Ugo Mulas - photographer

Images of street life in Milan and of New York art scene won acclaim

Ugo Mulas began his photography
career in Milan in the 1950s

The photographer Ugo Mulas, much admired for the way he captured the street atmosphere of postwar Milan and for his portraits of Andy Warhol and others in the Bohemian New York art scene of the 1960s, was born on this day in 1928 in Pozzolengo, a small town near the southern tip of Lake Garda.

At one time part of Milan’s fashion community, another of Mulas’s claims to fame is having been the photographer who discovered Veruschka, a German aristocrat who became part of the supermodel generation of Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton in the 60s. 

Known for his meticulous approach to composition and lighting, and for the candid, spontaneous style of his work, illness denied Mulas a long life but he is widely seen as a pioneering figure in photography who had a profound impact on the art form.

Little is known about Mulas’s early life other than that he studied at a classical lyceum and moved to Milan initially to study law, but then switched his focus to art, enrolling at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.

He was drawn towards the company of the artists and intellectuals who frequented the nearby Bar Jamaica. 

A fashionable hang-out at different times for artists such as Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, writers Allen Ginsberg and Salvatore Quasimodo, designers Achille Castiglioni and Ettore Sottsass and actors Dario Fo and Mariangela Melato, it was the Jamaica and its clientele that sparked Mulas to begin taking photographs.

Armed with a compact Leica camera, Mulas developed an eye for pictures that captured the essence of everyday life. In the Brera and beyond, around Milano Centrale station, where people from all walks of life paused in the waiting rooms, and in other locations, he created a visual record of life in a city at the forefront of Italy’s postwar recovery in the early 1950s.

Mulas first gave notice of his photographic talent
with his street scenes in postwar Milan 

He became a regular at the Jamaica, where in addition to taking photographs he made numerous contacts in the fashion industry and the media, which led to his first paid assignment in 1954, when he was invited by the Venice Biennale to cover the exhibition as its official photographer. It was a relationship that would continue until 1972.

The following year he opened his own studio in Milan and his work would soon be illustrating the pages of publications such as Settimo Giorno, Rivista Pirelli, Domus and Vogue, as well as supporting advertising campaigns for clients including Pirelli and Olivetti.

Away from fashion, art and architecture, Mulas still enjoyed taking his camera on to the streets to photograph Italians in their day-to-day life. It was while he was shooting street scenes in Florence, in 1959, that his eyes were drawn towards a woman whose 6ft 3ins frame would make her stand out in any crowd.

This was Veruschka von Lehndorff, a German aristocrat whose father, a member of the German resistance movement in World War Two, had been executed in 1944 for plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. She was in Florence in the late 50s to further her study of art.

Mulas’s striking images of her long-limbed elegance found their way to the desk of Diana Vreeland, editor of the US edition of Vogue. It was the start of a modelling career that would see Veruschka paid $10,000 for a single day’s shooting at her peak.

Among the projects for which Mulas won particular acclaim were his 1964 series on the Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana, his reportage on the Sculture nelle città exhibition in Spoleto in 1962 and the series devoted to Ossi di sepia, the collection of poems by Eugenio Montale.

Mulas came into contact with the American art scene at the 1964 Venice Biennale, where his encounters with a number of American artists, art critics, and the art dealer Leo Castelli led him to travel to New York City.

Andy Warhol (right), with the American poet Gerard
Malanga, photographed by Ugo Mulas in New York

The New York art scene in the 1960s was a vibrant and transformative period, marked by a variety of groundbreaking movements and innovative artists.  Mulas was drawn in particular to the Bohemian atmosphere of the Pop Art scene. He won the trust of artists such as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein and installed himself as a fly on the wall within the studios of six artists he would follow closely over three visits: those of Johns, Lichtenstein, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Barnett Newman, and Robert Rauschenberg. 

His collection of more than 100 photographs from this period became the subject of an exhibition and a book. 

From the late 1960s, Mulas began working in theatre, contributing to the stage design for many  productions at Milan's Piccola Scala theatre and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

As a photographer, Mulan would continually experiment, always pursuing new ideas for composition, plot and framing. Some of his contemporaries suggested that through his art he sought to understand the depths of human souls. In the late 1960s, he began work on a new series, entitled La Verifiche - the Verification - that was an attempt to analyse the photographic process and identify its value.

