Guido Bentivoglio - cardinal, historian and diplomat

17th century ambassador who set standards for modern statecraft

Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, as painted in 
1623 by the Flemish artist, Anthony van Dyck

The cardinal, archbishop and papal nuncio Guido Bentivoglio, an important figure in the development of modern international diplomacy, died on this day in 1644 in Rome.

Born in 1579 in Ferrara, Bentivoglio’s life was notable for having helped reset the Vatican’s approach to international relations, both through his astute and pragmatic methodology and his influential writings.

His most notable written work, Della Guerra di Fiandra, is regarded as setting a new standard for historical writing. Published in multiple volumes between 1632 and 1639, it documented in great detail what Bentivoglio had learned from his eight years as papal nuncio in Flanders after decades of civil war between Habsburg rebels and the region’s Spanish rulers.

Bentivoglio’s blend of political acumen and ecclesiastical authority, enabling him to navigate the religious and political tensions of a region divided between Catholic and Protestant powers, came to the fore during this time.

Della Guerra di Fiandra and his earlier work, Relazioni in tempo delle sue nunziature, provided observations of his terms as papal nuncio in both Flanders and France. They became points of reference for historians and diplomats for many years to come and added considerably to the understanding of European politics.

Ironically, given his reputation for enlightened moderation, Bentivoglio is also remembered as having been a member of the panel of cardinals who in 1633 condemned the scientist Galileo Galilei to be burned at the stake - a sentence later commuted to indefinite house arrest - after the Inquisition had found him guilty of heresy.  

Born on September 4, 1579, Bentivoglio hailed from the Ferrara branch of the influential Bentivoglio family of Bologna, the younger son of the marchese, Cornelio Bentivoglio. His upbringing was steeped in humanist education, preparing him for a life of ecclesiastical service and cultural sophistication.

A Spanish edition of Bentivoglio's
seminal work, The War in Flanders

Bentivoglio attended university in Ferrara and Padua, where in 1598 he received a doctorate in both civil and canon law. During his time in Padua, it is thought Bentivoglio attended mathematics lessons in which, somewhat ironically, his tutor was Galileo, who was a professor at the University of Padua between 1592 and 1610. 

After completing his doctorate, Bentivoglio returned to Ferrara, where he met Pope Clement VIII, who was visiting the city. Clement saw in him an individual of enormous potential and asked him to return to Rome with him as his private chamberlain.

Clement VIII died in 1605 but his successor, Pope Paul V, was similarly impressed with Bentivoglio and appointed him titular archbishop of Rhodes in May 1607, despite not having yet received the sacred orders. The appointment was to give him appropriate credentials to be nuncio at the court of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in the Netherlands, a position to which he was appointed a month later. 

After nine years in Flanders, Bentivoglio was transferred to Paris as nuncio in France, where he witnessed the volatile regency of Marie de’ Medici, the supposed assassination of the powerful Italian-born politician Concino Concini, and the rise of Louis XIII. His reports provided Rome a clear-eyed view of French politics, balancing ecclesiastical interests with diplomatic realism.

In both positions, in Flanders and France, Bentivoglio’s style was marked by restraint, observation, and cultural sensitivity. He navigated Protestant-Catholic tensions with tact, often prioritizing long-term influence over short-term victories.

Elevated to cardinal by Pope Gregory XV, Bentivoglio became Protector of France at the Vatican, a role that positioned him as a key intermediary between the French crown and the Holy See and which he kept from 1621 to 1641. 

The Inquisition hearing in 1633 that found the
great scientist, Galileo Galilei, guilty of heresy

He also served as a patron of the arts, commissioning works from painters such as Anthony van Dyck, and collecting tapestries and manuscripts.

Particularly enthusiastic about supporting northern European artists  working in Rome, he commissioned Van Dyck to paint his portrait, while his portrait bust was sculpted by François Duquesnoy, known as Il Fiammingo,  a Flemish sculptor active in Rome.

In the middle of this period came his part in the condemnation of Galileo, who was found guilty of heresy for writing a book that supported the view - for which, he claimed, there was scientific proof - that the sun rather than the earth was the centre of the solar system, as had been put forward by the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus. In orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine, it was regarded as an indisputable fact of scripture that the opposite was true, that the sun moved around the earth. 

