Gino Severini - painter and mosaicist

Tuscan was leading figure in Futurist movement

Gino Severini, typically sporting a monacle, was
an influential figure in 20th century Italian art 

The painter and mosaicist Gino Severini, who was an important figure in the Italian Futurist movement in the early 20th century and is regarded as  one of the most progressive of all 20th century Italian artists, was born on this day in 1883 in the hilltop town of Cortona in Tuscany.

He divided his time largely between Rome and Paris, where he died in 1966. Although he was a signatory - along with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla - of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910, his work was not altogether typical of the movement.  

Indeed, ultimately he rejected Futurism, moving on to Cubism, having become friends with Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in Paris, before ultimately turning his interest to Neo-Classicism and the Return to Order movement that followed the First World War. 

He attracted criticism among his peers by his associations with the Fascist-supporting Novecento Italiano movement, whose work became closely linked with state propaganda. Severini was involved with Benito Mussolini's "Third Rome" project, supplying murals and mosaics for Fascist architectural structures inspired by imperial Rome. 

Working in mosaics became an increasing focus for Severini in his later years, particularly after he rediscovered his Catholic faith. His religious mosaics displayed such refined technique he was dubbed the “father of modern mosaics". 

Severini was also the author of many essays and several books on painting, including Du cubism au classicisme (From Cubism to Classicism) in 1921 and The Life of a Painter, a vivid account of his early career. 

Severini's Le Boulevard (1913), his Futurist 
interpretation of Parisian street life

Born into a family of modest means in Cortona, where his father a junior court official and his mother a dressmaker, Severini studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona until the age of 15, at which point his formal education ceased when he and other classmates were caught trying to steal exam papers. They were expelled and probably lucky to escape prison. 

In 1899, his mother took him to Rome, thinking his prospects would be better there. He gained employment as a shipping clerk. He painted in his spare time and, thanks to the patronage of a fellow Cortonese with whom he had become friends, was able to attend art classes at the Rome Fine Arts Institute, studying nudes. He was not a disciplined student, however, and found himself cut adrift when his frustrated patron cancelled his allowance. 

Left to fend for himself when his mother returned to Cortona, Severini was so poor he lived in a room that was essentially a store cupboard in a kitchen in Via Sardegna in Ostiense. In 1900 he met Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla for the first time. Balla took him on as a student, introducing him to the technique of pointillism, a painting method where effects were created by dotting the canvas or other surface with contrasting colours according to the principles of optical science.  The technique would have a major influence on Severini's early work and on Futurist painting in general.

Severini (right) with Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni in Paris in 1912

He moved to Paris in 1906 with Balla’s encouragement. Declaring the French capital to be his spiritual home, he settled in Montmartre, befriending another Italian, Amedeo Modigliani, and getting to know most of the city’s upcoming artists, including the Cubists Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris and Picasso.

It was through Severini that some of the leading Italian Futurists visited Paris in 1911, absorbing some of Severini’s influence by adopting some of the humanist features of Cubism, namely the human figure in motion, as further means of expressing pictorial dynamism.  

Severini’s own Futurist work had been based on human figures, nightclub dancers or simply people in the street, rather than the cars or machines that had been central to the attempts of many of his fellow Futurist artists to depict speed and dynamism in painting.  In his nightclub scenes, he would evoke the sensations of movement and sound through rhythmic forms and flickering colours. His Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912) and The Boulevard (1913) were examples of his best work in Paris. 

However, Severini did produce some of the finest Futurist war art, notably his Red Cross Train Passing a Village (1914), Italian Lancers at a Gallop (1915) and Armoured Train (1915). 

His work over the next few years could be categorised as an idiosyncratic form of Cubism with elements of pointillism and Futurism before he began to experiment with a Neoclassical figurative style in portraits such as Maternity (1916). 

Severini's Mosaic of San Marco
in his hometown of Cortona

Severini had married in 1913, his bride Jeanne Paul Fort, the 16-year-old daughter of the French poet Paul Fort. The couple were desperately poor and when Severini succumbed to pleurisy soon after the wedding, they moved to live with his parents, by then living in Montepulciano, where Jeanne became pregnant. They moved back to Paris, where their daughter, Gina, was born. A second child, Tonio, died from pneumonia, which was a factor in reigniting Severini’s Catholicism, which he had earlier renounced.

Only between the wars did Severini begin to find financial stability, realised mainly through his commissions to create frescoes and mosaics. 

He produced mosaics for the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan (1936), the Palazzo delle Poste in Alessandria (1936) and mosaics and frescoes at the University of Padua (1937).  He worked for the Mussolini regime at the Foro Italico, a multi-venue sports complex, and the Palazzo degli Uffici, the inaugural building of the EUR project. Severini’s association with the Fascists was roundly condemned within the international artistic community, although none of Severini’s work was overtly pro-Fascist. 