It turned out to be his last work of substance. Diagnosed with cancer in 1970, he continued to work for as long as he had the strength but in March 1973, soon after the release of his last book, La Photographie, in which he recorded all his ideas and observations on art and photography, he died at home in Milan at the age of 45, survived by his wife, Antonia “Nini” Bongiorno.

Before he died, Mulas established the Archivio Ugo Mulas, in Via Giovanni Battista Piranesi in Milan, which houses, manages copyright and sales and promotes the artistic work of Ugo Mulas.

The Castello di Pozzolengo in the historic town
close to Lake Garda dates back to the 10th century

Travel tip:

Pozzolengo, where Mulas was born, is a small town in Lombardy, close to the border with the Veneto region and about halfway between Brescia and Verona. Situated just a few kilometres south of Lake Garda, it is surrounded by low hills lined with vines. Its origins can be traced to the Bronze Age, while Roman relics have also been discovered in the area. It has a mediaeval castle, built in the 10th century at the highest point of Monte Fluno, and a 12th century Benedictine monastery, the Abbazia di San Virgilio, now converted to a golf resort. The town’s vineyards produce the Lugana DOC wine, while other local products include saffron and a salami called salame morenico di Pozzolengo. In the 19th century Pozzolengo was the scene of a number of battles which led to the independence and unification of Italy, in particular, of the Battle of Solferino and San Martino in June 1859. Fought between the Austrian and Franco-Sardinian armies with the participation of over 230,000 soldiers, the battle resulted in a victory for the Franco-Sardinian forces, bringing to an end the Second Italian War of Independence.

The Palazzo Brera in Milan is home to the 
prestigious Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera

Travel tip:

The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, sometimes shortened to Accademia di Brera, where Ugo Mulas studied after initially pursuing a law degree, is now a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Via Brera in Milan, in a building it shares with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public museum for art. The academy was founded in 1776 by Maria Theresa of Austria and shared its premises with other cultural and scientific institutions. The main building, the Palazzo Brera, was built in about 1615 to designs by Francesco Maria Richini.  The Brera district is so named because in around the ninth century, for military purposes, it was turned into a ‘brayda’ – a Lombardic word meaning ‘an area cleared of trees’. For a long time a magnet for artists and writers, the Brera district remains one of Milan’s most fashionable neighbourhoods, its narrow streets lined with trendy bars and restaurants. As the traditional home of many artists and writers, the area has a Bohemian feel that has brought comparisons with Montmartre in Paris.

Also on this day:

1665: The death of painter and printmaker Elisabetta Sirani

1809: The birth of sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni

1909: The birth of movie actor Lamberto Maggiorani

1938: The birth of journalist and talk show host Maurizio Costanzo

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Giambettino Cignaroli - painter

Artist celebrated in home city of Verona 

A self-portrait painted by Cignaroli in
1758 ( Kunsthistorisches, Vienna)

The painter and writer Giambettino Cignaroli was born on this day in 1706 in Verona, where he spent much of his career and became the city’s leading painter in the Rococo era. 

Primarily a painter of religious scenes, he became known also for spiritual images and celebratory historical painting.

His most famous works include Death of Cato and Death of Socrates, two canvases of Greco-Roman episodes which he painted for the Austrian governor of Lombardy, Count Karl von Firmian; his Virgin and Child With Saints Jerome and Alexander, for the Chiesa di San Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo; and the Death of Rachel for the Scuola Grande della Carità, now part of the Galleria dell 'Accademia in Venice.

He was thought to have painted a portrait of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he visited Verona at the age of 13, although some experts attribute this work to Cignaroli’s nephew, Saverio Dalla Rosa. 

Although his workshop was in his home city, Cignaroli travelled around northern Italy in the 1730s and ‘40s, when he often worked in Venice, Chioggia, Bergamo and Brescia. He was also active in cities such as Milan, Parma, Turin, Bologna and Ferrara. 

Other notable works can be found in the Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Brescia, the basilica of San Giovanni Battista in Lonato del Garda, and the Chiesa di San Marco in Bergamo.

