professional name, is an historic town at the foot of Monte Grappa in the Vicenza province of the Veneto, about 35km (22 miles) northeast of the city of Vicenza. The town is famous for inventing grappa, a spirit made from the grape skins and stalks left over from wine production, which is popular with Italians as an after dinner drink to aid digestion. A famous sight in the town is the Ponte degli Alpini, a bridge designed by Andrea Palladio.

The Basilica di Santa Giustina can be found off
Padua's large square, Prato della Valle

Travel tip:

Jacopo Bassano painted altarpieces for churches in Padua, Treviso, and Belluno as well as for churches in his home town and Venice. In the Basilica di Santa Giustina in Padua, his work, Santa Giustina enthroned with the saints Sebastian, Antonio Abate and Rocco, was painted by him in around 1560 with the help of his son, Francesco. It is considered one of his best works and also one of the most original examples of the Venetian Mannerist culture. The Basilica Church of Santa Giustina, which is the ninth largest Christian church in the world, is at the corner of Prato della Valle where it is joined by Via Avazzano and Via Ferrari. The church contains the remains of Santa Giustina, a devout young woman who was martyred in 304, and is also home to the tomb containing the body of St Luke the Evangelist, who was credited with writing the Gospel according to St Luke. Next door to the basilica there is a Benedictine monastery with frescoed cloisters and a famous library that can be visited by arrangement.

Also on this day:

Feste di San Valentino e di Sant’Antonino

La festa degli innamorati (The Feast of the Lovers)

1963: Fellini’s masterpiece Otto e mezzo (8½) is released in Italy

1974: The birth of triple Olympic champion fencer Valentina Vezzali

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Luca della Robbia - sculptor

Renaissance ‘genius’ famed for glazed terracotta

Della Robbia's Resurrection over the door of
the northern sacristy in the Florence duomo

Luca della Robbia, whose work saw him spoken of in the same breath as Donatello and Lorenzo Ghiberti among the great sculptors of the Renaissance, died on this day in 1482 in Florence.

Della Robbia worked in marble and bronze initially but enjoyed considerable success after inventing a process for making statuary and reliefs in terracotta decorated with a colourful mineral glaze.

Thought to be around 82 or 83 years old, he had shared the full details of the process only with his family. On his death, his nephew Andrea della Robbia inherited his workshop and other members of the family, notably his great-nephews Giovanni della Robbia and Girolamo della Robbia, continued to employ his methods with success into the 16th century.

Terracotta literally means cooked earth and Della Robbia’s technique involved the application of colourful glazes made using lead, tin and other minerals to the fired clay. 

Sculpting in terracotta was not new, having been invented in the ancient world, but Della Robbia’s idea to coat the terracotta with a glaze that fused with the clay below gave the surface a brightness and shine and made the sculpture particularly durable. 

Della Robbia decorated the dome of Brunelleschi's
Pazzi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce

It took him many years to perfect his technique. The clay itself came from riverbeds, where Della Robbia would look for a light-colored, chalky variety of clay that bound particularly well with his glazes, cleaning and sifting it before adding soft river sand to achieve optimal consistency.  The blend of minerals in the glaze itself was a closely guarded secret.

The first commissions for which Della Robbia used the technique were in the Duomo of Florence, where between 1442 and 1445 he sculpted a lunette of the Resurrection over the door of the northern sacristy and a relief of the Ascension over the southern sacristy door.

He went on to execute many more works in the medium, of which some of the most important are the roundels of the Apostles in Filippo Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, the roof of Michelozzo’s Chapel of the Crucifix in the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, Florence, and a lunette over the entrance of the Church of San Domenico at Urbino.

His final major work was an altarpiece in the Palazzo Vescovile at Pescia, a small town just over an hour from Florence, near Montecatini Terme.

Della Robbia's bust in the Pincio
Gardens in Rome

It was the Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti who compared Della Robbia to fellow sculptors Donatello and Ghiberti, ranking him also alongside the architect Brunelleschi and the painter Masaccio in terms of their artistic genius. This assessment took into account more than just his work in glazed terracotta, although his use of bright colours gave his work in the medium a particular charm that was very popular.