After the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War, Severini received lucrative commissions to decorate the offices of the Italian airline companies KLM and Alitalia among other organisations. 

His Cubist-inspired Mosaic of San Marco (1961), which adorns the facade of the Church of San Marco in Cortona, is seen as a signature work. He died in Paris in 1966 at the age of 82 but was buried in Cortona.

Cortona's elevated position gives it commanding
views over the surrounding countryside

Travel tip:

Cortona, founded by the Etruscans, is one of the oldest cities in Tuscany. Its Etruscan Academy Museum displays a vast collection of bronze, ceramic and funerary items reflecting the town’s past. The museum also includes an archaeological park that includes city fortifications and stretches of Roman roads. Outside the museum, the houses in Via Janelli are some of the oldest houses still surviving in Italy. Powerful during the mediaeval period, Cortona was defeated by Naples in 1409 and then sold to Florence.  Characterised by its steep narrow streets, Cortona’s hilltop location - it has an elevation of 600 metres (2,000 ft) - offers sweeping views of the Valdichiana, including Lago Trasimeno, where Hannibal ambushed the Roman army in 217 BC during the Second Punic War.

The Piramide Cestia and Porta San Paolo are
two highlights of the Ostiense neighbourhood

Travel tip:

Severini’s earliest home in Rome was in the Ostiense neighbourhood, which can be found to the south of the Trastevere district. Bordered by the working class areas of Garbatella and Testaccio, Ostiense itself has shed its own down-at-heel reputation to become an increasingly trendy part of the city, populated by young professionals and boasting a thriving nightlife. The home of the majestic Basilica San Paolo Fuori le Mura - the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls - with its gold-plated ceilings, of the Roman  Piramide Cestia and the 3rd century Porta San Paolo, the district was built around the Via Ostiense, the ancient road linking the city with the Roman harbour at Ostia. 

Also on this day:

1763: The birth of musician Domenico Dragonetti

1794: The birth of opera singer Giovanni Battista Rubini

1906: Vesuvius erupts, killing more than 200 people

1973: The birth of footballer Marco Delvecchio

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Giovanni Dupré - sculptor

Work helped end the dominance of Neoclassicism

Giovanni Dupré, painted by the 
Swiss-Italian artist Antonio Ciseri

Giovanni Dupré, who came to be seen as one of the most important figures in 19th century Italian sculpture, was born on this day in 1817 in Siena.

Like his contemporary, Lorenzo Bartolini, Dupré went back to the Renaissance for inspiration and his success helped Italian sculpture move on from the dominance of Antonio Canova, whose brilliant work in the Neoclassicist style had spawned a generation of imitators.

Dupré did much of his work in Florence and Siena, his greatest piece generally judged to be the Pietà he carved between 1860 and 1865 for the family tomb of the Marchese Bichi-Ruspoli in the cemetery of the Misericordia in Siena.

Although his family were of French descent, they were long established in Tuscany when Giovanni was born. The street in the Contrada Capitana dell'Onda where the family lived, a few steps away from Piazza del Campo, subsequently saw its name changed to Via Giovanni Dupré.

As a young man working in the workshops of his father and of another sculptor, Paolo Sani, he became familiar with the work of Renaissance sculptors, carving copies of the great works, for which there was some demand among wealthy Sienese and was the basis of a thriving family business.

He began to make a name for himself after moving to Florence and winning a competition run by the Accademia di Belle Arti with a Judgment of Paris. 

Dupré's Pietà for the family tomb of the Marchese
  Bichi-Ruspoli is seen as his finest work

In 1842, when he was just 25, he carved a lifesize Dying Abel, which was startling for its natural realism. It was bought by a Russian duchess and resides now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. A bronze version can be seen in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Bartolini made a point of encouraging Dupré  to be aware of his talent and to continue. He followed his Abel with a Cain, the marble version of which is also in the Hermitage Museum with a bronze in the Pitti. 

Also in Florence, commissions followed for statues of Giotto and St Antoninus for the Loggiato degli Uffizi and a Triumph of the Cross lunette above the main entrance of the Basilica di Santa Croce.

Despite a period of ill health, Dupré worked prolifically. His sculptures included a representation of the Greek poet Sappho which was reminiscent of Michelangelo, which is now in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, the bronze base for a grand table in the Sala del Castagnoli at the Palazzo Pitti, a funeral monument for contessa Berta Moltke Ferrari-Corbelli in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and a Madonna Addolorata for Santa Croce.

The startlingly realistic Dying Abel brought the
young Dupré his first major success

The Pietà for the Bichi-Ruspoli family tomb, for which he was so acclaimed, won him the Grande medaille d'honneur at the International Exhibition in Paris.