Cignaroli's Death of Socrates, which is now on
display in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest

Cignaroli was born into an artistic family. His half-brothers included a sculptor, Diomiro, and painters Gian Domenico and Giuseppe. Two of his father’s cousins, Pietro and Martino, were also painters, as was his uncle, Leonardo Seniore.

After studying rhetoric at a Jesuit school, he became interested in painting himself. He became a pupil of Sante Prunati before attending the painting school of Antonio Balestra. 

He then spent time in Venice, where he studied the works of masters such as Titian, Paolo Veronese and Palma il Vecchio before returning to Verona to set up his own workshop in 1728, which would become his permanent base. 

By mid-century, his fame had spread beyond Italy’s borders, and his works were sought after by monarchs and elites from Spain, Northern Europe, and Russia. Although he never left Italy, turning down invitations to work at the royal courts in Madrid and Vienna, his clients included the Elector of Saxony, the King of Poland and the Tsarina of Russia.

An altarpiece by Cignaroli in the
Church of San Lorenzo in Brescia

A  monumental altarpiece by Cignaroli in the Prado Museum in Madrid, depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints Lucia, Lorenzo, Anthony of Padua, Barbara and the guardian angel, was commissioned in 1759 by the Duke and Duchess of Parma on behalf of Elisabetta Farnese, who was Queen of Spain by marriage to King Philip V. 

Cignaroli helped establish Verona’s art academy - now known as the Accademia Cignaroli di Pittura e Scultura - in 1766.  

As a writer, Cignaroli wrote poetry and history, including a series of biographies of Veronese painters.

He died in December, 1770 and was buried in Verona in the church of Saints Siro and Libera, a short distance from the Accademia Cignaroli. He never married and there was no record of any children.

In November 2019, the portrait of the young Mozart some experts attribute to him was sold at auction at Christie's in Paris for more than €4 million. 

The courtyard of the Cignaroli Accademia di Belli
Arti di Verona, established during the painter's life

Travel tip:

The Cignaroli Academy is one of the oldest academies of fine arts in the world and one of the five historical Italian Academies.  Also known as the Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona, it was founded in 1764 by Giambettino Cignaroli and secured lasting recognition for the Verona school of painting. The institution faced challenges during periods of social and political upheaval but survived and prospered due to figures such as Saverio Dalla Rosa, Cignaroli’s nephew, who worked to preserve Verona’s artistic heritage and opened part of the academy as a public gallery. Today, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Verona maintains its prestigious standing, offering art courses as well as exhibitions open to the public. Situated in Via San Carlo, near Ponte Pietra, it is open on Monday to Friday from 9am until noon, and from 3-7pm.

The Church of Saints Siro and Libera was built
within the remains of Verona's Teatro Romano

Travel tip:

The Church of Saints Siro and Libera, where Cignaroli was buried, can be found in the Veronetta district of Verona, within the archaeological site which includes the ruins of the Teatro Romano, an open-air theatre built in the 1st century BC at the foot of Colle San Pietro, on the left bank of the Adige, which is one of the best preserved Roman theatres in northern Italy.  According to historical accounts, the church owes its unusual location, directly overlooking what would have been the theatre’s stage, to the first Christian mass in the city of Verona being celebrated in an archway of the theatre. It was above this archway that in 913 Giovanni, Bishop of Cremona, built the church. The church was modified and expanded in the early 17th century to include the gabled, west-facing façade, accessed via a staircase divided into two branches.

Also on this day:

1742: The death of mathematician Luigi Guido Grandi

1914: The birth of car designer Giuseppe ‘Nuccio’ Bertone

1927: The birth of actress Gina Lollobrigida

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Vecchietta – painter and sculptor

Early Renaissance craftsman left a rich legacy of work in Tuscany

The Vision of Santa Sorore, part of a fresco cycle by
Vecchietta at the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala

The artist Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni, who later became known as Vecchietta, ‘the little old one,’ died on this day in 1480 in Siena.

Vecchietta was a renowned painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and architect of the Renaissance. He was born in Siena and baptised on 11 August, 1410 in the city. He is believed to have become the pupil of a Sienese artist and his name has been linked with those of Sassetta, Taddeo di Bartolo and Jacopo della Quercia.

Much of Vecchietta’s work has remained in Siena, some of it in the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, which caused him to be also known as pittor della spedale  - painter of the hospital. With branches in many other towns, the hospital was one of the largest and most famous of its kind in mediaeval Italy.

