Giulio Carlo Argan – art historian and politician

Award-winning art expert switched from Fascism to Communism

Giulio Carlo Argan was a major
figure in the arts as well as politics

Art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who joined the Fascist party in the 1920s but went on to become the first Communist mayor of Rome nearly 50 years later, was born on this day in 1909 in Turin.

After stepping down as Mayor of Rome in 1979, Argan represented the Italian Communist Party as a Senator of the Italian Republic, between 1983 and 1992.

Argan’s family were originally from Geneva, but by the 19th century they had settled in the Piedmont region. His father was the bursar of the provincial mental asylum and his mother was a school teacher. After leaving high school, Argan went to study at the University of Turin.

He joined the National Fascist Party in 1928 and after graduating in 1931 worked for the National Arts and Antiquity Directorate. Among his duties were directing the magazine, Le Arti, and helping to establish what became one of the most prestigious institutes for art conservation and restoration. 

It has been said that his career was helped by his friendship with Cesare Maria De Vecchi, 1st Conte de Val Cismon, one of the four leaders of the Blackshirt mob that marched on Rome in 1922 and helped to put Mussolini in power.

Argan published a manual of art for high schools and contributed to the magazine, Primato, which was run by another high ranking Fascist official. After World War II he taught in the universities of Palermo and Rome.

He co-founded the publishing house, Il Saggiatore, and was a member of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts, which was a predecessor to the Ministry of Culture.

Argan became Mayor of Rome in 1976,
the first Communist to hold the office

In 1968, Argan published his most famous work, Storia dell’arte italiana - The History of Italian Art. 

He then founded an institute for industrial design in Rome In 1973.  Argan was interested in art as a form of social engagement, which he thought was integral and necessary to life. He identified architecture and urban planning as areas where the community had a particularly strong interaction with culture.

A prolific writer of books on art, Argan’s major works, which tended to emphasise the social context of art, ranged from studies of  Renaissance painters and architects, including Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo and Palladio, through the Baroque period in art, to modern sculpture and abstract art. His last book, Michelangelo architetto, was published in 1990.

He stimulated much debate in 1963 with his discussion on ‘the death of art’, by which he meant the end of the creative autonomy of the individual. He saw it as an ‘irreversible’ crisis in the system of traditional art techniques used in an industrial and capitalist society.

He was a professor at the University of Rome from 1959 to 1976. He donated his entire library to the university in 1982, following which he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus. 

In 1976, he was elected as Rome’s first Communist mayor, an office he held for more than three years. While he was Mayor, he supported the defence of the environment and the relaunch of the Imperial Forums, using the slogan: ‘Either cars or monuments,’ and he prevented the construction of a four-star hotel on one of the most panoramic points of the capital city. He resigned as Mayor on health grounds in 1979.

Later, he served as a Communist Senator representing Rome and Tivoli for nearly 11 years. 

Argan was awarded the Feltrinelli prize for the Arts in 1958 and the Gold Medal for Merit and Culture in Art by the Italian Republic in 1976.

He died in Rome in 1992, aged 83. After his death, collections of his writing and articles were published.

The site of the Royal Palace was 
chosen for its open, sunny position

Travel tip:

Giulio Carlo Argan was born in the city of Turin in Piedmont, where much of the architecture illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy kings of Italy. In the centre of the city, Piazza Castello, with the Royal Palace, Royal Library, and Palazzo Madama, which used to be where the Italian senate met, showcases some of the finest buildings in ‘royal’ Turin.  The Royal Palace – the Palazzo Reale – was built on the site of what had been the Bishop’s Palace, built by Emmanuel Philibert, who was Duke of Savoy from 1528 to 1580. He chose the site because it had an open and sunny position close to other court buildings. Some members of the House of Savoy are buried in Turin’s Duomo in Piazza San Giovanni, which is also famous for being the home of the Turin shroud. Many people believe that the cloth now preserved in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud was the actual burial shroud of Jesus Christ. 

The entrance to the Villa d'Este and the Tivoli
Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site

Travel tip:

Argan spent much of his life living in Rome and, as a Senator, he represented both Rome and Tivoli, a town and commune in Lazio about 30 miles, 19 kilometres, north east of Rome. Tivoli  offers a wide view over the Roman Campagna, a low-lying area of countryside surrounding Rome. Tivoli is famous for being the site of Hadrian’s villa, a large villa complex built around AD 120 by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and the Villa d’Este, a 16th century villa, famous for its terraced hillside Renaissance Garden. Both villas are UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Villa d'Este is often referred to simply as the Tivoli Gardens, and for its profusion of fountains, more than 50 in total. The nearby river Aniene was diverted to provide water for the complex system of pools, water jets, channels, fountains, cascades and water games. Canals were dug and 200 metres of underground pipes were laid. 

Also on this day:

1500: The birth of Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua

1510: The death of painter Sandro Botticelli

1963: The birth of motorcycle world champion Luca Cadalora

1970: The birth of fencing champion Giovanna Trillini

Home

Dino Grandi - politician

Fascist who ultimately turned against Mussolini

Dino Grandi was a member
of the Fascist Grand Council

The Fascist politician Dino Grandi was born on this day in 1895 in Mordano, a small town near Imola in Emilia-Romagna.