Other notable works included busts of prominent figures such as Letizia Cristina Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon, a San Zanobi for the façade of the Duomo di Siena, the huge allegories of the Cavour monument in Turin and a bronze bust of Savonarola at the monastery of San Marco, Florence.

After his death in 1882 at the age of 64, Dupré’s last work, a depiction of St. Francis inside the Cattedrale di San Rufino in Assisi, was finished by his daughter, Amalia, who was also his pupil.

Despite a steady workload, Dupré managed to write a book, Pensieri sull'arte e ricordi autobiografici - Thoughts on Art and Autobiographical Memories - which was translated into English in 1882 and republished in 1935.

The beautiful Piazza del Campo in Siena is regarded
as one of the finest mediaeval squares in Europe

Travel tip:

Dupré’s family home growing up was just a short distance from Siena’s Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped square that originated in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form Siena. It is regarded as one of Europe's finest mediaeval squares, looked over by the Palazzo Pubblico - also known as the Palazzo Comunale - and the Torre del Mangia.  Via Giovanni Dupré opens on to the piazza alongside the Palazzo Pubblico. The building where his family lived is indicated by a plaque, placed above the main entrance of the building. Piazza del Campo is well known also as the venue for the twice-yearly Palio di Siene horse race.

The inner courtyard and the Loggiato, which links
the two palaces of the Uffizi Gallery complex

Travel tip:

What is now the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, one of the world’s most famous art galleries, was originally built to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi (offices). It was Cosimo I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany who commissioned the building, who gave it its parallel identity as an art gallery, displaying prime artworks of the Medici collections. Over the years, more sections of the palace were chosen to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici.  It was officially opened to the public as an art gallery in 1765. The Uffizi complex, which consists of two palaces alongside the Arno river linked by the Loggiato and a semi-enclosed courtyard, was designed by Giorgio Vasari.

Also on this day:

1773: The death of architect Luigi Vanvitelli

1869: The birth of sculptor Pietro Canonica

1926: The birth of actor Cesare Danova

1930: The birth of cycling champion Gastone Nencini

(Picture credits: Pieta by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons; Piazza del Campo by Gerhard Bögner from Pixabay)

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Enea Salmeggia – artist

Painter was dubbed the Raphael of Bergamo

Enea Salmeggia's Il Martirio di Sant’Alessandro
is one of his most famous paintings

Prolific painter Enea Salmeggia, who was active during the late Renaissance period and left a rich legacy of art in northern Italy, died on this day in 1626 in Bergamo in the region of Lombardy.

Salmeggia, also known as Il Talpino, or Salmezza, went to Rome as a young man, where he studied the works of Raphael. His style has often been likened to that of Raphael and he has even been called the Bergamo Raphael by some art lovers. A drawing formerly attributed to Raphael, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, of two figures seated with some architectural studies, has subsequently been ascribed to Enea Salmeggia.

The artist was born at Salmezza, a frazione of Nembro, a comune - municipality - in the province of Bergamo, between 1565 and 1570. It is known that he grew up in Borgo San Leonardo in Bergamo, where his father, Antonio, was a tailor.

He learnt the art of painting from other Bergamo painters and is also believed to have studied under the Bergamo artist Simone Peterzano in Milan. Caravaggio was one of Peterzano’s most famous pupils and it has been suggested that Salmeggia could have been studying with Peterzano at the same time as Caravaggio.

Enea's Madonna col Bambino e santi
 Ambrogio e Carlo Borromeo

Salmeggia was so young when he received his first commission to paint an Adoration of the Magi for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo that his father had to sign the acceptance document on his behalf.

The artist married Vittoria Daverio, the sister of Milanese sculptor Pietro Antonio Daverio, and they had six children. Two of their children died from the plague and one went into a monastery, but his daughters, Chiara and Elisabetta, and his son, Francesco, worked in his studio near the Church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna in Bergamo and later became painters themselves.

One of Salmeggia’s most famous works, Il Martirio di Sant’Alessandro, an oil on canvas in the choir of the Church of Sant'Alessandro in Colonna, was completed in 1623.

Among the other churches with paintings by Salmeggia are Sant’Andrea and Santi Bartolomeo e Stefano in Bergamo, Sant’Afra in Brescia, San Francesco in Lodi, San Vittorio in Terno d’Isola and San Gregorio in Gromo.

The Accademia Carrara in Bergamo has works by Salmeggia, including his Portrait of a Gentleman. The Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco in Milan also has paintings by Salmeggia, including his Madonna col Bambino e santi Ambrogio e Carlo Borremeo.

Salmeggia died in 1626 and was buried in the Church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna.