He painted a series of frescoes for the Pellegrinaio - Pilgrim Hall - at the hospital along with Domenico di Bartolo and Priamo della Quercia. These included The Founding of the Spedale and The Vision of Santa Sorore, which depicts a dream of the mother of the cobbler Sorore, the mythical founder of the hospital.

In about 1444, Vecchietta decorated the Cappella di Sacra Chiodo, the old sacristry, with his work. His frescoes were of Annunciation, Nativity, and Last Judgments scenes and an Allegory of The Ladder, depicting children climbing to heaven.

Vecchietta's Arliquiera, originally in the hospital's
old sacristy, is now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale

He created a bronze figure of the risen Christ, which was signed and dated 1476, for the high altar of the Church of the Santissima Annunziata, which was within the hospital complex. This is said to show the influence of the sculptor Donatello, who Vecchietta is believed to have met in Siena in the 1450s.

The Arliquiera, a painted wardrobe for holy relics, was decorated by Vecchietta for the old sacristry of Santa Maria della Scala in 1445. It is now in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale - National Picture Gallery - of Siena.

Vecchietta and his pupils, who included Francesco di Giorgio and Neroccio de’ Landi, created a series of frescoes for the Baptistry of San Giovanni at Siena Cathedral between 1447 and 1450.

A large bronze ciborium, originally created by Vecchietta for the hospital in the 1460s, was moved to the Cathedral after his death. 

A bronze tomb statue of a jurist from Siena was created by Vecchietta for the church of San Domenico and this is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He also sculpted life-size figures of St Peter and St Paul for the Loggia della Mercanzia and a sculpture of St Martin for the Palazzo Saracini. 

Vecchietta made a silver statue of St Catherine of Siena when she was canonised in 1461, but this work disappeared after the siege of Siena in 1565.

In Pienza, just outside Siena, there is a painting of the Assumption created by Vecchietta in 1461 for Pope Pius II. 

A panel depicting the Madonna, which was created by Vecchietta, is in the Uffizi in Florence and there is a painting of Saint Peter Martyr by Vecchietta at the Palazzo Cini gallery in Venice. The British Library in London has a manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy containing illuminations by Vecchietta.

Considered to have been among the outstanding Sienese artists of the 15th century,  Vecchietta died, aged nearly 70, on June 6, 1480 in Siena. He had previously designed a funerary chapel for himself and his wife in Santa Maria della Scala.

Siena's Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta
is considered an architectural masterpiece

Travel tip:

Siena in Tuscany is well known as the venue for the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena. The race starts from Piazza del Campo, a shell-shaped open area which is regarded as one of Europe’s finest mediaeval squares. It was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between three communities that eventually merged to form the city of Siena. The piazza, built between 1287 and 1355, consists of nine sections of fan-like brick pavement said to symbolise the Madonna's cloak said to protect the city in dark times.  The Campo is dominated by the red Palazzo Pubblico and its tower, Torre del Mangia. The city’s cathedral, which houses works by Vecchietta, is considered a masterpiece of Italian Romanesque Gothic architecture.

Vasari's 'wall of windows' became the space
where the Medici displayed their art collection

Travel tip:

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which houses works by Vecchietta, was originally created as a suite of offices - uffici - for the administration of Cosimo I de’ Medici. The architect, Giorgio Vasari, created a wall of windows on the upper storey and from about 1580, the Medici began to use this well-lit space to display their art treasures, which was the start of one of the oldest and most famous art galleries in the world. The present day Uffizi Gallery, in Piazzale degli Uffizi, is open from 8.15 am to 6.50 pm from Tuesday to Sunday.

Also on this day:

1513: The Battle of Novara

1772: The birth of Maria Theresa, the last Holy Roman Empress

1861: The death of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

1896: The birth of Italo Balbo, Mussolini’s heir apparent 

1926: The birth of auto engineer Giotto Bizzarrini

1979: The birth of football coach Roberto De Zerbi

 

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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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Francesco Hayez - painter

Artist who pushed boundaries of sensuality

Francesco Hayez, as he appeared
in an 1820s self-portrait

The painter Francesco Hayez, regarded as the father of the Milanese Romanticism movement in the mid-19th century and an artist renowned for his depictions of historical events and for his political allegories, was born on this day in 1791 in Venice.

