Giovanni Migliara – painter

19th century artist captured many beautiful views for posterity

Giuseppe Molteni's 1829 portrait of
Giovanni Migliara

Giovanni Migliara, who rose from working as a theatre set designer to becoming court painter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, was born on this day in 1785 in Alessandria in Piedmont.

He was first apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, but then went on to study at the Brera Academy.in Milan with Giocondo Albertolli.

He began working as a set designer with Teatro Carcano in Milan in 1804 and then moved to La Scala in 1805, where he served under the direction of Alessandro Sanquirico until 1809. His theatre work enabled him to acquire skills as a landscape artist and a creator of perspective.

Migliara had to stop working while he was suffering from a serious lung problem but from about 1810 he started painting miniatures and then moved on to watercolours and then oils on canvas, silk and ivory, drawing inspiration from Venetian painters.

In 1812 he exhibited four views of Milan at the Brera Academy, officially signalling his return to the world of art.

Migliara's Veduta di Piazza del Duomo in Milan is part
of the Fondazione Cariplo collection

Migliara specialised in painting views and romantic, historical subjects. Because of the high quality of his work he became a favourite of the aristocracy living in Milan at the time.

As his fame spread, he received commissions from the King Charles Albert, from Maria Cristina of Savoy, from Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from Maria Louise, Duchess of Parma, from Archduke Rainer, Viceroy of Lombardy-Veneto and from the Prince of Metternich.

In 1822 he was named professor at the Brera Academy. Among his pupils were Giovanni Renica of Brescia, Luigi Bisi and Federico Moja.

Migliara took long trips to Tuscany, Piedmont, Lazio and Campania between 1825 and 1835, which gave him new subjects for his landscapes and interiors. 

After being presented with the Civil Order of Savoy, a type of knighthood, by Charles Albert, he was named painter to the crown in 1833.

Migliara died in Milan in 1837, having suffered a recurrence of his lung problems.  The funeral took place in the church of San Babila before his coffin was escorted to the cemetery by a military band and followed by more than 300 friends and colleagues.

Some of his paintings, including his 1928 Veduta di Piazza del Duomo in Milano, and his earlier Veduta del chiostro di Sant’Antonio a Padova, are among the Fondazione Cariplo collection at the Gallerie di Piazza Scala, located in the Palazzo Brentani and the Palazzo Anguissola, in Piazza della Scala in Milan.

Piazza del Duomo in Alessandria, the city in Piedmont
where Giovanni Migliara was born in 1785

Travel tip:

Alessandria, where Migliara was born, is a city in Piedmont, about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Turin. The Battle of Marengo was fought in 1800, when Migliara would have been 15, between French and Austrian forces on a battle field to the east of Alessandria. The French victory helped to consolidate Napoleon’s grip on power back in Paris. Alessandria has a Museum of the Battle of Marengo in Via della Barbotta in the district of Spinetta Marengo. Alessandria is also a rail hub for northern Italy. The railway station opened in 1850 to form part of the Turin to Genoa railway and now also has lines to Piacenza, Novara, Pavia, Cavallermaggiore, Ovada and San Giuseppe di Cairo.

The Palazzo di Brera in Milan, where Migliara was a
student and later a professor

Travel tip:

One of Migliara’s most famous paintings is a view of the Palazzo di Brera in Milan, which he executed in 1829 after he was named as a Professor at the Art Academy there. Palazzo di Brera was a Jesuit college from the 1570s to the 1770s. After that it became home to various cultural, scientific, and artistic institutions. Maria Theresa of Austria founded the Reale Accademia di Belle Arti there in 1776. The picture gallery, now the Pinacoteca di Brera, was opened in 1806. The Brera district is often recommended to visitors to Milan as an area where there are plenty of good restaurants.

Also on this day:

1704: The moment that inspired Edward Gibbon to write his epic history of Rome

1905: The birth of footballer Angelo Schiavio

1964: The birth of astronaut Roberto Vittori



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Baldassare Verazzi - painter

Piedmontese artist famous for image of uprising in Milan

Verazzi's Episodio delle Cinque Giornate
 (Combattimento a Palazzo Litta)

The painter Baldassare Verazzi, whose most famous work depicts a scene from the anti-Austrian uprising known as The Five Days of Milan, was born on this day in 1819 in Caprezzo, a tiny village in Piedmont, 120km (75 miles) from Turin in the hills above Lake Maggiore.

