Don Bosco – Saint

Father and teacher who could do magic tricks

Giovanni Bosco was born in 1815 soon after the
end of the Napoleonic Wars

Saint John Bosco, who was often known as Don Bosco, died on this day in 1888 in Turin.

He had dedicated his life to helping street children, juvenile delinquents and other disadvantaged young people and was made a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1934.

Bosco is now the patron saint of apprentices, editors, publishers, children, young delinquents and magicians.

He was born Giovanni Bosco in Becchi, just outside Castelnuovo d’Asti in Piedmont in 1815. His birth came just after the end of the Napoleonic Wars that had ravaged the area.

Bosco’s father died when he was two, leaving him to be brought up by his mother, Margherita.

Mama Margherita Occhiena would herself be declared venerable by the Catholic Church in 2006.

Bosco attended Church and grew up to become very devout. Although his family was poor, his mother would share what they had with homeless people who came to the door.

While Bosco was still young, he had the first of a series of dreams that would influence his life.

He saw a group of poor boys who blasphemed while they played together, and a man told him that if he showed meekness and charity he would win over these boys, who were his friends.

Don Bosco used magic tricks to get the
attention of street children

Not long afterwards he saw a travelling group of circus performers and magicians and realised if he learnt their magic tricks he could use them for his own purposes. He staged a magic show for other children and ended by inviting them to pray with him.

He later decided to become a priest, but had to work for two years in a vineyard before he found a priest, Joseph Cafasso, who was willing to help him achieve his ambition. Cafasso would later be made a saint for his work ministering to prisoners and the condemned.

After studying for six years, Bosco was ordained as a priest in 1841. He was assigned to work with poor children in Turin and visited prisons which housed large numbers of boys between the ages of 12 and 18 in deplorable conditions.

Bosco used his magic tricks to get the attention of the street children and then shared his message with them. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment.

His mother began to help him and by the 1860s they were responsible for finding shelter for hundreds of boys.

He negotiated new rights for apprentices to prevent them from being abused and beaten. He encouraged some of the boys he met to consider becoming priests, but was accused by other priests of stealing boys from their parishes.

Don Bosco is commemorated around the
world. This statue is in Rondo, in Spain

The Marquis of Cavour, Chief of Police in Turin, regarded his open air services as political and a threat to the state. Bosco was interrogated on several occasions but no charges were ever made against him.

In 1859 Bosco established the Society of St Francis de Sales to carry on his charitable work helping boys. The organisation has continued to help children all around the world to this day.

Some of the boys helped by Don Bosco also decided to work to help abandoned boys. One of these was John Cagliero, who later became a Cardinal.

Bosco also founded a group of religious sisters to do for girls what he had been doing for boys. They became known as the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

After Bosco’s death on January 31, 1888, his funeral was attended by thousands and the call for his canonisation came immediately.

Pope Pius XI had known him personally and declared him blessed in 1929 and a Saint in 1934. He was given the title Father and Teacher of Youth. His feast day is celebrated all over the world on this day.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II was formally petitioned to declare Bosco the Patron Saint of stage magicians.

Bosco’s extraordinary life was featured in the 1935 film, Don Bosco, directed by Goffredo Alessandrini and starring Gianpaolo Rosmino as the priest.

The house in which Don Bosco was born is in Becchi, a
hamlet just outside Castelnuovo d'Asti

Travel tip:

Castelnuovo d’Asti in Piedmont, which was near the hamlet where Bosco was born, has been renamed Castelnuovo Don Bosco in honour of the saint. It is situated about 20km (12 miles) east of Turin and about 25km (15 miles) northwest of Asti. One of the main sights is a medieval tower, one of the few remains of the castle, which was built before the year 1000 and gave the town the name, Castelnuovo.

The Basilica of Don Bosco was built between 1961 and 1966

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Don Bosco was built in Frazione Morialdo at Castelnuovo Don Bosco between 1961 and 1966 close to the saint’s birthplace. In front of the church there is a large square designed to accommodate large numbers of pilgrims who visit the Basilica. It is also possible to visit the birthplace of Don Bosco, which is still standing at Via Becchi 36.


More reading:

Francesco Faà di Bruno - the wealthy academic who helped the poor

The reformed gambler who devoted himself to caring for the sick

Why Padre Pio is one of the most popular saints in history

Also on this day:

1788: The death in Rome of British royal exile Bonnie Prince Charlie

1933: The birth of Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano

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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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Felice Beato – war photographer

Venetian-born adventurer captured some of first images of conflict

Felice Beato's graphic pictures from the Second Opium
War in China shocked Western audiences

Felice Beato, who is thought to be one of the world’s first war photographers, died in Florence on this day in 1909.