His father, a fisherman, was French in origin and married a girl from Murano called Chiara Torcello, although they were a relatively poor family and Francesco was largely brought up by his wife’s sister, who had the good fortune to marry Giovanni Binasco, a wealthy ship-owner who dealt in antiques and collected art.

It was Binasco who fostered in Hayez his love of painting and after initially beginning an apprenticeship as an art restorer became a pupil in the studio of the Venetian painter Francesco Maggiotto. He was admitted to the New Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1806.

Hayez moved to Rome in 1809 after winning a one-year scholarship at the Accademia di San Luca.  In the event, he stayed in Rome until 1814, then moved to Naples where he was commissioned by Joachim Murat, the  French military commander and statesman who was King of Naples under Napoleonic rule, to paint a major work. 

By the mid-1830s, Hayez had become interested in the growing Risorgimento movement, the proponents of which foresaw an Italy liberated from foreign control in which artistic expression could thrive. He moved to Milan, where he met like-minded painters and writers at the Salotto Maffei, the salon hosted by Clara Maffei, whose portrait Maffei's husband commissioned Hayez to paint. 

Hayez's 1867 painting, The destruction
of the Temple of Jerusalem

It was in Milan that he established himself at the centre of intellectual life, being held in such high regard that in 1850 he was appointed director of the Brera Academy, where he remained for the rest of his working life. His pupils included Alessandro Focosi, Angelo Pietrasanta and Francesco Valaperta.

Hayez’s output was substantial and varied throughout his career, from biblical themes to grand works depicting key contemporary political and social figures in settings from Italian history. 

He had a particular penchant for paintings involving semi-clothed Odalisques, a favorite topic of Romantic painters. These women were female attendants in Turkish harems under Ottoman rule but the term came to mean a concubine in western usage, and their depiction in historical works allowed artists the ability to paint scenes that otherwise would not be deemed acceptable in 19th century society.

Later, Hayez focussed more and more on allegorical themes, often with strong patriotic or political connotations.

The allegorical painting, Il bacio, is seen
by some as Hayez's finest work

It was during this phase that he produced one of his most famous works, and one that many of his contemporaries regarded as his best, Il bacio - The Kiss - painted in 1859.

Il bacio is notable first for the passion with which the male figure kisses the woman, one hand at the back of her head while the other caresses her face, a sensual echo of his much earlier work, L'ultimo bacio di Romeo e Giulietta - The Last Kiss of Romeo and Juliet - painted in 1823, in Romeo’s hand on Juliet’s lower back, pulling her closer to him, was seen as somewhat risqué at the time.

It was seen as having a political message, too. Painted at a time when Milan and much of northern Italy was under the control of the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, Il bacio was interpreted as showing a young Italian soldier kissing goodbye to his lover before going off to fight for Italy against the Austro-Hungarians. 

This was reinforced in a later version - Hayez is thought to have painted five versions in total - in which the red and green in the male figure’s costume, juxtaposed to a white shawl that has fallen on to some nearby steps, is seen to represent the Italian tricolore, and the blue and white of the woman’s clothing, next to the red of the man’s tights, is taken to represent the French flag, symbolising the alliance between Italy and France that ultimately brought about Italian unification.

Hayez was in demand also for his portraits, often commissioned by the nobility but also by his fellow artists and musicians. In the late stages of his career, he was known to have made use of photographs, sparing his subjects the need to pose for long periods. 

He died in Milan in 1892 at the age of 91.

A canal in Murano, flanked by the examples of
the island's characteristic coloured houses

Travel tip:

Murano, the home of Francesco Hayez’s mother, is a group of islands in the Venetian lagoon about a kilometre across the water from Venice’s northern shore. Like its neighbour, it has a network of canals. Historically a fishing port and a centre for salt production, nowadays it is famous for its multi-coloured houses and glass factories and attracts crowds of tourists, although this does not detract from its charm. The island is proud of its glass-making history, which can be studied at the Museo del Vetro, on Fondamenta Giustinian, but aggressive sales techniques and cheap imports masquerading as Murano glass have sullied its reputation in recent years.