Something of a revolutionary in that he was an active supporter of the Risorgimento, it is supposed that he was in Milan in 1848 when citizens rose up against the ruling forces of the Austrian Empire, which controlled much of northern Italy.

The Cinque Giornate di Milano, in March of that year, comprised five days of street fighting that eventually resulted in the Austrian garrison being expelled from the city, marking the start of the First Italian War of Independence.

Verazzi’s painting, which is today on display at the Museum of the Risorgimento in the Castello Sforza in Milan, is entitled Episodio delle Cinque Giornate (Combattimento a Palazzo Litta), and shows three figures sheltering behind a barricade while another aims a rifle over the barricade, presumably in the direction of Austrian troops.

Born into a family of humble origins, Verazzi studied at the Brera Academy in Milan from 1833 to 1842 under the guidance of the Venetian painter Francesco Hayez. He participated in numerous art exhibitions in Milan and Turin.

In 1851 he won the prestigious Canonica Prize with The Parable of the Samaritan and in 1854 the Mylius Prize with his portrait of Raphael, which was presented to Pope Julius II.

Verazzi's Portrait of a Gentleman and Girls, in the
National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires

He became sought after for his frescoes, depicting historical scenes, such as his work on the dome of the enclosed annex to the Fatebenesorelle Hospital in Milan.

Although he had no shortage of work in Lombardy and Piedmont - his paintings can be found in many churches across the two regions - Verazzi took the bold decision in 1856 to move to South America.

Settling first in Buenos Aires, he became known for his historical and allegorical compositions, and for portraits, as well as the decorations at the Teatro Colón.

In Buenos Aires an intense rivalry developed between him and another Italian painter, Ignazio Manzoni, while he also had a dispute with General Justo José de Urquiza, an influential politician and military leader, which led him to move on to Montevideo in Uruguay, where he became a sought-after portraitist and decorated the frescoes of the Rotonda of the city cemetery.

Between Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, he spent 12 fruitful years of his artistic career in South America, where he became one of the most appreciated and well-known painters.

He returned to Italy in 1868 but decided not to reopen his former studio in Milan in favour of taking up residence again in Caprezzo, although he ultimately decided that the wealth he had accumulated in South America deserved something grander.

Eventually, he took a fancy to the small town of Lesa, on the shores of Lake Maggiore and a favourite of the novelist Alessandro Manzoni.

He bought a extensive property in the hamlet of Villa Lesa, where he spent the last 16 years of his life, 1870 to 1886, and where his son Serafino, who also became a noted painter, was born in 1875.

The town of Lesa on the shores of Lake Maggiore, which
was once the home of novelist Alessandro Manzoni

Travel tip:

Lesa is a pretty town on the shores of Lake Maggiore, halfway between Stresa and Arona, known for its calm atmosphere and beautiful views. The town and surrounding area is notable for its many extravagant villas and palaces, with gardens and distinctive architecture, a legacy of its one-time popularity with noble families. It remains a sought-after area for the wealthy, such as the businessman and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns the Villa Campari, built by Gaspare Campari, inventor of the famous aperitif liqueur.  On the lakeshore are the ruins of a castle that once guarded the town.

The Cascata del Toce waterfall is one of the attractions
of the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in Piedmont

Travel tip:

Caprezzo is part of the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, an area of unspoiled nature that encompasses many beautiful valleys such as Val d’Ossola, through which flows the Toce River and the dramatic Cascata del Toce waterfall. The area includes the picturesque Lake Mergozzo, the northern bank of Lake Orta and the town of Omegna, which in the early part of the 20th century was famous for the production of small domestic appliances, including the first coffee makers and pressure cookers. The province includes the western bank of Lake Maggiore that hosts renowned resorts of Cannobio, Cannero Riviera, Verbania, Baveno and Stresa, as well as the Borromean Islands, lying in the middle of Lake Maggiore, including the Baroque palace and gardens of Isola Bella.