The parish church of San
Martino in the centre of Nembro

Travel tip:

Nembro, the suburb of Bergamo in which Enea Salmeggia was born, can be found about 9km (5 miles) northwest of the city of Bergamo, on the right bank of the Serio river. The surrounding countryside is popular with walkers, with many defined paths in the hills above the town, one of which leads to the Santuario della Madonna dello Zuccarello, built in 1374 by the nobleman Bernardo Vitalba. The town itself surrounds the parish church of San Martino, erected in the ninth century but rebuilt in the 18th century, which contains no fewer than 27 of Salmeggia’s paintings.  In recent history, Nembro was notable as one of the areas of Bergamo worst hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, with 188 known to have died from the disease, 94 in the first 15 days. On average, every household in Nembro mourned at least one family member.

Stay in Nembro with Booking.com

The Festa di Sant'Alessandro sees
the church facade illuminated

Travel tip:

The Chiesa di Sant’Alessandro in Colonna in Via Sant’Alessandro in Bergamo is the church of the city’s patron saint.  Outside the church is a Roman column, said to have been erected in the exact spot where Alessandro was executed by the Romans. The column was constructed in the 17th century from Roman fragments and there are various theories about where the pieces came from. The church of Sant’Alessandro in Colonna was rebuilt in the 18th century on the site of an earlier church. Its ornate campanile was completed at the beginning of the 20th century. Over several days each August, the facade of the church is illuminated as part of the Festa di Sant’Alessandro, marking the anniversary of his execution in 303.

Accommodation choices in Bergamo from Booking.com

More reading:

The Bergamo painter who left a visual record of changing society

The Bergamo shoemaker’s son who became internationally acclaimed sculptor

Raphael - the precocious genius from Urbino

Also on this day:

1682: The birth of anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni

1707: The birth of Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni

1866: The birth of philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce

1873: The birth of tenor Enrico Caruso

2003: The death of actor Alberto Sordi

(Picture credits: Nembro church by Giorces via Wikimedia Commons)

(Paintings: Il Martirio di Sant’Alessandro, Galleria dell Accademia Carrara, Bergamo; Madonna col Bambino e santi Ambrogio e Carlo Borromeo, Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, Milan)

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Roberto Bompiani – artist

Prolific painter recreated scenes from ancient Rome

Roberto Bompiani: a self-portrait
painted in about 1896

Artist Roberto Bompiani, who became well known for his paintings depicting Rome in ancient times, was born on this day in 1821 in Rome.

He became a successful landscape and portrait painter and later in his career he also worked as a sculptor.

His portrait of Queen Margherita of Italy, which was painted in 1878, still hangs in the Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome.

From a wealthy family, Bompiani was able to dedicate himself entirely to the study of art and enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome when he was 15. He was awarded a share of a first prize in design along with a fellow student in 1836, not long after joining the Academy. Within three years he was regularly winning prizes for sculpture and painting.   

As a painter, Bompiani depicted historical, mythological, and religious subjects in an idealised style making his figures physically perfect and giving them noble, spiritual expressions. His paintings of scenes from ancient Rome earned him the nickname of ‘The Italian Bouguereau’, referring to a French painter who made modern interpretations of classical subjects and was working at the same time as Bompiani.

An art historian wrote that despite Bompiani’s conservative approach, he showed himself to be open to new ideas and emancipated himself in his best work almost entirely from what was narrow and conventional in the style that had been imposed upon him by his early training.

Bompiani's Two Pompeian Ladies, an example
of his work depicting scenes from ancient Rome

Bompiani earned the attention of the wealthy Borghese family in Rome and painted two canvases recording the visit of Pope Pius IX to the family’s properties in 1854.

In later years, Bompiani painted landscape watercolours and in the 1870s he also began painting portraits. In addition to his painting of the Queen of Italy, he painted a portrait of his own wife and portraits of various members of the Borghese family.

He also painted frescoes for churches and a cemetery in Rome and paintings for a theatre and a church in Santiago in Chile.

Some of his classical works were on display at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and he won an award for his 1872 portrait of his fellow painter Giovanni Battista Canevari, when it was exhibited in Vienna. The painting now hangs in the Academy of San Luca. One of his sculptural works from the 1860s, Sappho, is in the Palazzo Castellani in Rome.

Bompiani served as a professor and ultimately as the president of the Roman Academy of San Luca. He died in Rome in 1908.

One of his sons, Augusto Bompiani, and one of his daughters, Clelia Bompiani, who were both his pupils and both studied at the Academy of San Luca, went on to become professional painters.

The Accademia di San Luca is located
 a few steps from the Trevi Fountain

Travel tip:

The Accademia di San Luca, where Roberto Bompiani and his children studied art, was founded in the 16th century and named after St Luke the Evangelist, the patron saint of painters. It is now located at Piazza Accademia di San Luca close to the Trevi Fountain but was based near the Forum in Rome after it was founded in 1577. The Academy’s original building no longer exists, but the Academy Church of Santi Luca and Martina, which was designed by Pietro da Cortona, still stands overlooking the Forum.