Hotels in Murano by Booking.com

The Palazzo Brera is home to the Milan's
renowned Accademia di Belle Arti

Travel tip:

The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, sometimes shortened to Accademia di Brera, where Francesco Hayez was the director, is now a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Via Brera in Milan, in a building it shares with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public museum for art, which houses the original version of Il bacio. The academy was founded in 1776 by Maria Theresa of Austria and shared its premises with other cultural and scientific institutions, including an astronomical observatory, botanical garden, school of philosophy and law, laboratories for physics and chemistry, and a library. The main building, the Palazzo Brera, was built in about 1615 to designs by Francesco Maria Richini.

Find a hotel in Milan with Booking.com

More reading:

How Giovanni Mazzini inspired the Risorgimento movement

Baldassare Verazzi, the painter who captured the Five Days of Milan uprising

The 18th century master of frescoes who became court painter to Napoleon

Also on this day:

1482: The death of sculptor Luca della Robbia

1821: The birth of painter Roberto Bompiani

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

1944: The birth of writer and politician Raffaele Lauro

1953: The founding of oil and gas company ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

(Paintings: Hayez's Self-Portrait in a Group of Friends (1824), Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan; The Destruction of The Temple of Jerusalem (1867), Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice; Il bacio (1859), Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan)

(Picture credits: Palazzo Brera by MarkusMark via Wikimedia Commons)

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Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo – artist

Painter’s expressive style was the start of Mannerism

Jacopo Pontormo's masterpiece, The
Deposition from the Cross

Painter Jacopo Carucci, often referred to simply as Pontormo, was born on this day in 1494 in Pontorme near Empoli in Tuscany.

Pontormo is considered to be the founder of the Mannerist style of painting in the later years of the Italian high renaissance, as he was capable of blending Michelangelo’s use of colour and monumental figures with the metallic rigidity of northern painters such as Albrecht Dürer. His work represents a distinct stylistic shift from the art typical of the Florentine Renaissance.

According to Giorgio Vasari in his book, The Lives of the Artists, Pontormo’s father was also a painter but he became an orphan at the age of ten. As a young art apprentice he moved around a lot, staying with Leonardo da Vinci, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo and Andrea del Sarto.

Pope Leo X, passing through Florence in 1515 on a journey, commissioned the young Pontormo to fresco the Pope’s Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella.

Pontormo also participated in the decoration of the nuptial chamber of Pierfrancesco Borgherini with his Stories of Joseph, four paintings that are now in the National Gallery in London.

According to Vasari, the model for the boy seated on the step in one of the pictures was Pontormo’s young apprentice, Bronzino.

In 1522, when the plague broke out in Florence, Pontormo went to stay at a cloistered Carthusian monastery, the Certosa di Galluzzo, where he painted a series of frescoes on the passion and resurrection of Christ, but sadly these have been damaged over the years.

Pontormo’s surviving masterpiece is considered to be The Deposition from the Cross, a large altarpiece canvas in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence.

Pontormo's portrait, The Halberdier, was once
the most expensive painting in the world

In the last few years of his life, Pontormo worked on frescoes for the choir of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, but only the drawings for these have survived. The artist died, aged 62, in January 1557 before completing this work.

According to Vasari, Pontormo ‘was buried in the first cloister of the Church of the Servite friars under the scene he had previously painted there of the Visitation.’ This is the church of Santissima Annunziata in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

His body was moved in 1562 to the chapel devoted to artists and placed under the Trinity, which had been painted by his pupil, Bronzino.

Vasari portrays Pontormo as withdrawn, neurotic and miserly, but subsequent art historians have pointed out that the two were rivals for Medici commissions, which might have influenced Vasari’s judgment.

Pontormo’s work was out of fashion for centuries, but there has recently been renewed interest in him from art historians. Between 1989 and 2002, Pontormo’s portrait of The Halberdier held the title of the world’s most expensive painting by an Old Master.

The church of San Michele in Pontorme, Empoli, is just
a few steps from the house in which Pontormo was born

Travel tip:

The village of Pontorme, where Jacopo Carucci was born, is now a district of the town of Empoli, which can be found 20km (12 miles) southwest of Florence. Pontorme is essentially the network of streets around the church of San Michele Arcangelo. The house where Carucci spent his early years is now a museum in which visitors can see objects and artworks that include preparatory sketches for the altarpiece depicting Saints John the Evangelist and the Archangel Michael from the church of San Michele, a page from the painter’s diary and pieces of ceramic cookware uncovered during the building’s restoration.  The house is close to the church of San Michele in Via Pontorme, who can arrange visits.