More reading:

What happened in the Five Days of Milan

Why Alessandro Manzoni is considered to have written the greatest novel in Italian history

Garibaldi and the Expedition of the Thousand

Also on this day:

Befana - the Italian tradition on January 6

1907: Educationalist Maria Montessori opens her first school

1938: The birth of Italy's biggest-selling recording artist Adriano Celentano


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Luciano Bianciardi - novelist and translator

Writer who brought contemporary American literature to Italian audiences

Luciano Bianciardi devoted
much of his life to literature

The journalist, novelist and translator Luciano Bianciardi, who was responsible for putting the work of most of the outstanding American authors of the 20th century into Italian, was born on this day in 1922 in Grosseto in Tuscany.

Bianciardi translated novels by such writers as Saul Bellow, Henry Miller, William Faulkner and Norman Mailer, who were read in the Italian language for the first time thanks to his understanding of the nuances of their style.

He also wrote novels of his own, the most successful of which was La vita agra (1962; published in English as It’s a Hard Life), which was made into a film, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Ugo Tognazzi.

Bianciardi, whose father, Atide, was a bank cashier, developed an appreciation for learning from his mother, Adele, who was an elementary school teacher.

At the same time he acquired a lifelong fascination with Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, after his father gave him a book by a local author, Giuseppe Bandi, about Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand.

Bianciardi struggled to control
his drinking late in his life

Bianciardi’s university education was interrupted by the Second World War. He witnessed the bombing of Foggia, where the army unit to which he was assigned had the grim task of tending to the wounded and recovering the bodies of the dead. It was not long afterwards that Italy negotiated the 1943 armistice with the Allies, for whom he then worked as an interpreter.

He resumed his education at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he graduated in philosophy. His circle of friends were mainly writers with liberal socialist political leanings and he was briefly a member of Il Partito d’Azione - the Action Party - until it folded in 1947. The following year he married his first wife, Adria, with whom he would have two children.

His entry into the literary world came at the invitation of the municipality of Grosseto, who asked him to reorganise their civic library, which had been badly damaged by the bombings of 1943 and the floods of the following year. Later he became the library director and a passionate promoter of cultural initiatives such as the bibliobus, a van that took books into the hamlets and and scattered farms around the town.

The cover of the Feltrinelli edition of
his most famous book, La vita agra

He began to write for newspapers and, in 1956, published his first book, The Miners of the Maremma, which followed an investigation he launched with his friend and political ally, the writer Carlo Cassola, for the newspaper L’Avanti into the harsh conditions in which the miners in this Tuscan coastal territory worked and the poverty in which their families lived, which he encountered at first hand through his bibliobus scheme.

Bianciardi over time became a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines on all manner of subjects, on political matters but also cultural topics.  He was a film and television critic, and at times wrote about sport for magazines such as Guerin Sportivo.

He forged his reputation as a translator after moving to Milan to work for the Feltrinelli publishing house, developing a relationship that continued even after the company, frustrated with his poor timekeeping and clashes over their editorial policy, decided they could no longer employ him on a permanent, formal basis.

He worked his way through most of the major American writers. Among more than 100 texts that he translated into Italian were Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and Travels with Charley, Jack London's John Barleycorn, J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and William Faulkner's A Fable and The Mansion.

At the same time, he began to write novels of his own, his stories often having a theme of rebellion against the cultural establishment, or else the lives of ordinary Italians during the so-called ‘economic miracle’ years of the 1950s and '60s.

Ugo Tognazzi in a scene from the movie based on
Luciano Bianciardi's book, La vita agra

La vita agra is considered his finest work, published by Rizzoli in 1962.  Acclaimed by the critics, it sold 5,000 copies with a couple of weeks of its appearance in the book shops. It brought Bianciardi fame almost overnight.

His other works include Il lavoro culturale - Cultural Work; L’integrazione - Integration; La battaglia soda - The Soda-Water Battle; and Aprire il fuoco - Setting the Fire.

Bianciardi, who had a third child by Maria Jatosti, with whom he worked at Feltrinelli, bought a house at Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera in Liguria about 30km (19 miles) east of Genoa, while keeping his home in the Brera district of Milan.

A heavy drinker through much of his life, he died at the age of just 49 in 1971, suffering from liver disease.  His last book, a comprehensive biography of Garibaldi, was published posthumously in 1972.