Although Grandi was an active member of Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts and a staunch advocate of using violence to suppress opponents of Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, he ultimately became central to the Italian dictator’s downfall.

During his time as the Italian Ambassador in London, Grandi tried to forge a pact between Italy and Britain that would have prevented Italy entering World War Two.  Under pressure from the German leader Adolf Hitler, Mussolini removed him from the post of ambassador and appointed him Minister of Justice.

Grandi had also opposed the antisemitic Italian racial laws of 1938. He enjoyed a good relationship with the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, who gave him the title Count of Mordano.

His increasing criticism of Italy’s war effort saw him dropped from his position in Mussolini's cabinet in February 1943 but he remained chairman of the Fascist Grand Council. In this role, he colluded with others, such as Giuseppe Bottai and Mussolini’s own son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, to remove Mussolini as leader.

They could see Italy’s war was being lost, with the country suffering more and more following the Allied invasion of Sicily. Grandi and other members of the Fascist Grand Council met on July 24, 1943. When Mussolini said that the Germans were thinking of pulling out of the south, effectively abandoning the country to the enemy, Grandi stood up and subjected the self-proclaimed Il Duce to a blistering verbal attack. 

Grandi served as Italy's Ambassador in London,
where he sought a deal to keep Italy out of WW2

He proposed a motion to the Grand Council asking Victor Emmanuel III to resume his full constitutional authority. When the motion was put to a vote, at 2am on 25 July, it was carried by 19 votes to eight.

This effectively stood down Mussolini from office, although it took his arrest later in the day, after he had been to see the King as if it was business as usual, to enforce his removal. 

Grandi, a law graduate from the University of Bologna who hailed from a wealthy background in Mordano, had met Mussolini for the first time in 1914. Like Mussolini, he had initially been attracted to the political left, but swung in behind the future leader’s nationalist brand of socialism. He joined the Blackshirts - the Fascist party’s paramilitary wing - at the age of 25.

After the March on Rome in October 1922, after which the Fascists took power in Italy, Grandi became part of Mussolini’s government, first as the undersecretary of the interior, then as Minister of Foreign Affairs and later as  Italy's ambassador to the United Kingdom, a position he held from 1932 to 1939. 

He maintained his links with the most radical and violent groups in the party. He surrounded himself with members of the Blackshirts, whom he used as bodyguards.

Despite his role in the fall of the Fascist government, Grandi found himself unwanted by the new regime under interim prime minister Pietro Badoglio and left Italy under a false name, taking his family first to Spain and then Portugal.  In 1944 he was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in the Italian Social Republic, where Mussolini, having been freed from house arrest by German paratroopers, had been installed by Hitler as the head of a puppet Nazi state. 

After seven years in exile, when life at times was hard for his family because of a lack of income, Grandi’s luck changed in the 1950s. He held representative positions for the Italian car maker Fiat and worked as a consultant to the American authorities, often serving as an intermediary in political and industrial operations between Italy and the United States. 

He then moved to Brazil, becoming the owner of an agricultural estate, before returning to Italy in the 1960s. He had a farm in the countryside of Modena before moving to Bologna. He died in Bologna in 1988 shortly before his 93rd birthday, three years after the publication of his political autobiography Il mio paese.

He is buried in the monumental cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna.

Imola's duomo, the Cattedrale di
San Cassiano, in the city centre 

Travel tip:

The city of Imola, like Mordano, is today part of the greater metropolitan area of Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has a well-preserved castle, the Rocca Sforzesca, which is nowadays the home of an internationally respected piano academy and the Cinema d’Este, which shows films in July and August. Imola also has a duomo, dedicated to San Cassiano. Erected from 1187 to 1271, it was repeatedly restored in the following centuries, until a large renovation was held in 1765–1781. The façade dates to 1850.The city is best known today for its motor racing circuit, the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, which hosts the Formula One Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix and formerly hosted the San Marino Grand Prix, on behalf of the nearby independent republic.

The Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna's
Piazza Maggiore, the heart of the city

Travel tip:

Bologna, where Grandi died, is one of Italy's oldest cities, dating back to 1,000BC or possibly earlier.  The University of Bologna, the oldest in the world, was founded in 1088.  Bologna's city centre, which has undergone substantial restoration since the 1970s, is one of the largest and best preserved historical centres in Italy, characterised by 38km (24 miles) of walkways protected by porticoes.  At the heart of the city is the beautiful Piazza Maggiore, dominated by the Gothic Basilica of San Petronio, which at 132m long, 66m wide and with a facade that touches 51m at its tallest, is the 10th largest church in the world and the largest built in brick. The Certosa di Bologna, where Grandi is buried, is a former Carthusian monastery founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797, located just outside the walls of the city. In 1801 it became the city’s monumental cemetery.

Also on this day:

1463: The death of historian and archaeologist Flavio Biondo

1604: The birth of Claudia de’ Medici, Archduchess of Tyrol

1966: The birth of opera singer Cecilia Bartoli

1970: The birth of Olympic skiing champion Deborah Compagnoni

Home