The loggia facade of the Basilica della Santissima
Annunziata in Florence, where Carucci was buried

Travel tip:

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, where Carucci was buried, is a Renaissance-style basilica in Florence. Considered the mother church of the Servite Order, it is located at the northeastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata near the city centre. The facade of the church is by the architect Giovanni Battista Caccini, added in 1601 to imitate the Renaissance-style loggia of Brunelleschi's facade of the Foundling Hospital, which defines the eastern side of the piazza. The building opposite the Foundling Hospital, designed by Sangallo the Elder, was also given a Brunelleschian facade in the 1520s.

Also on this day:

1671: The birth of Gian Gastone de’ Medici, the last Medici to rule Florence

1751: The birth of Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia

1981: The birth of celebrity chef Simone Rugiati


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Corrado Cagli - painter

Jewish artist who fought in World War II as a US soldier

Corrado Cagli, pictured in his studio in Rome
in around 1969

The painter Corrado Cagli, one of the outstanding figures in the New Roman school that emerged in the early part of the 20th century, was born in Ancona on this day in 1910. 

He moved with his family to Rome in 1915 at the age of five and by the age of 17 had created his first significant work, a mural painted on a building in Via Sistina, the street that links Piazza Barberini with the Spanish Steps in the historic centre of the city.

The following year he painted another mural inside a palazzo on the Via del Vantaggio, not far from Piazza del Popolo.  In 1932, he held his first personal exhibition at Rome’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna.

At this stage, despite being both Jewish and gay, Cagli had the support of the Fascist government, who commissioned him and others to produce mosaics and murals for public buildings.

Although he would go on to experiment in neo-Cubist style and metaphysical styles, the aim of the Scuola Romana he sought to establish with fellow artists such as Giuseppe Capogrossi and Emanuele Cavalli was to reaffirm the principles of classical and Renaissance art.

However, in 1938, when the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini stepped up his persecution of Jews and other minorities, Cagli sought refuge in Paris and later fled to New York.

A detail from Cagli's 1936 painting, The Battle of San Martino,
the final battle of the Second Italian War of Independence

Not knowing when or if he might return to Italy, Cagli became an American  citizen, even enlisting in the US Army. He went back to Europe as a soldier, taking part in the 1944 Normandy landings and seeing frontline combat fought in Belgium and Germany.

In fact, in an episode in his tour of duty that would have a profound effect on his life, he was part of a battalion that liberated Jewish prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, in 1945. While he was there, Cagli made a series of dramatic drawings.

In 1948, Cagli finally returned to Rome to take up permanent residence again. At that time, he began to experiment in various abstract and non-figurative techniques, including metaphysical and neo-Cubist.

The recipient in 1946 of a Guggenheim award, in 1954 he was recognised with a Marzotto award, made by the Marzotto fashion company in Valdagno, in the Veneto between 1951 and 1968 to artists and thinkers who contributed to the cultural rebirth of Italy after the war.

In later life, he was the official banner painter for the Palio di Siena, the twice-yearly horse race around Siena’s Piazza del Campo, for which he had a particular fascination.

Corrado’s younger sister, Ebe, was a writer who also moved to the United States to escape Mussolini’s race laws.  She married an academic, Abraham Seidenberg, and did not return to Italy.

Cagli died in Rome in 1976.

Ancona's Cathedral of San Ciriaco, which occupies an
elevated position on the site of a former acropolis

Travel tip:

Ancona, where Cagli lived until he was five years old, is a bustling port with a population of almost 102,000, situated on the Adriatic coast in the Marche region. Although the area around the port has an industrial feel, there are some notable beaches nearby of which the Passetto is the best known.  There is a good deal of history in the older part of the city,  some of it bearing witness to its Greek and Roman past, as well as the Cathedral of San Ciriaco, which has mixed Romanesque-Byzantine and Gothic elements, and stands on a hill on the site of the former acropolis of the Greek city.  The 18m-high Arch of Trajan, built in honour of the emperor who built the city’s harbour, is regarded as one of the finest Roman monuments in the Marche region. The 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.