Grosseto's Romanesque cathedral, viewed
from the Via Daniele Manin

Travel tip:

Bianciardi’s home town of Grosseto is the largest town of the Maremma region of Tuscany, with approximately 65,000 inhabitants. Located in the alluvial plain of the Ombrone river, about 14km from the Tyrrhenian sea, the town grew in importance several centuries ago because of the trade in salt, that was obtained in salt pans in the now reclaimed lagoon that covered most of the area between Grosseto and the sea.  By 1328, the silting up of the lagoon robbed Grosseto of its salt revenues, after which is became largely depopulated, vulnerable to outbreaks of malaria caused by the mosquitos that thrived in the marshy areas surrounding the town. It began to expand again in the 19th century. Tourists today are drawn to visit by the walls begun by Francesco I de Medici in 1574, and by the Romanesque cathedral, dedicated to St. Lawrence.

Search tripadvisor for a hotel in Grosseto

Rapallo's Castello sul Mare was built in 1551 to deter pirates
from attacking the Ligurian coastal town

Travel tip: 

Rapallo, while somewhat overshadowed by its exclusive neighbour Portofino, is an attractive seaside town of the eastern Italian Riviera, known as the Riviera di Levante. The town developed around a harbour guarded by a small castle – Il Castello sul Mare – built in 1551 to repel pirate attacks, which sits right on the water’s edge.  Look out also for the 12th century Basilica of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, two historic towers and a ruined monastery, along with a network of narrow streets to explore. There are boat services to Portofino, as well as Santa Margherita Ligure and Camogli, while the main Genoa to Pisa railway line passes through the town.


More reading:

How Cesare Pavesi introduced foreign writers to Fascist Italy

Why novelist Leonardo Sciascia was the scourge of corrupt politicians

The comic genius of La Cage aux Folles star Ugo Tognazzi

Also on this day:

1784: The birth of Neapolitan princess Maria Antonia

1853: The birth of anarchist Errico Malatesta

1966: The birth of racing driver Fabrizio Giovanardi


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Ettore Bugatti - car designer

Name that became a trademark for luxury and high performance

Ettore Bugatti launched the company in 1909 after
attending the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan

The car designer and manufacturer Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan on this day in 1881.

The company Bugatti launched in 1909 became associated with luxury and exclusivity while also enjoying considerable success in motor racing.  When the glamorous Principality of Monaco launched its famous Grand Prix in 1929, the inaugural race was won by a Bugatti.

Although Bugatti cars were manufactured for the most part in a factory in Alsace, on the border of France and Germany, their stylish designs reflected the company’s Italian heritage and Bugatti cars are seen as part of Italy’s traditional success in producing desirable high-performance cars.

The story of Bugatti as a purely family business ended in 1956, and the company closed altogether in 1963.  The name did not die, however, and Bugatti cars are currently produced by Volkswagen.

Ettore came from an artistic family in Milan. His father, Carlo Bugatti, was a successful designer of Italian Art Nouveau furniture and jewelry, while his paternal grandfather, Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, had been an architect and sculptor.  His younger brother, Rembrandt Bugatti, became well known for his animal sculpture.

Ettore - full name Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti - displayed both artistic talent and an interest in motor vehicles at a young age. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in his home city before becoming apprenticed to the bicycle manufacturer Prinetti and Stucchi, where at the age of 17 he successfully attached an engine to a tricycle.

A Type 35 Bugatti, the car that brought the company
many race successes, including its first Grand Prix

With financial support from his father, he began to produce prototype cars, the second of which won a prize at the Milan Trade Fair in 1901. Bugatti's design also caught the eye of the wealthy Baron de Dietrich, who offered him an opportunity to design cars at his factory in Niederbronn, a town then in Germany but now in the Alsace region of northeastern France.

Bugatti produced his first racing car in 1903, but fell out with De Dietrich over his attention to racing cars over production models and moved to work for the French manufacturer Emil Mathis in Strasbourg, although again it was a short-lived relationship. By 1907 he was working for the Deutz engine company in Cologne.