In the early part of his career, Della Robbia, who may have trained as a goldsmith, worked with Ghiberti on the famous bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry - the so-called Gates of Paradise.

Brunelleschi often used him for sculpture on his buildings. His important commission was for the Cantoria - a singing gallery - in Florence's Duomo, for which he was probably chosen by the Medici family.  The project took seven years and his depictions in the 10 panels of children singing, dancing and making music, the figures lively and finely observed in the manner of Renaissance naturalism, established him as a major Florentine artist.

Della Robbia’s other important works in marble include a tabernacle carved for the Chapel of San Luca in the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, and the tomb of Benozzo Federighi, bishop of nearby Fiesole.

Florence's magnificent Duomo towers above
the skyline of Della Robbia's city

Travel tip:

The Florence Duomo - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore - with its enormous dome by Filippo Brunelleschi and campanile by Giotto, is one of Italy's most recognisable and most photographed sights, towering above the city and the dominant feature of almost every cityscape. From groundbreaking to consecration, the project took 140 years to complete and involved a series of architects. Arnolfo di Cambio, who also designed the church of Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio was the original architect engaged and it was to his template, essentially, that the others worked.  When he died in 1410, 14 years after the first stone was laid, he was succeeded by Giotto, who himself died in 1337, after which his assistant Andrea Pisano took up the project.  Pisano died in 1348, as the Black Death swept Europe, and a succession of architects followed, culminating in Brunelleschi, who won a competition - against Lorenzo Ghiberti - to build the dome, which remains the largest brick-built dome ever constructed.

Find a hotel in Florence with Booking.com

Piazzo Mino is the main square in the centre of
Fiesole, in the hills to the northeast of Florence

Travel tip:

Fiesole, a town of about 14,000 inhabitants situated in an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence, has since the 14th century been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in Florence.  Formerly an important Etruscan settlement, it was also a Roman town of note, of which the remains of a theatre and baths are still visible.  Fiesole's cathedral, built in the 11th century, is supposedly built over the site of the martyrdom of St. Romulus. In the middle ages, Fiesole was as powerful as Florence until it was conquered by the latter in 1125 after a series of wars.

Fiesole hotels by Booking.com

More reading:

Lorenzo Ghiberti and the 'Gates of Paradise'

Filippo Brunelleschi, the genius who designed the dome of the Florence duomo

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Florentine who made his mark in Rome

Also on this day:

1791: The birth of painter Francesco Hayez

1918: The death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

1941: The birth of author and politician Raffaele Lauro

1953: The founding of the giant oil and gas company ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

(Picture credits: Resurrection by Sailko; Pazzi Chapel ceiling by Mattis; bust of della Robbia by Lalupa; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Luca Longhi – artist

‘Quiet’ painter trained his children to follow in his footsteps

Luca Longhi's Adoration by the Shepherds
can be seen at the Museo d’Arte della Città

Luca Longhi, a portrait painter also known for his beautiful religious paintings who was working during the late Renaissance and Mannerist periods, was born on this day in 1507 in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

He was the father of the painters Francesco Longhi and Barbara Longhi, who were both trained by him and worked in his workshop.

Little is known about Luca Longhi’s own artistic training, but it is thought he probably attended the Ravenna workshops of local artists Francesco Zaganelli and his brother, Bernardino Zaganelli.

The painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari visited Ravenna in 1548 and wrote about "Master Luca de Longhi" in his book, The Lives of the Artists. He says: “Luca de Longhi is a man of good nature, quiet and (a) scholar (who) has done in his homeland Ravenna, and outside, many beautiful oil pictures and portraits. He has done and still works with patience and study.”

Longhi painted the portraits of many famous and important people of his time, including Giovanni Guidiccione, Bishop of Fossombrone, Giulio della Rovere, Cardinal of Urbino, Alessandro Sforza, Cardinal legate of Romagna and Cristoforo Boncompagni, Archbishop of Ravenna.