In a later collection of his works, Memorie, Bentivoglio expressed sympathy for Galileo's plight, brought on "all by his own fault, for having wanted to bring into print the new opinions about the motion of the Earth against the true accepted sense of the Church". 

It seems possible, given the Catholic Church’s struggle with emerging science, that Bentivoglio was torn between his intellectual leanings and his institutional loyalties. Nonetheless, his signature was on the decree.

Some may be tempted to believe, though, that Bentivoglio might have been an influence in the comparative leniency extended to Galileo. 

The astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and engineer – often described as ‘the father of modern science’ - could have been burned at the stake but was given the option of life imprisonment provided he recanted his findings as “abjured, cursed and detested”, to which he agreed with great reluctance.

The following day, his sentence of imprisonment was commuted to house arrest, after which Galileo was allowed to live at his villa at Arcetri, near Florence, for the remaining nine years of his life.

The 14th century Estense Castle dominates the
central part of the city of Ferrara

Travel tip:

Bentivoglio’s home city of Ferrara, about 50 km (31 miles) northeast of Bologna, was ruled by the Este family between 1240 and 1598. Building work on the magnificent Estense Castle in the centre of the city began in 1385 and it was added to and improved by successive rulers of Ferrara until the end of the Este line.  The castle was purchased for 70,000 lire by the province of Ferrara in 1874 to be used as the headquarters of the Prefecture.   Ferrara is also notable for Palazzo dei Diamanti, a palace in Corso Ercole I d’Este, that takes its name from the 8500 pointed diamond shaped stones that stud the façade, diamonds being an emblem of the Este family. It was designed by Biagio Rossetti and completed in 1503. The palace now houses the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara on its first floor.

Find a hotel in Ferrara

The anatomical theatre at the University
of Padua attracts curious visitors

Travel tip:

The founding of the University of Padua is officially recorded to have taken place in 1222 but this was actually the first time it was mentioned in an historical document, which means it is certainly older. Only the University of  Bologna, founded in 1088, is older. Padua’s university was formed, in fact, when a large group of students and professors left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom. The first subjects to be taught were law and theology. The main university building, Palazzo del Bò in Via VIII Febbraio in the centre of Padua, used to house the medical faculty. You can take a guided tour to see the lectern used by Galileo when he taught at the university between 1592 and 1610. The university buildings also house nine museums, a botanical garden and the oldest surviving permanent anatomical theatre in Europe, built in around 1595 and which used to hold public dissections, which attracted scientists and artists in large numbers, keen to enhance their knowledge of the human body.

Search places to stay in Padua

More reading: 

What led Galileo Galilei to be convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church

How Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, used his position to acquire wealth to buy art

Pope Gregory XV, the last pontiff to issue a papal ordinance against witchcraft 

Also on this day: 

1303: Pope Boniface VIII captured by King Philip IV of France

1791: The birth of poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli

1893: The founding in Genoa of Italy’s oldest surviving football club

Home

Vittorio Vidali - communist revolutionary

One-time Russian agent ultimately elected Italian deputy and senator

Vittorio Vidali became an agent of
the Russian Communist Party

The revolutionary Vittorio Vidali, who operated as a secret agent of the Russian communists in the United States, Mexico and Spain, was born on this day in 1900 in the coastal town of Muggia, near Trieste.

Known at various times by at least five different names, he was implicated in the murder of a fellow agent and in an attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky, although in neither case could his involvement be proved. After returning to Italy at the end of World War Two, he served as a deputy and then a senator in the Italian parliament.

Vidali was politically active from an early age, joining the Socialist Youth movement in Trieste at the age of 16. At 20 he was one of the founders of the youth federation of the Italian Communist Party. In the same year - 1921 - he was arrested for his part in rioting at the San Marco shipyards where his father worked.

He became a target for Mussolini’s Blackshirts after organising, with others, an anti-fascist paramilitary group, and fled Italy in 1922, to Germany and then New York, where he met the Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

From New York he travelled to Russia, becoming involved with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and their international wing, known as Comintern, which had agents operating around the world in their attempt to spread the communist doctrine.

Vidali became romantically involved with
Tina Modotti, a glamorous former actress

Comintern sent Vidali to Mexico on a mission to bring discipline to the Mexican Communist Party. There he is thought to have become infatuated with Tina Modotti, a former model and silent movie actress originally from Udine in Italy, who had been living in San Francisco and moved to Mexico to work as a photographer. She too was a communist activist.