He went alone for the first time in 1909, buying a disused dyeworks in Molsheim, abou 25km (16 miles) west of Strasbourg, where with the financial backing of the Spanish racing driver Pierre De Vizcaya and a bank loan, he began work to produce 10 cars and five aeroplane engines.

Bugatti produced his first so-called ‘pur sang’ (thoroughbred) Bugattis - a term he invented himself - with the Type 10/13 in 1910, a car in which his factory driver, Ernest Friederich, came second in the French Grand Prix at the first attempt in 1911.

Ettore Bugatti (right) and his son Jean discuss race tactics

The company’s reputation for producing some of the fastest, most luxurious, and technologically advanced road cars of their day soon spread. Among the clients who purchased a Bugatti car was the celebrated French fighter pilot Roland Garros.

Bugatti branched more into aircraft engines during the First World War but returned to cars once peace resumed and between the wars Bugatti cars enjoyed notable success on the track.

The 1924 Type 35 brought the marque its first Grand Prix victory in Lyon, while Bugattis swept to victory in the Targa Florio, the road race in Sicily, for five years in a row from 1925 to 1929.

Between 1921 and 1939 Bugattis won more than 30 major races, including the French Grand Prix six times and the Monaco Grand Prix four times, culminating in the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice, in 1937 and 1939, with the Type 57, driven by Jean-Pierre Wimille and Pierre Veyron, whose name has since been immortalised in the most famous of modern Bugattis.

The Bugatti Veyron is regarded by experts as one of
the best cars ever produced for looks and performance

On the production side, the company enjoyed huge success through the 1920s but suffered in the financial crash of the 1930s, which was a disaster for the first of the Bugatti Royales, the luxury 12.7 litre open-top limousine, of which only three were sold after the market disappeared.

Tragedy struck when Ettore Bugatti's son, Jean Bugatti, was killed in 1939 at the age of 30 while testing a Type 57 near the Molsheim factory. After that, the company's fortunes began to decline.  A strike in 1936 hit the company hard and the Second World War saw the factory in Molsheim transferred to a German owner by compulsory purchase.

The Molsheim plant was given back to Bugatti after the war but lack of funds meant the company could never return to its pre-war prosperity. Ettore, by then living in Paris, suffered pneumonia followed by a stroke and died in 1947 at the age of 65.

Married twice, he fathered two daughters and two sons, the youngest of whom, Roland Bugatti, took over the running of the company in 1951 but was unable to save it, production coming to an end in 1956, the closure of the company following in 1963.

The company name was revived 24 years later, however, when the Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli bought the rights to the Bugatti trademark and began manufacturing cars at Campogalliano, near Modena.

It was subsequently acquired by Volkswagen in 1998, with the help of whose expertise the Bugatti name has again come to symbolise luxury and high performance. The Bugatti Veyron, of which production began in 2005 at a refurbished Molsheim plant, has propelled it back to the top of the tree in the limited production exclusive sports car market, earning the title ‘greatest car of the past 20 years’ in a poll conducted by the UK magazine Top Gear that attracted more than 100,000 entries.

The Palazzo Brera is home to the Accademia di Belle Arti

Travel tip:

The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, sometimes shortened to Accademia di Brera, is 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, 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.

The first Targa Florio in 1906 was won by Alessandro
Cagno, driving an Turin-based Itala car

Travel tip:

The Targa Florio was an open road endurance car race held in the mountains of Sicily near the island's capital of Palermo between 1906 and 1977, when it was discontinued due to safety concerns. Conceived by the wealthy pioneer race driver Vincenzo Florio, it was for a time the oldest surviving sports car racing event in the world. While early races were eventually extended to a whole tour of the island, covering a distance of 975km (606 miles), it was in time shortened to a circuit of just 72km (45 miles). The race started and finished at the village of Cerda, 45km (28 miles) southeast of Palermo.

More reading:

Enzo Ferrari and the automobile world's most famous name

The insult that fired the Lamborghini-Ferrari rivalry

How Battista 'Pinin' Farina changed the way cars looked

Also on this day:

1616: Europe's first free public school opens in Frascati, near Rome

1904: The birth of Umberto di Savoia, the last king of Italy


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Fortunino Matania - artist and illustrator

War artist famous also for images of British history

Fortunino Matania was one of the leading
20th century magazine artists

Chevalier Fortunino Matania, a prodigiously talented artist who became known as one of the greatest magazine illustrators in publishing history, was born on this day in 1881 in Naples.