The Lady and the Unicorn is said
to depict Giulia Farnese

Among his well-known works are The Lady and the Unicorn, which is a portrait of Giulia Farnese, who was mistress to Pope Alexander VI and the sister of Pope Paul III, Adoration by the Shepherds and Virgin and Child with Saints Sebastian and Rocco.

He painted a Marriage at Canna for the Church of the Camaldolese in Ravenna with his son, Francesco. In the picture there are portraits of Francesco, his daughter, Barbara, and the Abbot of the church’s convent, Don Pietro Bagnolo da Bagnacavallo.

Longhi’s daughter, Barbara Longhi, was much admired as a portrait painter as well. She also assisted her father on large altarpieces and modelled for him. She was depicted by her father as Saint Barbara in his 1570 painting Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints.

Her self-portrait, in which she is dressed as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, bears a strong resemblance to her father’s depictions of her. The painting was intended originally for the monastery of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, but it was acquired by the Museo d’Arte della Città di Ravenna in the 19th century and restored in 1980.

Lucca Longhi died in his home town of Ravenna in 1580 after succumbing to what was described as a catarrhal illness that had spread throughout Italy after arriving from Paris.

The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna is
a UNESCO world heritage site

Travel tip:

Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna, where Luca Longhi and his children lived and worked, was the capital city of the western Roman empire in the fifth century. It is known for its well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and mosaics and has eight UNESCO world heritage sites. The Basilica of San Vitale is one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture in Europe.

The museum is housed in the cloister of the
Basilica di Santa Maria in Porto

Travel tip:

There are works by Luca Longhi and his children, Francesco and Barbara, on display in the Museo d’Arte della Città di Ravenna, which is in Via di Roma in the centre of the city, housed in the cloister of the abbey of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Porto. The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 9am to 6pm. During the Covid 19 pandemic the museum is asking visitors to book appointments in advance.  Also on display are works by the Zaganellis and many Venetian artists.

Also on this day:

1451: The birth of Renaissance composer Franchino Gaffurio

1552: The birth of international lawyer Alberico Gentili

1883: The birth of fashion designer Nina Ricci

1919: The birth of seven-times prime minister Giulio Andreotti

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Mario Minniti - painter

Sicilian influenced by long-time collaborator Caravaggio

Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of
Fruit, thought to be a young Minniti

The painter Mario Minniti, who has acquired some historical notoriety over his long association with the brilliant but hot-tempered Renaissance great Caravaggio but went on to enjoy a successful career in his own right, was born on this day in 1577 in Syracuse, Sicily.

Minniti first encountered Caravaggio - born Michelangelo Merisi - when he arrived in Rome at the age of 15, seeking an apprenticeship following the death of his father.

Caravaggio was just a few years older than Minniti. They became friends and Minniti, who was blessed with boyish good looks, is thought to have been the model Caravaggio used in a series of works commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome.

These included his paintings Boy with a Basket of Fruit, The Fortune Teller, The Musicians, Bacchus and The Lute Player.

As well as learning Caravaggio’s style and techniques, whose influence shone through in many of his own works, Minniti became close friends with his mentor, with some historians buying into the theory that they were lovers and that Caravaggio was obsessed with his young model’s beauty.

Others dispute this, however, not least because Minniti is known to have been married twice. They also point out that, in 16th century Italy, it was normal for men possessed with qualities associated with female beauty, such as pale, smooth skin and full lips, to be admired by other men, who saw such characteristics as signs of aristocratic breeding.

Caravaggio (above) took refuge with
Minniti at his home in Sicily

They argue that Minniti and Caravaggio, in fact, shared an appetite for flirting with other men’s wives and girlfriends on alcohol-fuelled nights out and that in many of the street brawls that marked Caravaggio’s time in the Eternal City, Minniti was at his side.

He may even have been present on the fateful May day in 1606 when Caravaggio is alleged to have killed murdered Ranuccio Tomassoni, reputedly a ‘wealthy scoundrel’, in the Campo Marzio district of central Rome, not far from the Piazza Monte D'Oro.