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The Camera dei Deputati has been the permanent
seat of the Chamber of Deputies since 1918

Travel tip:

The Camera dei Deputati - the Chamber of Deputies - one of Italy’s houses of parliament,  meets at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome. The palace was originally designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and completed by Carlo Fontana in 1697 and stands to the north of the Pantheon. The building was originally intended for the nephew of Pope Gregory XV. It was chosen as the seat of the Chamber of Deputies in 1871 but the building proved inadequate for their needs and extensive renovations were required before it became the chamber's permanent home, in 1918.

More reading

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Italy's last universal genius

Pius IX - the longest papal reign in history

Giovanni Boldini - painter who captured elegance of Belle Époque

Also on this day:

1482: The death of sculptor Luca della Robbia

1791: The birth of painter Francesco Hayez

1918: The death of Nobel Prize-winning pacifist Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

1944: The birth of author and politician Raffaele Lauro

1953: The founding of Italian energy giant ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

(Picture credits: Bompiani portrait uploaded by Spino; Accademia San Luca by Warburg; Palazzo Montecitorio by Manfred Heyde; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Matilde Malenchini – painter

The tempestuous life of a talented Tuscan artist

Vincenzo Camuccini's portrait of
Malenchini, from about 1815

The painter Matilde Malenchini was born on this day in 1779 in Livorno in Tuscany. She was well-known for her paintings of church interiors but turned to portrait painting later in life to make money to help her survive after her long relationship with Belgian writer Louis de Potter ended.

Matilde was born into the Meoni family and married the painter and musician Vincenzo Francesco Malenchini at the age of 16. Although they soon separated, she kept his name for the rest of her life.

In 1807 she went to study at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence under the guidance of Pietro Benvenuti. To earn money and practise her art, she copied the works of old Italian and Dutch masters in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

After being given a four-year annual stipend by Elisa Bonaparte, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in 1811, Matilde went to Rome to study at the Pontificia Accademia romana delle belle arti di San Luca. There she met the French Governor of the Papal States, General Francois de Mollis, who was an art collector. He bought 18 of her paintings and helped her establish a studio in the convent of Trinità dei Monti. 

While painting church and convent interiors, she worked with students from the Academie Francaise who were living in the Villa Medici, as well as the up-and-coming Italian artists Antonio Canova and Vincenzo Camuccini. In 1815, Matilde was named a Professor of Merit at the Accademia di San Luca and in the same year Camuccini painted her portrait. The years she spent in Rome proved to be the most productive of her career.

Malenchini's own portrait of the writer
Louis de Potter, her long-time partner

She embarked on a long and intense relationship with Louis de Potter and between 1817 and 1819 they shared a home with the painter Francois-Joseph Navez. The couple attempted to obtain an annulment of Matilde’s previous marriage by appealing to the Roman Curia, but their requests coincided with some scandalous trials involving monks and nuns, which caused the Curia to be more cautious than usual with their decisions. At around the same time, Matilde’s former husband, who was supporting the request, was having problems with the police to further complicate the issue.

In 1820, Matilde had to leave Rome and she returned to Florence where she was named an honorary professor at the Accademia.

De Potter returned to Bruges in 1823 to be with his ailing father, but the following year, after his father’s death, he moved to Brussels and invited Matilde to join him. Their home in the Belgian capital became a meeting place for expatriate Italians and political refugees. With their friend Navez, they organised painting classes. Navez also became a prominent advocate for Belgian independence.

Matilde became restless and travelled for a while before returning to live in Florence. De Potter, who was frustrated at not being able to marry her, ended the relationship in 1826. He later married Sophie van Weydeveldt, 20 years his junior, with whom he had four children.

Although De Potter agreed to give Matilde an annual pension of 1200 francs, the money was spasmodic because of his political problems. He served 18 months in prison after writing a pamphlet denouncing King William I of Belgium and then went into exile in Germany. Matilde turned to portrait painting to make money to keep herself. There was no contact between her and De Potter until 1854, when he wrote her an affectionate letter following the death of his son, and afterwards they maintained contact with each other through letters.

The following year, by which time Matilde was 76, she was accused of pushing one of her maids out of a window after she caught her stealing. She was sentenced to three and a half years detention but the ruling was overturned. However, it was reinstated in 1857 and sadly, one of Matilde’s last paintings was of the interior of the prison in Florence. She died in 1858 in Fiesole in Tuscany at the age of 78.