When Modotti’s lover, Julio Antonio Mella , one of the founders of the Communist Party of Cuba, was shot dead at point blank range while walking with her, some witnesses claimed that Vidali was with the couple and even that it was he who carried out the killing. 

He had plausible motives, both personal and political, given his own interest in Modotti and Mella’s association with Trotskyists, to whom the Stalinist Comintern was hostile. Yet, although they questioned and released Modotti, the Mexican authorities charged another man, José Agustín López, a criminal with no political associations, with the murder. The accepted version of events, in Cuban history in any event, is that Mella’s death was ordered by the Cuban president, Gerardo Machado.

Vidali left Mexico for Spain.  Working under the name Carlos Contreras, he teamed up with Enrique Castro Delgado to create the so-called "Fifth Regiment" responsible for the defence of Madrid against Francisco Franco’s Nationalists, and organised the production of a daily newspaper to provide information for those fighting for the Spanish Democratic Republic.  At the same time, in a more sinister side to his activities on behalf of Comintern, he is said to have arranged for a number of pro-Trotsky operatives on the republican side to be eliminated.

He returned to Mexico in 1940, not long before Trotsky was killed. He was suspected of being involved in a failed assassination attempt at Trotsky’s residence in Mexico City. He was also thought to have facilitated the infiltration into Trotsky’s inner circle of the Stalinist operative Ramón Mercader, who entered Trotsky’s study and killed him with an ice axe later in the same year.  

Vidali served for 10 years in
the Italian parliament

Modotti, who was expelled from Mexico in 1930, rejoined Vidali in Spain and returned with him to Mexico under a false name. She herself died suddenly in 1942, suffering a cardiac arrest while returning home from a social engagement in a taxi. There were rumours that Vidali, despite the intimate nature of their relationship, had her killed simply because she knew too much about his activities in Spain.

By 1947, Vidali was back in his home country, returning to Trieste. After the postwar settlement saw the long-disputed city established as the Free Territory of Trieste, Vidali became one of the most powerful members of the Communist Party there, conducting a purge of Titoists within the organisation following Stalin’s split with the Yugoslav leader. 

After Trieste became part of Italy again in 1954, Vidali had ambitions to serve as a Communist in the Italian Parliament from the area. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1958 and to the Senate in 1963, sitting until 1968.  He died in Trieste at the age of 83.

The harbour at the quaint seaside town of Muggia,
the only Istrian town to remain part of Italy

Travel tip:

At the time of Vidali’s birth, the coastal town of Muggia - situated 12km (7 miles) by road from Trieste - belonged to the part of the Austria-Hungary empire known as the Istrian peninsula, which includes a number of beautiful towns and cities such as Pula, Rovinj, Perec and Vrsar. It was partitioned to Italy in the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920 following the First World War. In the Second World War it became a battleground for rival ethnic groups and political groups. It was occupied by Germany but with their withdrawal in 1945  Yugoslav partisans gained the upper hand and Istria was eventually ceded to Yugoslavia. It was divided between Croatia and Slovenia following the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Nowadays, Muggia remains the only former Istrian town that is part of Italy. A charmingly quaint fishing port, Muggia’s main attractions are its Duomo, dedicated to the saints John and Paul, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta and its 14th century castle, which stood abandoned for 200 years but has been restored by the sculptor, Villi Bossi. 

The sea-facing Piazza Unita d'Italia is the oldest
and most elegant square in Trieste

Travel tip:

The seaport of Trieste, capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, officially became part of the Italian Republic in 1954. Trieste had been disputed territory for thousands of years and after it was granted to Italy in 1920, thousands of the resident Slovenians left. The final border with Yugoslavia was settled in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo. The area today is one of the most prosperous in Italy and Trieste is a lively, cosmopolitan city and a major centre for trade and ship building.  The city has a coffee house culture that dates back to the Hapsburg era.  Caffè Tommaseo, in Piazza Nicolò Tommaseo, near the grand open space of the Piazza Unità d’Italia, is the oldest in the city, dating back to 1830.

Also on this day:

1552: The birth of writer and actor Flaminio Scala

1871: The birth of Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda

1966: The birth of musician Jovanotti

1979: The death of actress and writer Gracie Fields

September 27 was the chosen birthday of Cosimo de’ Medici, born in 1389

Home

Francesco Domenico Araja - composer

Brilliant musician introduced Italian opera to Russia

Francesco Araja, depicted in a
caricature in 1731

Francesco Araja was the first in a long line of Italian composers to work for the Imperial Court in St Petersburg in Russia. Born on this day in 1709 in Naples, then in the Kingdom of Sicily, Araja received a musical education in his native city and was composing operas by the age of 20.