He was 76 or 77 years old and had passed perhaps his final year in Italy, having spent the majority of his adult life in Asia and the Far East. 

Although he was from an Italian family it was thought for many years that he had been born on the island of Corfu and died in Burma. However, in 2009 his death certificate was found in an archive in Florence, listing his place of birth as Venice and his place of death as the Tuscan regional capital.

Beato photographed the Crimean War in 1855, the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion in 1857 and the final days of the Second Opium War in China in 1860, later travelling with United States forces in Korea in 1871 and with the British in the Sudan in 1884-85.

He also spent many years living in Japan and then Burma, where his photography introduced the people and culture of the Far East to many in the West for the first time.

Felice Beato, pictured in about 1872, when
he was based in Japan

In addition, he developed photography techniques that put him ahead of his time, despite the crude nature of equipment compared with today’s technology.

These included adding colour using methods learned from Japanese watercolour artists and creating panoramas by carefully making several exposures of a scene and joining them together for pictures up to two metres (6½ feet) long.

Although not born in Corfu, Beato lived on the island from a young age after his parents moved there from Venice.  Corfu was a British protectorate at the time, which made him a British subject.  Later the family lived in Istanbul.

Equipped with what was thought to be the only camera he ever used, bought in Paris, he formed a partnership with the British photographer and his future brother-in-law James Robertson and began his travels by heading to Balaklava in Crimea, where his photographs captured the destruction of the Crimean War, including the fall of Sebastapol in 1855.

From there they went to Calcutta to observe and photograph the country in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and in 1860 on to South China to photograph the Anglo-French military expedition in the Second Opium War. Beato’s pictures there were the first to document a military campaign as it was unfolding. His pictures of dead Chinese soldiers brought home the horrors of war as never seen before.

After travelling to London in 1861, where he raised funds by selling many of his photographs, he ventured to Yokohama in Japan, where he formed a new partnership with Charles Wirgmann, an illustrator with whom he had worked previously.

A street scene in Nagasaki in Japan in around 1868

The move began a new chapter in Beato’s career. He compiled albums of Japanese photographs, including portraits, cityscapes and landscapes, and despite restrictions imposed by Japan’s military dictatorship was able to reach parts of the country into which few Westerners had been.

Unlike his work in India and China, which tended to underline the might of British imperial rule and paid little attention to the indigenous population, he was keen to introduce the Western world to Japanese people and culture and many of his photographs were of local people going about their daily life.

At the same time, Beato was expanding his horizons in a business sense, acquiring several studios, venturing into property, investing money in the new Grand Hotel in Yokohama and setting up a business importing carpets and women’s handbags, although he is said to have suffered big losses on the Yokohama silver exchange.

Later, after selling his business in 1877, he settled in Burma, where he continued to focus on photographing local people, while again developing money-making sidelines, in this case an antiques and curios business.

It is thought Beato spent time in Belgium towards the end of his life before returning to Italy to live in Florence in about 1908.

The ancient Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello

Travel tip:

Venice is a very different place today from Felice Beato’s era and many visitors find the number of people concentrated on the area around Piazza San Marco in high season rather daunting.  But by venturing towards the outlying parts of the city it is possible to escape the crowds. Better still, try a trip to one of the islands. Murano and Burano still attract tourists but in smaller numbers, while Torcello – just a few minutes further on from Burano – is more or less undisturbed.  Once home to upwards of 20,000 people, albeit in the 10^th century, there are now fewer than 100 living on the island, yet relics of the past remain, such as the oldest church in the Venetian lagoon, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, founded in 639 and with Byzantine mosaics still intact from the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

The Chiesa di San Salvatore di Ognissanti
in Borgo Ognissanti in Florence

Travel tip:

A 10-minute walk west from the centre of Florence, the the Franciscan Chiesa di San Salvatore di Ognissanti – usually known simply as the Ognissanti – is a church worth venturing away from the main sights for. Once the parish church of the wealthy Vespucci family, including the explorer Amerigo, the church is rich in art treasures, including Ghirlandaio’s Madonna della Misericordia and his Last Supper, which was believed to have been the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. There is also a Madonna and Child With Angels by Giotto and works by Sandro Botticelli, who is buried in the south transept.