Livorno, the Tuscan port city where Malenchini
was born, has a network of canals

Travel tip:

Livorno, Malenchini’s birthplace, is the second largest city in Tuscany, with a population of almost 160,000. It has a large commercial port and in many respects is the most modern city in the region, yet there are also many remnants of its history.  Designed by the architect Bernardo Buontalenti at the behest of the House of Medici at the end of the 16th century, Livorno was conceived as an "ideal city" of the Italian Renaissance. Notable are the huge Fortezza Vecchia - the Old Fortress - which was built to protect the port, the fortified walls around the city’s pentagonal plan and the dense network of canals, a kind of “Little Venice”, which were originally created to connect the merchants’ residences with their warehouses.  The city has produced many notable painters, including the 19th century landscape and battlefield painter Giovanni Fattori, and the celebrated modernist painter of portraits and nudes, Amedeo Modigliani.  It was also home to the opera composer, Pietro Mascagni.

The remains of a Roman theatre on a hillside
near the town of Fiesole in Tuscany

Travel tip:

Fiesole, where Malenchini died, is a town of about 14,000 inhabitants occupying an elevated position about 8km (5 miles) northeast of Florence. Since the 14th century, it has been a popular place to live for wealthy Florentines and even to this day remains the richest municipality in the city. Once 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 Romanesque 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.

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati

1911: The birth of composer Nino Rota

1917: The death in World War One of cycling champion Carlo Oriani

1937: The birth of actress Angela Luce

1947: The birth of politician Mario Borghezio

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Flaminio Scala - Renaissance writer and actor

Influential figure in growth of commedia dell’arte

A 16th century painting thought to show Flavio
Scala's commedia dell'arte company, I Gelosi 

The writer, actor and director Flaminio Scala, who is recognised as one of the most important figures in Renaissance theatre, was born on this day in 1552 in Rome.

Commonly known by his stage name Flavio, Scala was the author of the first published collection of scenarios - sketches - from the commedia dell’arte genre.

These scenarios, brought together under the title Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, were short comic plays said to have provided inspiration to playwrights such William Shakespeare and Molière.

They were unusual because the theatre companies were so worried about rival troupes stealing their ideas that publishing them was considered too risky.

Commedia dell’arte was a theatrical form that used improvised dialogue and a cast of masked, colourful stock characters such as Arlecchino, Colombina and Pulcinella. The characters tended to be exaggerated versions of social stereotypes. Figures of authority, such as doctors or city officials, were often portrayed as buffoons, while the servants were much more lovable and sympathetic.

The cover page of Scala's collection
of scenarios, published in 1611

The first record of Scala’s theatrical career suggests he was a member of a touring troupe known as the Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi in Florence from as early as 1577. He became known as Flavio after being given the role in 1610 of the company’s stock innamorato character, who was called Flavio.

Innamorati - lovers - were staple characters in commedia dell’arte, generally seen to be in love with themselves as much as other members of the cast. They were central to the plots of most scenarios.

As well as I Gelosi, Scala worked with a number of other successful commedia dell’arte companies. He can also be said to have been theatre’s first professional producer, having identified and hired an actor to play opposite him as his innamorata. She was Isabella Andreini, the 16-year-old wife of another actor, Francesco Andreini, who was such a success in the role that the company’s stock female lover became known as the Isabella.

Scala’s writing and directing reinforced commedia dell’arte as a highly expressive and physical art form, underlining the importance of body and facial gestures. The 50 scenarios in his collection Il Teatro delle Favole Rappresentative, published in 1611 and sometimes known simply as the Scala collection, did not contain any dialogue. 

They consisted instead of detailed stage direction, descriptions of the actions the characters were required to perform.  Dialogue in commedia dell’arte was improvised, the most successful actors those who could reference topical events or popular culture.

The collection was republished a number of times and, in 1967, appeared in translation for the first time as Scenarios of the Commedia dell'Arte.  More recently, translation of 30 of the scenarios was published as The Commedia dell'Arte of Flaminio Scala: A Translation and Analysis of 30 Scenarios, by Richard Andrews.

Little is known about Scala’s private life, although it is thought he was born into an aristocratic family and fathered one child, Orsola, who herself became an actress. His death was recorded as having occurred in Mantua in 1624.

The facade of the church of San
Luigi dei Francesi in Rome

Travel tip:

Flaminio Scala’s life coincided with that of the temperamental but brilliant painter, Caravaggio, who was active largely in Rome and was a major influence on the art of the Baroque period.  Rome today hosts approximately 25 Caravaggio masterpieces, several of which are on free public display in churches, including the basilicas of Sant’Agostino and Santa Maria del Popolo, which has two of his masterpieces in the Cerasi Chapel, and the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where three Caravaggio paintings can be viewed in the Contarelli Chapel. The Sant’Agostino basilica is in Campo Marzio, where in 1606 the painter killed a man in a row over a woman, after which he spent the rest of his life effectively on the run.