He made history as the composer of the first Italian opera to be performed in Russia and as the composer of the first opera with a Russian text.

It is thought that Araja was probably taught music by his father Angelo Araja and his grandfather Pietro Aniello Araja, who were both musicians. He was appointed maestro di cappella at the church of Santa Maria La Nova in Naples at the age of just 14.

Araja’s early operas were staged in Naples, Florence, Rome, Milan and Venice. His opera Berenice was performed in Florence in 1730, with the famous castrati, Farinelli and Caffarelli, singing the main roles in a new production in Venice in 1734.   

He was invited to St Petersburg in 1735 with a large Italian opera company and became the maestro di cappella to Empress Anna Ioannovna, and later to Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.

His opera, La forza dell’amore e dell’odio, staged in 1736, was the first Italian opera ever to be performed in Russia. It was translated into Russian and a printed booklet of the libretto was produced for the Russian audience. Araja is known to have written at least 14 operas while working for the Russian Imperial court.

Araja worked in St Petersburg from 1735 to 1759
and returned in 1762 before the fall of Tsar Peter III

In 1755, Araja composed Tsefal I Prokris, an opera in three acts, to the Russian language libretto by Alexander Sumarokov, which was based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was staged in St Petersburg and was the first opera to be sung by Russian singers.

To celebrate the success of this opera, Araja was given a generous sum of money and a sable coat by the Empress, Elizaveta Petrovna. This first opera in Russian was revived and staged in St Petersburg in 2001.

Araja returned to Italy in 1759 but was recalled to Russia for the coronation of Tsar Peter III in 1762. He was obliged to leave Russia soon after the overthrow of the German-born Peter III by troops loyal to his wife, who became known as Catherine the Great.

The composer spent his remaining years living in Bologna and died there at some time between 1762 and 1770.

The church of Santa Maria delle
Grazie stands on the theatre site

Travel tip:

Although the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is frequently referred to as the world’s oldest opera house, a more correct description would be the world’s oldest active opera house. The first operas in Naples were actually performed at the Teatro San Bartolomeo. Built in 1620, the San Bartolomeo originally staged plays and other spoken word performances but by 1650, it was primarily an opera house. It introduced southern Italy to works composed by musicians such as Monteverdi and others from the north. The theatre burnt down in 1681, was reopened two years later but closed for good in 1737 when the San Carlo replaced it as the royal opera house in Naples. The San Bartolomeo was demolished to make way for the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie, but remnants of the old theatre’s boxes can still be seen in the church, which is in vico Graziella al Porto, in the San Giuseppe Carità district.

The church of Santa Maria Nova,
where Araja was maestro di cappella

Travel tip:

The Church of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples is a Renaissance style, now-deconsecrated church and monastery that can be found in the street of the same name off Via Monteoliveto, which links Via Toledo with Via Armando Diaz in central Naples. It is a few blocks south of the church and monastery of Santa Chiara.  Nowadays, the Santa Maria La Nova complex houses various municipal offices, a museum of religious art and a tomb that some historians believe contains the remains of Vlades Tepes III Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler, the ruler of Wallachia - modern Romania - who inspired the name of Bram Stoker's famous literary vampire Count Dracula.

Also on this day:

1678: Elena Cornaro Piscopia becomes the first woman to graduate from a university

1900: The birth of actress Marta Abba, muse of Pirandello

1960: The birth of footballer Aldo Serena

Home

Giacomo Quarenghi - architect

Neoclassicist famous for his work in St Petersburg

Giacomo Quarenghi spent most of his working
life in St Petersburg in Russia

The architect Giacomo Quarenghi, best known for his work in Russia, and in St Petersburg in particular, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was born on this day in 1744 in Rota d’Imagna, a village in Lombardy about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Bergamo.

His extensive work in St Petersburg between 1782 and 1816, which followed an invitation from the Empress Catherine II (Catherine the Great), included the Hermitage Theatre, one of the first buildings in Russia in the Palladian style, the Bourse and the State Bank, St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace, several bridges on the Neva river, and a number of academic buildings including the Academy of Sciences, on the University Embankment.