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Simonetta Vespucci – Renaissance beauty

Noblewoman hailed as embodiment of female perfection

Simonetta Vespucci, as recalled by Sandro
Botticelli in his 1480s Portrait of a Woman

Simonetta Vespucci, a young noblewoman who became the most sought-after artist’s model in Florence in the mid-15^th century, is thought to have been born on this day in 1453.

Born Simonetta Cattaneo to a Genoese family, she was taken to Florence in 1469 when she married Marco Vespucci, an eligible Florentine nobleman who was a distant cousin of the explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.

She quickly became the talk of Florentine society. Soon known as La Bella Simonetta, she captivated painters and young noblemen alike with her beauty. 

It is said that, shortly before her arrival, a group of artists had been discussing their idea of the characteristics of perfect female beauty and were stunned, on meeting Simonetta, to discover that their idealised woman actually existed.

The Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano, were said to have been besotted with her, Giuliano in particular, while she is thought to have been the model for several of Sandro Botticelli’s portraits of women.

The female figure standing on a shell in Botticelli’s masterpiece, The Birth of Venus, so closely resembles the woman in the paintings accepted as being Simonetta Vespucci that some critics insist he must have based his Venus on her.

The Venus in Botticelli’s Primavera has the same hair colour and similar facial features, as does one of the figures in his Three Graces.

Another Botticelli Portrait of a Woman,
clearly of the same model

The romantic notion that Botticelli, who never married, carried with him an unrequited love for Simonetta is reinforced by the story that, having outlived her, he asked to be buried at the Church of Ognissanti in Florence because she had been laid to rest there, although historians have pointed out that he had been baptized there and was buried with his family.

Other artists were similarly inspired by her. The 1490 Portrait of a woman by Piero di Cosimo is also believed to be Simonetta Vespucci.

Considering the impact she supposedly made, in reality her life was tragically short.

The daughter of a Genoese nobleman, Gaspare Catteneo, she was probably born in Genoa but some like to believe she was born in Porto Venere, the coastal town near La Spezia, the place that legend says was the birthplace of Venus herself.

Whichever it is true, she is said to have met Marco Simonetti while he was attending the Banco di San Giorgio. The young man asked her father for her hand and Gaspare, aware that the marriage would enhance his family’s social standing through Vespucci’s connection with the Medici, gave his approval.

In any event, both Lorenzo and Giuliano fell for her charms on their first meeting, and offered the couple use of a palazzo in Via Larga for the wedding ceremony followed by the wedding breakfast at their lavish Villa di Careggi.  The groom and his bride were both around 16 years old.

The Botticelli masterpiece The Birth of Venus is thought to
have been inspired by Simonetta Vespucci

Afterwards, Lorenzo was too busy with the politics of the day to pay Simonetta much attention but it was a different story for Giuliano, who did not conceal his feelings despite her now being married.

On one occasion, he took part in La Giostra, a jousting tournament, carrying a banner on which was a picture of Simonetta and an inscription, in French, that read La Sans Pareille, which translates in context as ‘The Woman Unparalleled’.

Guiliano won the tournament and dedicated his victory to ‘the Queen of Beauty’ and there have been suggestions that the pair become lovers, although historians think this was unlikely.

Simonetta died just one year later, at the age of 22.  It is thought she was stricken with tuberculosis, known at the time as ‘the subtle evil’ and a disease that was usually fatal.

During her funeral procession, it is said that the coffin was opened so that onlookers could appreciate her beauty one last time, although it appears to have been preserved for posterity in art.

The Uffizi overlooks the Arno river in central Florence

Travel tip:

Botticelli’s paintings The Birth of Venus and Primavera can both be found in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, one of the largest and most important art museums in the world and the most visited art gallery in Italy, attracting more than two million visitors a year, with so many wanting to make it part of their experience of Florence that turning up without a pre-booked ticket can mean waiting up to five hours to be allowed in.  The complex of buildings that make up the gallery was originally designed by Giorgio Vasari on behalf of Cosimo I de’ Medici as offices – uffizi – for the Florentine magistrates.

The Villa di Castello is set in extensive gardens

Travel tip:

It is thought Cosimo I de’ Medici also commissioned Botticelli to provide some paintings to decorate the walls of a country house, the Villa di Castello, that the family had acquired in the hills northwest of Florence, near the town of Sesto Fiorentino and not far from the city's airport. Cosimo also commissioned an engineer, Piero di San Casciano, to build a system of aqueducts to carry water to the villa and gardens, a sculptor, Niccolo Tribolo, to create fountains and statues in the gardens and Vasari to restore and enlarge the main building.

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