Matania made his name largely in England, where in 1904 he joined the staff of The Sphere, the illustrated news magazine that was founded in London in 1900 in competition with The Graphic and the Illustrated London News.

The use of photography on a commercial scale was in its infancy and artists who could work under deadline pressure to produce high-quality, realistic images to accompany news stories were in big demand.

Never short of work, he was commissioned by magazines across Europe, including many in his native Italy.

Matania’s best known work was from the battlegrounds of the First World War but he also covered every major event - marriages, christenings, funerals and state occasions - from the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 to that of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.  He produced illustrations of the Sinking of the Titanic for The Sphere.

He was also in demand to design advertising posters, such as those inviting travellers on the LNER and other railways to visit Blackpool or Southport. He created posters, too, for Ovaltine and Burberry, the sports outfitter.

Matania was the war artist for the
London magazine The Sphere

Later in his career, he drew voluptuous women, often nude, for the women’s magazine Britannia and Eve, and was one of the first illustrators hired to work on the ground-breaking children’s magazine, Look and Learn.

Fascinated with British royalty and the Empire, Matania wrote as well as illustrated historical stories and in the years up to his death in 1963 produced a series of paintings for the Look and Learn publisher Leonard Matthews called a Pageant of Kings, which began with William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings.

He was working on a painting entitled Richard II and His Child Bride when he died in London at the age of 81.

Matania’s prolific output also included illustrations to be used in Hollywood movies.

His talent was plainly in his genes, to a certain extent. His father was Eduardo Matania, an artist who became an illustrator for magazines in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He studied at his father's studio, designing a soap advertisement at the age of nine and exhibiting his first work at Naples Academy by the times he was 11.

By the age of 14, he was good enough to take on some of his father’s workload for books and magazines and earned a commission in his own right to produce weekly illustrations for the periodical L'Illustrazione Italiania.

Matania was also in demand to create advertising posters,
this one extolling the virtues of winter in Southport

He took the bold step to move to Paris in 1901 to work for Illustration Francaise. It was an invitation to cover the Coronation of Edward VII for The Graphic in 1902 that took him to London, where he quickly became in such demand that he stayed.

It was his coverage of the Great War that made it clear he was possessed of extraordinary talent. Not only was he able to work at great speed, he was able to recreate scenes as if he was using a camera, noting small details of the way people stood or moved and the expressions on their faces and bringing them together in vivid scenes so natural as if he had captured a moment in time exactly as it was when he saw it.

Although he spared readers the worst elements of what he had seen, his illustrations as much as anything in the news coverage of the conflict brought home to readers the full horrors of the conflict.

Naples, looking from Mergellina towards Santa Lucia

Travel tip:

Eduardo Matania produced many paintings depicting the life of fishermen and their families on the Bay of Naples, particularly in the Santa Lucia area, a neighbourhood clustered around the Castel dell’Ovo and only a short distance from the Royal Palace. Today, the area is a good place to eat, with many restaurants setting up around the harbour.

The Brera district has many restaurants

Travel tip:

The publishing centre of Milan was traditionally in the Brera district, an area just to the north of the city centre which once had the Bohemian atmosphere of a kind of Italian Montmartre.  Nowadays, it is the home of the Pinacoteca di Brera, one of the city’s major art galleries, and also of many fine restaurants, and retains its chic reputation.

More reading:

Felice Beato, the Venetian who may have been the world's first war photographer

How war injuries suffered in Italy inspired the great writer Ernest Hemingway

The First World War nurse who was made a saint

Also on this day:

1118: The death of Adelaide del Vasto, Countess of Sicily

1839: The birth of Antonio Starabba, twice Italy's prime minister


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Bernardo Bellotto – landscape painter

Venetian artist blessed with uncle Canaletto’s talent

A view of the New Market Square in Dresden, painted by
Bernardo Bellotto in about 1750

The landscape artist Bernardo Bellotto, a nephew and pupil of the masterful view painter Canaletto, was born on this day in 1721 in Venice, the city that brought fame to his illustrious uncle.