The incident led to Caravaggio being condemned to death by order of Pope Paul V, after which he fled the city, first to Naples and then Malta.  When he arrived in Sicily in 1608, forced to take flight again after another violent incident, he is said to have stayed with Minniti, who had by then returned home to Syracuse.  Minniti even found some work for his former employer, including a commission to paint the Burial of Saint Lucy for the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia in Syracuse. 

The influence on Minniti’s painting style led to him becoming known as “the Sicilian Caravaggio” and while his use of chiaroscuro - the dramatic contrast of light with dark shadows - was clearly inherited from Caravaggio, his style evolved into something that was more clearly his own, involving a the lively realism typical of the Baroque period.

The Miracle at Nain, which is on display in
Messina, is one of Minniti's best-known works

Like Caravaggio, Minniti benefited financially from the huge programme of church-building that took place in his lifetime, which meant that he was seldom short of commissions.

His readiness to embrace the Baroque style, characterized by exaggerated motion and clear detail used to evoke drama and exuberance, made him popular with the Catholic Church, who had determined that the arts should communicate religious themes and direct emotional involvement in response to the Protestant Reformation.

Minniti spent much of his time in Syracuse and Messina, as well as Palermo, and also took  commissions in Malta.  Among his surviving works are the Miracle at Nain, which can be seen at the regional art gallery in Messina, the Martyrdom of Saint Lucy and Miracle of Saint Clare, (both at the regional art gallery in Siracusa), Saint Benedict, Madonna with Child and Saints Cosimo and Damian (Church of Saint Mary, Modica), and Saint John the Baptist (Messina). 

Some critics claim that Minniti’s work too often lacked variety, and that he overdid certain motifs. Nonetheless, he is regarded in Sicily as one of the most distinguished painters of his era, one of the few Sicilian painters of the early 17th century whose work is preserved. 

Minniti died at Syracuse in 1640, at the age of 62.

The Sicilian Baroque cathedral in 
Syracuse, rebuilt by Andrea Palma

Travel tip:

The Syracuse of Minniti’s day was largely destroyed in the earthquake of 1693, but it was rebuilt, thanks to the largesse of the island’s Spanish rulers, in a way that makes it one of the most beautiful cities in southeast Sicily, with a wealth of buildings constructed in the architectural style that became known as Sicilian Baroque. There are several ancient ruins, however. The Parco Archeologico Neapolis, situated within the city, comprises the Roman Amphitheatre, the Teatro Greco and the Orecchio di Dionisio, a limestone cave shaped like a human ear. The Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi exhibits terracotta artifacts, Roman portraits and Old Testament scenes carved into white marble.  Syracuse as a city is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The Piazza del Popolo is a feature of the
Campo Marzio district of central Rome

Travel tip:

The district of Campo Marzio is situated in the centre of Rome, comprising an area that includes Piazza di Spagna and the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti - otherwise known as the Spanish Steps - and Piazza del Popolo, as well as the fashion district with the Via dei Condotti at its centre, overlooked by the Pincian Hill.  During the Middle Ages it was the most densely populated quarter of the city. It is bordered by the Tiber, the Quirinal hill in the north and the Capitoline Hill.

Also on this day:

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

1685: The birth of perfumier Johann Maria Farina

1881: The birth of architect Marcello Piacentini

1925: The birth of former prime minister Arnaldo Forlani

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Jacopo della Quercia - sculptor

Innovative work said to have influenced Michelangelo

Jacopo della Quercia was a leading
influence on many artists

The sculptor Jacopo della Quercia, regarded as one of the most original artists in his field in the early 15th century and an influence on a number of leading figures in the Renaissance including Michelangelo, died on this day in 1438.

Della Quercia’s most notable works include the Fonte Gaia in Piazza del Campo in Siena, the sculptures around the Porta Magna of the church of San Petronio in Bologna, the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca Cathedral, and Zacharias in the Temple, a bronze relief for the baptismal font in the church of San Giovanni in Siena.