He was also responsible for the reconstruction of some buildings around Red Square in Moscow in neo-Palladian style.

Quarenghi’s simple yet imposing neoclassical buildings, which often featured an elegant central portico with pillars and pediment, are responsible for much of St Petersburg’s stately elegance.

As a young man, Quarenghi was allowed to study painting in Bergamo despite his parents’ hopes that he would follow for a career in law or the church. He travelled widely through Italy, staying in Vicenza, Verona, Mantua and Venice in the north and venturing south to make drawings of the Greek temples at Paestum before arriving in Rome in 1763. His first focus was on painting, but he was later introduced to architecture by Paolo Posi.

Quarenghi's building for the Academy of Sciences on the
banks of the Neva river in St Petersburg

His biggest inspiration came from reading Andrea Palladio's Quattro libri d'archittetura, after which he moved away from painting to concentrate on the design of buildings. He returned to Venice to study Palladio and came to meet a British peer who was passing through Venice on the Grand Tour. It was through him that Quarenghi was commissioned to work in England, where his projects included an altar for the private Roman Catholic chapel of Henry Arundell at New Wardour Castle.

His first major commission in Italy was for the internal reconstruction of the monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco, just outside Rome, in 1771, where he was also asked to design a decor for a Music Room in the Campidoglio, and drew up designs for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII, which were later executed by Antonio Canova.

In 1779 he was selected by the Prussian-born Count Rieffenstein, who had been commissioned by Catherine II to send her two Italian architects.  Quarenghi, then 35, was finding it hard to generate enough work amid fierce competition in Italy, so he accepted the offer without hesitation, leaving immediately for St Petersburg, taking his pregnant wife with him.

Quarenghi's English Palace at Peterhof, which was sadly
demolished after suffering damage during the war

Quarenghi's first important commission in Russia was the magnificent English Palace in Peterhof, just outside St Petersburg, which was sadly blown up by the Germans during the Second World War II and later demolished by the Soviet government.

In 1783 Quarenghi settled with his family in Tsarskoe Selo, the town which was the former seat of the Russian royal family, where he would supervise the construction of the Alexander Palace.

Soon afterwards, he was appointed Catherine II's court architect and went on to produce a large number of designs for the Empress, her successors and members of her court, as well as interior decorations and elaborate ornate gardens.

His work outside St Petersburg included a cathedral in Ukraine and among his buildings in Moscow were a theatre hall in the Ostankino Palace.

Quarenghi was less popular with Catherine II’s son and successor, the Emperor Paul, but enjoyed a resurgence under Alexander I. He returned to Italy from time to time and always to an enthusiastic welcome.

He retired in 1808 and remained in Russia, even though most of his 13 children by two wives chose to return to Italy.

Quarenghi was granted Russian nobility and the Order of St. Vladimir of the First Degree in 1814. He died in Saint Petersburg at the age of 72.

A view over the village of Rota d'Imagna in Lombardy

Travel tip:

Rota d’Imagna in the province of Bergamo is situated in the Imagna Valley, a popular tourist spot because of its largely unspoilt landscape and spectacular mountain views, with many visitors attracted to trekking, mountain walks and horse riding. In the village itself, the Church of Rota Fuori, dedicated to San Siro, which was built in 1496 and restructured in 1765, has art works of significance including by Gaetano Peverada, Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli and Carlo Ceresa.  Quarenghi’s home was Ca’ Piatone, a palace built in the 17th century.

The Hermitage Theatre has echoes of
Palladio's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza

Travel tip:

Quarenghi’s design for the Hermitage Theatre in St Petersburg, with its seating set out in the style of a Roman amphitheatre and the walls decorated with marble columns and recessed statues, was heavily influenced by his visit to the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza as he toured Italy as a young man. The theatre, constructed between 1580 and 1585, was the final design by Andrea Palladio and was not completed until after his death. The trompe-l'œil onstage scenery, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, gives the appearance of long streets receding to a distant horizon. The theatre is one of only three Renaissance theatres still in existence.

More reading:

How Palladio became the world's favourite architect

Vincenzo Scamozzi - the man behind the unique stage set at the Teatro Olimpico

Luigi Vanvitelli and a royal palace based on the Palace of Versailles 

Also on this day:

1559: The birth of the painter and architect known as Cigoli

1960: The birth of conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan


Home