Mantua, like Venice, gives the impression of rising
from the water, in this case the Lago Superiore

Travel tip: 

Mantua, where Flaminio Scala died, is a Renaissance city surrounded on  three sides by lakes, which can create the impression that the city rises from the water in the same way that Venice seems to emerge from the lagoon.  It is a city with a rich artistic and cultural heritage, going back to the time of Virgil, the Roman poet, said to have been born in a village nearby. In the Renaissance, Frederico Gonzaga II and Isabella d’Este presided over one of the finest artistic courts in Europe, to which they invited many musicians, artists and writers, among them Leonardo di Vinci and Raphael. Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo was performed for the first time in Mantua in 1607. More than 200 years later, Giuseppe Verdi set his opera, Rigoletto, in the city.

Also on this day:

1389: The official ‘birthday’ of Cosimo de’ Medici, banker and politician

1871: The birth of Nobel prize winner Grazia Deledda

1966: The birth of rapper and musician Jovanotti

1979: The death on Capri of English actress and singer Gracie Fields

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Mario Berrino - painter

Artist who was also a popular entrepreneur 

Berrino captured many scenes from life on the
coast of Liguria in and near his home in Alassio

The painter and entrepreneur Mario Berrino was born on this day in 1920 in Alassio, the coastal town in Liguria where he spent almost all his life.

Berrino took up painting full time in his 50s and his simple yet atmospheric and evocative works became sought after by collectors, often selling for hundreds of euros at auction.

Alassio has a gallery dedicated entirely to his work, as does the jet set playground of Monte Carlo, about 100km (62 miles) along the riviera coastline to the west, not far from Italy’s border with France.

Before that, Berrino had lived a colourful life in and around his home town, his entrepreneurial spirit shining through in many projects that left a lasting impression on Alassio.

As a young man, he helped his father and brothers run a bar and restaurant in Alassio, the Caffè Roma, which earned fame in the years between the First and Second World Wars as a hang-out for writers, artists, and musicians, among them the American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was a frequent visitor to Italy and became a close friend of Berrino.

It was when Hemingway was in Alassio in 1953 that Berrino hatched the idea of attaching brightly coloured tiles to the low wall of a public garden opposite the Caffè Roma bearing the signatures of artists who had visited the restaurant.

Il Muretto di Alassio, which Berrino created on a
wall outside the Caffè Roma, still attracts visitors

He asked a ceramicist to create some tiles and he and Hemingway crossed the road between the Caffè Roma and the garden one evening, using cement to attach the first three - one bearing Hemingway’s own signature and a second with the signature of a guitarist Cosimo de Ceciglie. The third carried all four signatures of a singing group, Il Quartetto Cetra.

The wall became known as Il Muretto di Alassio and remains a tourist attraction today, with close to 1,000 tiles, the criteria for inclusion expanded to include personalities from cinema, television, fashion, entertainment and sport.

In the same year as the wall came into being, Berrino launched a beauty contest, Miss Muretto, which was held every year until 2013. The winners include several women who have gone on to achieve a degree of fame, including the TV presenters Simona Ventura, Maria Teresa Ruta, Elisa Isoardi and Melissa Satta.

Berrino launched himself with enthusiasm into several other entrepreneurial ideas, cashing in on Alassion’s reputation for invigorating sea air by selling l’Aria Pura di Alassio in 500 litre jars, for which he received orders from all over Europe.

Berrino on the occasion of a 90th
birthday celebration in Alassio

He also successfully organised the Sciaccagiara, in which Formula One racing drivers including world champion James Hunt and the popular Swiss-Italian Clay Regazzoni, raced each other on steamrollers.

He was a popular figure in Alassio, usually seen driving his red Fiat Ghia 500 Jolly, a specially adapted Fiat 500 with a removable canopy top and wicker seats that was favoured by celebrities and VIPs ranging from the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis to Italian Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer.

Berrino set aside a wall of the Caffè Roma, called La buca del Muretto, to allow artists to exhibit, which was his inspiration to take up painting himself. Using watercolour, tempera, encaustic and oil techniques, he had become an established painter in the 1960s and from 1976 onwards devoted himself to painting full time.

Two years earlier, he had survived the ordeal of being kidnapped by a gang who demanded 300 million lire be paid for his release. Berrino managed to escape from captivity to the safety of a Carabinieri station.

Berrino remains a personality held in deep affection by the town of Alassio, who staged a celebration of his life on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 2020, nine years after his death in Alassio in August 2011.

A painting by Berrino that captures the beauty
of Alassio's location on the coast of Liguria

Travel tip:

Alassio is an attractive town on the Riviera di Ponente, the stretch of coastline that stretches southwest of the Ligurian capital of Genoa to the town of Ventimiglia, close to the French border. Renowned for its sandy beaches and blue seas, Alassio is popular for bathing in the summer and as a health resort in the winter.  It is a tourist-friendly town not least for having a narrow, pedestrianised street known as Il Budello which runs the length of the town just a few steps away from the beach. The English composer Edward Elgar is said to have written an overture while staying in Alassio during the winter of 1903-04, having been drawn to the area by its reputation for mild winters.  Read more...