His attention to proportion and perspective gave his creations a particularly lifelike quality and his innovative work put him at the forefront of his generation.  Art historians consider that his work marked a transition in Italian art from Gothic to Renaissance style that was taken forward by Michelangelo and contemporaries such as Francesco di Giorgio and Niccolò dell’Arca.

Born, it is thought, in 1374, he was baptised as Jacopo di Pietro d’Agnolo di Guarnieri.  He took his working name from his home village, Quercia Grossa - now Quercegrossa - situated a few kilometres outside Siena.  He came from a family of craftsmen; his father, Piero d’Angelo, was also a sculptor, and his brother Priamo was a painter.

The tomb of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca cathedral
brought together Gothic and Classical styles

Jacopo’s early influences are likely to have been the paintings of Nicola Pisano and Arnolfi di Cambio in Siena’s duomo, and the ancient Roman statues and monuments exhibited in the cemetery at Lucca, where he moved with his family at the age of 12. 

His career began to gather pace in his early twenties. It is thought Della Quercia's earliest work appears in the Lucca cathedral, in which a statue of St John the Evangelist, an impressive Man of Sorrows at the Altar of the Sacrament, and a relief on the tomb of St Aniello. 

In 1401 he entered a competition to design the bronze doors for Florence's Baptistery, along with Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi, who would go on to design the cathedral’s famous dome.  Ghiberti won but the exposure enhanced Della Quercia’s standing further and in 1403 he sculpted the marble Virgin and Child for the Ferrara cathedral, winning considerable acclaim. 

Returning to Lucca in 1406, he received a commission from the city's ruler, Paolo Guinigi, to begin work at the tomb of his second wife Ilaria del Carretto in the Lucca cathedral. The end result, in which an elegantly dressed woman rests on top of a sarcophagus decorated with Roman-style winged cherubs, combines elements of Gothic and Classical styles, and is seen as signalling the imminent dawn of the golden age of Renaissance art.

The Porta Magna of the church of
San Petronio in Bologna

For all his brilliance, Della Quercia had a tendency to frustrate his clients by accepting too many commissions simultaneously, which led to him working on one at the expense of another.  For example, while the Fonte Gaia was completed in five years between 1414 and 1419, he may have been commissioned to do the work as early as 1406, certainly 1409.  At the same time, however, he was working on the statue of an apostle for the exterior of the cathedral at Lucca, the Trenta altar for the Church of San Frediano in Lucca, and tomb slabs for Lorenzo Trenta and his wife.

He may have started working in earnest on the Siena fountain later still had he not had to flee Lucca in haste in 1413, having been accused of crimes including robbery and rape for which one of his assistants spent three years in jail.

The original commission was to build a new fountain in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, to replace one that featured a statue of the pagan goddess Venus that had been blamed for an outbreak of plague in the city.  Della Quercia came up with a rectangular fountain built in white marble, dedicated to the Virgin, with statues carved into the three sides. It remains an attraction for tourists, although what they see now is a copy by Tito Sarrocchi, installed in the 19th century. The original is in the loggia of the town hall.

Similarly, Della Quercia was commissioned to create two gilt bronze reliefs for the baptismal font in San Giovanni in Siena but completed only one, the second being assigned to Donatello.

The design of the round-arched Porta Magna of the San Petronio church in Bologna, for which he accepted a commission in 1425, would keep him busy for much of the last 13 years of his life and it is considered by some to be his masterwork. 

The sculpture around the portal features 10 scenes from Genesis, including The Creation of Eve, five scenes from the early life of Christ, reliefs of the prophets and the statues of the Virgin and Child with Saints Petronius and Ambrose,  The sense of depth in the work, on which he was assisted by artists from his Bolognese workshop such as Cino di Bartolo, has been compared with the paintings of Masaccio.  Michelangelo, who visited Bologna in 1494, conceded that his Genesis on the Sistine Chapel ceiling was based on Della Quercia’s scenes. 