Bellotto painted some Venetian scenes but travelled much more extensively than his uncle and eventually became best known for his work in northern Europe, and in particular his views of the cities of Vienna, Warsaw and Dresden.

His work was notable for his use of light and shadow and his meticulous attention to detail.  His paintings of Warsaw became a point of reference for architects involved with the reconstruction of the city after the Second World War, so precise was he in terms of perspective and scale and the intricacies of architectural features.

Born in the parish of Santa Margherita in Venice, Bellotto was related to Giovanni Antonio Canal – Canaletto’s birth name – through his mother, Canaletto’s sister, Fiorenza Canal, who married Lorenzo Antonio Bellotto.

A Bellotto of the Rio dei Mendacanti with the Scuola di
San Marco in Venice, probably executed in about 1741

It was natural for Bernardo to study in his uncle’s workshop and to an extent mimic Canaletto’s style. Sometimes, he would sign a painting with Canaletto’s name, which led to confusion later as art historians were occasionally unsure as to whose brush was actually responsible for a particular work.

But where Canaletto devoted himself largely to painting in his native city and in England, where he developed a considerable following, Bellotto left Venice at the age of 21 for Rome and spent much of his life away, travelling around Italy at first and then venturing north.

He painted views of Rome, Florence, Verona and Turin before accepting an invitation in 1747 from Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, to become his court painter in Dresden.  Those paintings he made of Dresden that have survived offer a glimpse into the outstanding beauty of the city, so much of which was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

As his fame spread, more invitations followed, to paint for the courts of Vienna, where he was based from 1758, and then Munich, where he moved in 1761. They were timely opportunities, given that the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War forced Augustus III’s court to disperse.

Bellotti's Self-Portrait as Venetian
Ambassador, painted in about 1765

He returned to Dresden after about a year but when Augustus III died in 1763 his importance in the city declined and he left for Russia, hoping to find employment at the court of Catherine II in St Petersburg.

Stopping off in Warsaw, however, his plans changed when he received an invitation from Augustus III’s successor, King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, to be resident painter at his court in Warsaw, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He tended to be known as Il Canaletto and signed himself Bernardo de Canaletto.

While in Warsaw, for the first time he painted some historical scenes as well as views, including the Election of Stanislaus Augustus, and painted his own image in robes and wig in Self-Portrait as Venetian Ambassador.

The position gave Bellotto the financial stability to provide for his wife, Elisabetta, to whom he had been married before leaving Venice, and their four children.  He died in Warsaw in 1780 and was buried at the 17^th century church of the Capuchins in Miodowa, a street in the centre of the city.

As well as his many views of city scenes and real landscapes, in which historians believe he probably made use of the camera obscura technique to achieve exact proportions and perspective, Bellotto was a proponent of the genre known as capriccio, in which the artist would indulge in fantasy by ‘moving’ famous monuments, buildings or ruins so that they could appear in the same view.

Many of his pictures can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna and the National Museum in Warsaw.

In Italy, there are Bellotto collections at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice and at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.

The Campo Santa Margherita in Venice, at the heart of the
area in which Bellotto grew up

Travel tip:

Campo Santa Margherita, the main square of the parish where Bellotto grew up in the Dorsoduro area of Venice, offers visitors a glimpse of a real Venetian life in a neighbourhood away from the hordes that throng Piazza San Marco and the other main tourist locations in the city.  A large open space, the square is typically the scene of a local market, with some stalls selling fresh fish caught in the lagoon, and is surrounded by 14^th and 15^th century houses mostly occupied by Venetians.  There are a good number of restaurants and bars, which come to life at night in particular, when the square is a meeting place for students from the nearby Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Bellotto's 1745 View of Turin Near the Royal Palace

Travel tip:

During his time in Turin, working for the court of Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, Bellotto spent much of his time around the Royal Palace, the historic house of Savoy in the centre of the city.  Built in the 16^th century and modernised in the 17^th century, the palace complex includes the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, which was built in the west wing and joins the apse of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist. The Chapel was added to house the Holy Shroud of Turin, believed by some to be the burial shroud of Christ, which was owned by the Savoy family for almost 500 years.

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