The Caffè Roma remains a thriving
business in Alassio today

Travel tip:

The Caffè Roma, in Via Dante Alighieri, remains a thriving part of the life of Alassio, a symbolic monument to the town and its history as one of the resorts most favoured by writers, artists and musicians. The Muretto di Alassio remains a draw for visitors, who often spend many minutes trying to decipher the signatures on the ceramic tiles. The restaurant and cafe itself is housed in an attractive building in the Italian variant of Art Nouveau known as Stile Liberty.

Also on this day:

1929: The birth of motorcycle world champion Carlo Ubbiali

1955: The birth of Mafia ‘pentito’ Leonardo Messina

1958: The birth of tenor Andrea Bocelli

1979: The birth of writer Roberto Saviano

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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo – painter and printmaker

Famous artist’s son developed his own style

Many of Tiepolo's works, such as this carnival scene
in Venice, featured the comic character Pulcinella

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who became famous for his paintings of Venetian life and of the clown, Pulcinella, was born on this day in 1727 in Venice.

Also known as Giandomenico Tiepolo, he was one of the nine children born to the artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his wife, Maria Guardi, the sister of painters Francesco and Giovanni Guardi.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Giandomenico inherited the talent to go into the same profession as his father and uncles and, by the age of 13, he had become the elder Tiepolo’s chief assistant. His younger brother, Lorenzo, also became a painter and worked as an assistant to his father.

By the age of 20, Giandomenico was already producing his own work for commissions. However, he continued to accompany his father when he received his major commissions in Italy, Germany and Spain.

He assisted his father with a grand stairwell fresco for a prince’s palace in Wurzburg in Bavaria in 1750 and with decorations for the Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vicenza in 1757 and the Royal Palace of Madrid in 1770.

The elder Tiepolo died while in Madrid and after Giandomenico returned to live in Venice, his own style of painting began to develop. His portraits and scenes of life in Venice were realistic and characterised by movement and his use of colour. He drew inspiration for his paintings from the lives of both peasants and aristocrats.

One of the panels from the Via Crucis cycle,
in the Oratory of the Crucifix at San Polo

Giandomenico also received many commissions for drawings and reproduced his own and his father’s paintings as etchings.

He produced more than 100 separate sketches of Pulcinella, a physically deformed clown who was the standard character of commedia dell’arte in Venice and later became the Punch in Punch and Judy. The sketches were created as entertainment for children, but also poked fun at the pretensions and behaviour of the viewers of Pulcinella’s shows.

He accepted commissions for religious paintings also. Many can be seen in the Chiesa di San Polo in Venice, including the 14 panels of his Via Crucis cycle, which can be seen in the adjacent Oratory of the Crucifix.

Frescoes that Giandomenico painted for the Tiepolo family villa at Zianigo near Mirano were removed from the walls of the building at the beginning of the last century and nearly sold to a French buyer, but the export of the paintings was blocked by an Italian Government minister. They were subsequently acquired by the city of Venice and put on display at Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, in a replica of their original arrangement at the villa.  

The paintings were executed between 1759 and 1797 solely for the entertainment of Giandomenico and his family. The ones featuring Pulcinella were the last to be painted and are perhaps the most famous of the cycle. Giandomenico was said to have been obsessed by the commedia dell’arte character during the last years of his life and is thought to have used him in his paintings as a vehicle to reflect his own irreverent and sarcastic spirit.

Giandomenico Tiepolo died in Venice in 1804, aged 76.

The Villa Valmarana ai Nani in Vincenza, where
Tiepolo and his father painted frescoes

Travel tip:  

Villa Valmarana ai Nani was built in 1669 near the gates of the city of Vicenza. The villa takes its name from the 17 stone sculptures of nani, dwarves, that once decorated the garden and have now been placed on the walls surrounding the villa. It is believed they were sculpted by Francesco Uliaco based on drawings by Giandomenico Tiepolo. The villa is famous for the frescoes by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo in the palazzina, owner’s residence, which were commissioned by Giustino Valmarana in 1757. The present day Valmarana family still live in the villa.

Frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo on display
at Ca' Rezzonico, the palace on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal in Venice, which now houses Giandomenico Tiepolo’s frescoes on its second floor, was built in the 16th century to a design by the architect Baldassare Longhena. Before the building was complete the architect died and the unfinished construction was later bought by Giambattista Rezzonico, who commissioned Giorgio Massari to complete it. In the 19th century it was purchased by Pen Browning, the painter son of the poet, Robert Browning. The poet died there during a visit in 1889. The frescoes removed from Giandomenico’s villa went on display in Ca ‘Rezzonico in 1936. The palace is also now home to the Museum of 18th Century Venice.

Also on this day:

1580: The death of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy

1585: The death of Venetian composer Andrea Gabrieli

1860: The birth of New York crime fighter Joe Petrosino

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