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Siena's beautiful Piazza del Campo, where the Palio di Siena
horse race is staged on tow dates every summer

Travel tip:

The shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form Siena, is regarded as one of Europe's finest medieval squares, looked over by the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia.  The red brick paving, fanning out from the centre in nine sections, was put down in 1349.  The Palio, which features 10 horses, each representing one of Siena's 17 contrade, or wards, ridden bareback by riders wearing the colours of the contrada they represent, was first contested in 1656 and is now staged on July 2 and August 16 each year.

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More reading:

The Futurist painter who captured light, movement and speed

Painter whose early death robbed Italy of a great talent

The founder of the scuola metafisica movement

Also on this day:

1507: The death of Renaissance painter Gentile Bellini

1806: The birth of military general Manfredo Fanti

1821: The death of English Romantic poet John Keats

1822: The birth of archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi

1834: The birth of Sicilian banker Emanuele Notarbartolo

(Painting: The Battle of San Martino (1936), Uffizi, Florence)

(Picture credit: Piazza del Campo by Ricardo André Frantz via Wikimedia Commons)

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Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini - painter

Venetian artist who made mark in England

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini's self-portrait,
painted in about 1717

The painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who is regarded as one of the most important Venetian painters of the early 18th century, was born on this day in 1675 in Venice. 

He played a major part in the spread of the Venetian style of large-scale decorative painting in northern Europe, working in Austria, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

With a style that had influences of Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese and the Baroque painters Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano, he is considered an important predecessor of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the development of Venetian art.

A pupil of the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani, Pellegrini began travelling while still a teenager, accompanying Pagano to Moravia and Vienna.

After a period studying in Rome, he returned to Venice and married Angela Carriera, the sister of the portraitist Rosalba Carriera.

Soon afterwards, he accepted the commission to decorate the dome above the staircase at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1709.

Pellegrini spent a significant part of his career in England, where he was invited, along with Marco Ricci, the nephew of Sebastiano Ricci, by Charles Montagu, the future Duke of Manchester.  He and Ricci were the first Venetians to work in England.

A copy of Pellegrini's original work in the reconstructed
dome of Castle Howard in Yorkshire

Pellegrini made his mark in England by painting murals in a number of English country houses, including at Kimbolton Castle for the Montagu, Castle Howard, and Narford Hall, Norfolk, for Sir Andrew Fontaine.

His paintings in the dome at Castle Howard in Yorkshire were unfortunately largely destroyed in a fire in 1940.

In London he worked at 31 St James's Square for the Duke of Portland, and became a director of Sir Godfrey Kneller's Academy in London in 1711.

He submitted designs for decorating the interior dome of the new St Paul's Cathedral, and is said to have been Christopher Wren's favourite painter. However, he did not win the commission, losing out to Sir James Thornhill.

Pellegrini subsequently travelled through Germany and the Netherlands on his way back to Italy.

He completed works in many European cities, including Düsseldorf, The Hague, Prague, Dresden, Vienna and Paris.

Pellegrini died in Venice in November 1741.

The Ospedale degli Incurabili, which houses the
 Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice

Travel tip:

Pellegrini is thought to have lived in the Dorsodoro sestriere of Venice, in which the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia was founded in September 1750. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo became the first president. The academy was at first housed in a room on the upper floor of the Fonteghetto della Farina, a flour warehouse and market on the Grand Canal, close to Piazza San Marco.

The facade of the historic Scuola Grande di San Rocco

Travel tip:

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco is a lay confraternity founded in 1478, named after San Rocco, who was popularly regarded as offering protection against the plague. It quickly became the richest Scuola of the city.  Jacopo Tintoretto was engaged to produce a large number of paintings to decorate the walls and ceilings, which included what is regarded as his celebrated pictorial cycle illustrating episodes from the New and Old Testaments.  More than over 60 paintings are preserved in their original setting in a building that has undergone very little alteration since its construction.



More reading:

The brilliant miniatures of Rosalba Carriera

Pietro da Cortona - outstanding exponent of Baroque

Why Luca Giordano was renowned as a fast worker

Also on this day:

1945: Brazilian soldiers liberate an Italian town

1987: The birth of tennis champion Sara Errani


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