While working at the Porta Magna, he was asked to design the Loggia di San Paolo, close to the Piazza del Campo, but died before he could finish the commission.  In 1435 he was knighted by the government of Siena and appointed to a prestigious role overseeing Siena Cathedral.

Della Quercia’s biography is included in Giorgio Vasari’s seminal work, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. After his death, he was buried in the San Agostino church in Siena.

The Fonte Gaia is situated in the historic
Piazza del Campo in Siena

Travel tip:

Siena is perhaps best known as the venue for the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena. The race takes place in the Piazza del Campo, a shell-shaped open area which is regarded as one of Europe’s finest medieval squares. It was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form the city of Siena.  The city's cathedral, with a pulpit designed by Nicola Pisani, is considered a masterpiece of Italian Romanesque-Gothic architecture.

The Basilica di San Petronio is the largest
brick built Gothic church in the world

Travel tip:

The Basilica di San Petronio is the main church of Bologna, located in Piazza Maggiore in the centre of the city. It is the largest brick-built Gothic church in the world. Building work began on the church in 1390 and it was dedicated to San Petronio, who had been the Bishop of Bologna in the fifth century. The facade was designed by Domenico da Varignana and started in 1538 by Giacomo Ranuzzi but was never finished. Despite being Bologna’s most important church, San Petronio is not the city’s cathedral. This is the Duomo di San Pietro, which stands nearby on Via Indipendenza. In the 16th century, the basilica staged the coronation of Charles V to Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII.

Also on this day:

1950: The birth of television presenter Mara Venier

1951: The birth of football manager Claudio Ranieri

1962: The birth of jazz musician Dado Moroni

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Fra’ Filippo Lippi - Renaissance painter

Mentor of Botticelli who led life of scandal

Filippo Lippi, a self-portrait within a
fresco in Spoleto's historic cathedral

The controversial 15th century painter Fra’ Filippo Lippi, who famously eloped with a nun who had agreed to pose for him at a Dominican monastery in Prato, died on or close to this day in 1469 in Spoleto, a city in Umbria then part of the Papal States.

He was aged 62 or 63. Because of the scandalous nature of his life, there was speculation after his death that he had been poisoned, possibly by relatives of Lucrezia Buti, the nun who fell for his charms and was the mother of two children by him.

Aside from his colourful private life, Lippi was an important figure in the development of painting.  Influenced himself by Masaccio and Fra’ Angelico, he developed a signature style of his own that was colourful and decorative and characterised by clarity of expression.  His own influence was seen in the works of his pupil Sandro Botticelli and his son, Filippino Lippi.

Born in Florence in 1406, the son of a butcher, Lippi was orphaned when he was two years old. Until he was eight, he lived with an aunt, who then placed him in a Carmelite convent. In 1420 he entered the community of friars at the Monastery of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, where he took religious vows at the age of 16. It was there that he first came across Masaccio, who was working there on some frescoes in the Brancacci chapel that would become some of the most revered works of the Renaissance.

He did not take to studying, often occupying his time drawing pictures, and was allowed to leave the monastery to pursue his interest in painting, although he was not released from his vows.

A scene from Lippi's fresco series in the 
cathedral in the Tuscan city of Prato

He began travelling around Italy, visiting Padua, Ancona and Naples. The art historian Giorgio Vasari claimed that Fra’ Lippi was captured by Barbary pirates during a boat trip and kept as a slave for 18 months, supposedly securing his release only after he drew a picture of his slave master on the wall, using a piece of coal, that was such an accurate likeness that it was assumed he had some miraculous powers.

By the time he returned to Florence, in the 1430s, his reputation as a painter was growing and he was commissioned by a number of prominent families, including the Medicis. At the same time, however, his private life became increasingly turbulent, and when his employers were not dealing with complaints about his behaviour and settling lawsuits, they were paying off the debts he ran up.  The Medici became so exasperated with his unreliability they are said to have kept him locked up at night until he completed various commissions.

He produced his best work after moving to Prato, where he painted frescoes in the choir of the city’s cathedral depicting the stories of St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen. The scene showing the ceremonial mourning over Stephen's corpse is believed to contain a self-portrait of the painter. One of his scenes from his fresco series, Scenes of the Life of the Virgin, in the cathedral in Spoleto, is also said to include a self-portrait.

Lucrezia Buti is thought to be depicted
 in Lippi's 1455 Madonna and Child

It was in Prato that the major scandal of his life occurred. He had been appointed chaplain of the monastery of Santa Margherita and it is said that Lippi asked the mother superior for a nun who could pose for him for a picture he was painting, either of the Madonna or Santa Margherita.

He was sent Lucrezia Buti, the daughter of a Florentine family who, like him, has been sent to a convent as a child.  Lippi was taken with her beauty and seduced her. Soon afterwards, while Lucrezia was taking part in a procession, Lippi effectively kidnapped her. They moved into his house in Prato. Their son, Filippino, was born in 1457, followed a few years later by Alessandra, their daughter.

Given that Filippo and Lucrezia had both taken vows, they were living in sin, which at the time was considered highly scandalous. Eventually, Pope Pius II agreed to dissolve their vows, although they never married.  Lippi frequently depicted Lucrezia in his paintings, including a celebrated Madonna and Child painted in around 1455 that influenced Botticelli’s depictions of the Madonna. The painting hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.

In 1467, accompanied by Filippino and his friend and fellow painter, Fra’ Diamante, Lippi left for Spoleto, where he had been commissioned to decorate the choir of the Duomo. They worked together on the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Death of Mary, and the Coronation. He died in 1469 before the work was complete. He was buried in the cathedral, where a monument to him, commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent, was designed by his son.

The Palazzo Pretorio is one of a 
several important buildings in Prato

Travel tip:

The city of Prato is just half an hour from Florence yet is almost Tuscany's forgotten gem.  It has a commercial heritage founded on the textile industry and its growth in the 19th century earned it the nickname the "Manchester of Tuscany". Prato is the home of the Datini archives, a significant collection of late medieval documents concerning economic and trade history, produced between 1363 and 1410, yet also has many artistic treasures, including frescoes by Lippi, Paolo Uccello and Agnolo Gaddi inside its Duomo and the external pulpit by Michelozzo and Donatello. The Palazzo Pretorio is a building of great beauty, situated in the pretty Piazza del Comune, and there are the ruins of the castle built for the medieval emperor and King of Sicily Frederick II.

Spoleto's beautiful cathedral, where
Fra' Filippo Lippi is buried

Travel tip:

Spoleto is an historic and beautiful Umbrian hill town, where the 12th century cathedral is one of a number of interesting buildings including, standing on a hilltop overlooking the town, the imposing 14th century fortress, La Rocca Albornoziana.  There is a Roman amphitheatre, close to Piazza Garibaldi, which dates back to the middle of the first century BC and the early days of the Roman empire.  Two marble busts unearthed nearby, thought to be of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus and his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, may have been part of the decoration of the wall of the stage, which was destroyed in the Middle Ages during the construction of the adjoining Sant’Agata monastery and church, which now houses an archaeological museum.  The town is the home of the Festival dei Due Mondi music festival.

Also on this day:

1221: The death of historian Salimbene di Adam

1562: The death of anatomist Gabriele di Falloppio

1963: The Vajont Dam disaster

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Giovanni Fattori - painter

Landscape artist who painted Risorgimento battle scenes 

A self-portrait of Giovanni
Fattori as a young man

The painter Giovanni Fattori, who campaigned to free Italy from Austrian domination and captured Risorgimento battle scenes on canvas, was born on this day in 1825 in Livorno.

Fattori became a leading member of a group of Tuscan painters known as the Macchiaioli, who have been described as the Italian equivalent of the French Impressionists but whose images were more sharply defined.  The group, largely comprising painters from a working class background, saw themselves more as a social movement who expressed themselves through art.

Born into a modest household in the Via della Coroncina in the centre of Livorno, the Tuscan port city, Fattori’s family hoped he would seek a qualification in commerce that would equip him to prosper in the city’s trade-based economy.

But his skill in sketching persuaded them instead to apprentice him in 1845 to Giuseppe Baldini, a local painter of religious themes.  The following year he moved to Florence to study under Giuseppe Bezzuoli and enrol at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

It was while he was in Florence, in 1848, that he became politically active, joining the Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - a liberal-socialist group that campaigned against the Austrian occupation of northern Italy. He distributed leaflets and is said to have taken part in an uprising in his home city of Livorno.  

Fattori made a breakthrough with The Italian
Camp at the Battle of Magenta in 1859 

When he returned to a calmer life in Florence in the early 1850s, Fattori began to frequent the Caffè Michelangiolo, on Via Larga, which was a popular gathering place for Florentine artists to discuss politics and the latest ideas in art. A number of them visited Paris for the Exposition of 1855 and returned keen to pursue the then-unusual practice of painting outdoors, directly from nature. 

Fattori was influenced by meeting the Roman landscape painter Giovanni Costa and decided to join his colleagues in taking up painting landscapes as they really appeared, subject to variations in daylight, as well as scenes of contemporary life.  The Florentine group evolved as the Macchiaioli. 

In terms of his personal finances, Fattori’s important break came in 1859, when his depiction of The Italian Camp at the Battle of Magenta (Il campo italiano dopo la battaglia di Magenta) won him a competition organised by the government to produce a patriotic battle scene. It came with a large enough cash prize for him to be married for the first time, to Settimia Vannucci.

Sadly, they were together for only eight years before Settimia succumbed to tuberculosis. During most of that time, Fattori lived in Livorno and painted mainly scenes of rural life, before moving back to a larger studio in Florence after receiving a number of commissions to paint epic battle scenes from the struggle for Italian unification. Famous among these was the Storming of the Madonna della Scoperta, an episode of the Battle of San Martino (1859).

A detail from Fattori's Maremma Cowboys
driving the Herds (1893)

After his wife’s death, the 1880s saw Fattori painting scenes from rural life in the Maremma, the area in the southwest of Tuscany.  His canvas Maremma Cowboys driving the Herds, one of his most famous works, is on permanent display in the Fattori Gallery in Livorno.

Fattori regarded his battlefield compositions as his finest works, in contradiction to modern critics, who prefer what they regard as his more spontaneous works, such as The Rotunda of Palmieri (1866), Woman with an Umbrella (1866), and his landscapes of the Florentine countryside, then of the Roman countryside, between 1873 and 1880, including his landscapes of the Maremma. 

Fattori fell into poor circumstances after marrying for a second time in 1891. Unable to buy frames for his paintings, he was prevented from exhibiting his works at the exhibition in Dresden in 1896.  After his second wife died in 1903, he was married for the third time, in 1906, but as a painter became increasingly disillusioned.

He died in 1908 in Florence and is buried in the loggia next to the Sanctuary of Montenero in Livorno, along with other important figures from the city’s history.

Livorno's elegant Terrazza Mascagni is
an attraction of the Tuscan port

Travel tip:

Livorno is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence, with a population of almost 160,000. Although it is a large commercial port with much related industry, it has many attractions, including an elegant sea front – the Terrazza Mascagni - an historic centre, the Venetian quarter with canals, and a tradition of serving excellent seafood.

A view of one of the hillier, greener parts of 
the Maremma region of southern Tuscany

Travel tip:

Maremma is a large coastal area in southern Tuscany known for the variety of its territory, from blue seas and long beaches, black rock, wooded hills and thermal baths to marshes and flat lands.  It has traces of Etruscan and Roman civilisations, as well as the towers and castles of the Middle Ages built by the Aldobrandeschi families and later the Medici.  For centuries, the area was a hotbed for malaria and the reclamation of land from the vast marshy areas begun by the Medici was completed only just after Second World War.

Also on this day:

1610: The birth of Francesco I d’Este, the military leader who built the Ducal Palace in Modena

1620: The birth of Baroque composer Isabella Leonarda

1925: The birth of best-selling author Andrea Camilleri, creator of Inspector Montalbano

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