Cosimo I de' Medici

The grand designs of a powerful archduke

This 1545 portrait of  Cosimo I by Agnolo
 Bronzino is owned by the Art Gallery
of New South Wales

The second duke of Florence and first grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, died on this day in 1574 at the Villa di Castello near Florence.

Cosimo had proved to be both shrewd and unscrupulous, bringing Florence under his despotic control and increasing its territories.

He was the first to have the idea of uniting all public services in a single building. He commissioned the Uffizi, which meant Offices, a beautiful building that is now an art gallery in the centre of Florence.

Cosimo was the great-great-grandson of Lorenzo the Elder, whose brother was Cosimo the Elder but played no part in politics until he heard of the assassination of his distant cousin, Alessandro.

He immediately travelled to Florence and was elected head of the republic in 1537 with the approval of the city’s senate, assembly and council.

He also had the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. The Emperor’s general defeated an army raised against Cosimo, who then had the principal rebels beheaded in public in Florence.

Cosimo began to style himself as a duke and sidelined the other Government bodies in the city.  As the Emperor’s protégée, he remained safe from the hostility of Pope Paul II and King Francis I of France.

The gallery over the Ponte Vecchio was added by Cosimo I
to link the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace

Cosimo launched an attack on Siena in 1554 and after a long siege the city capitulated to his troops. Having brought many other parts of Tuscany under his control, Cosimo then turned his attention to improving Florence.

He had the interior of Palazzo Vecchio redecorated and adopted the Pitti Palace as his residence, overseeing the design of the Boboli Gardens. He also had the gallery over the Ponte Vecchio built to enable him to move from one palace to the other easily.

Cosimo was deeply affected when his wife, two of his sons and two of his daughters all died within a few years of each other.

In 1564 he handed over the Government of the city to his eldest son, Francis. In 1569 Pope Pius V conferred the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany on Cosimo.

He retired to live at his country residence, the Villa di Castello, where he died in 1574.

Travel tip:

The Ponte Vecchio was built in 1345 and is the oldest bridge remaining in Florence. The medieval workshops inhabited by butchers and blacksmiths were eventually given to goldsmiths and are still inhabited by jewellers today. The private corridor over the shops was designed by the architect, Giorgio Vasari, to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, via the Uffizi, allowing the Medici to move about between their residences without having to walk through the streets.

The building that now houses the Uffizi Gallery was
originally designed to house a suite of offices

Travel tip:

Work on the Uffizi began in 1560 in order to create a suite of offices (uffici) for the new administration of Cosimo I. The architect, Vasari, created a wall of windows on the upper storey and from about 1580, the Medici began to use this well-lit space to display their art treasures, starting one of the oldest and most famous art galleries in the world. The present day Uffizi Gallery, in Piazzale degli Uffizi, is open from 8.15 am to 6.50 pm from Tuesday to Sunday.

More reading:

Piero di Cosimo - Florentine artist with works in the Uffizi

Niccolò Machiavelli, brilliant but ruthless statesman who served the Medici family

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(Uffizi picture is by Petar Milosevic CC BY-SA 4.0)

Massimo D’Alema – former prime minister

Journalist and politician first Communist to lead Italy

Massimo D'Alema

Massimo D’Alema, who was prime minister of Italy from 1998 to 2000, was born on this day in 1949 in Rome.

He was the first prime minister in the history of Italy, and the first leader of any of the NATO countries, to have been a Communist Party member.

After studying Philosophy at the University of Pisa, D’Alema became a journalist by profession. He joined the Italian Young Communists’ Federation in 1963, becoming its general secretary in 1975.
  
D’Alema became a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), part of which, in 1991, gave origin to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), and, in 1998, to the Democrats of the Left (DS).

D’Alema has also served as the chief editor of the daily newspaper, L’Unità, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.

In October 1998, D’Alema became prime minister of Italy, as the leader of the Olive Tree centre left coalition.

While his party was making the transition to becoming the Democratic Party of the Left, D’Alema stressed the importance of the party’s roots in Marxism with the aim of creating a modern, European, social-democratic party.

He was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs by Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006 and subsequently became president of a political foundation for Italian Europeans and president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies.

Travel tip:

Palazzo Chigi, the official residence in Rome of the Prime Minister of Italy, was occupied by D’Alema between 1998 and 2000. It is a 16th century palace in Piazza Colonna, just off Via del Corso and close to the Pantheon.

The Duomo and Leaning Tower in Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli

Travel tip:

Massimo D’Alema is one of several Italian prime ministers to have attended the University of Pisa. Situated in Lungarno Pacinotti in the centre of Pisa, close to the Duomo and the famous Leaning Tower, the university was founded in 1343 by an edict of Pope Clement VI and is the tenth oldest in Italy.


More reading:

Alcide de Gasperi - Prime Minister who rebuilt war-torn Italy

The tragedy of Aldo Moro

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(Massimo D'Alema photo by WeEnterWinter CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Pisa photo by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro CC BY-SA 3.0)

Antonio Carluccio - chef and restaurateur

TV personality and author began his career as a wine merchant

Antonio Carluccio pictured signing a
copy of one of his 21 books 

The chef, restaurateur and author Antonio Carluccio was born on this day in 1937 in Vietri-sul-Mare in Campania. 

An instantly recognisable figure due to his many television appearances, Carluccio moved to London in 1975 and built up a successful chain of restaurants bearing his name.  He wrote 21 books about Italian food, as well as his autobiography, A Recipe for Life, which was published in 2012.

Although born in Vietri, a seaside town between Amalfi and Salerno famous for ceramics, Carluccio spent most of his childhood in the north, in Borgofranco d'Ivrea in Piedmont.  His father was a station master and his earliest memories are of running home from the station where his father worked to warn his mother that the last train of the day had left and that it was time to begin cooking the evening meal.

Carluccio would join his father in foraging for mushrooms and wild rocket in the mountainous countryside near their home and it was from those outings that his interest in food began to develop, yet his career would at first revolve around wine.  Having moved to Austria to study languages, he settled in Germany and between 1962 and 1975 was a wine merchant based in Hamburg.

The wine business then took him to London, where he specialised in importing Italian wines.  He was already acknowledged among friends as a talented cook and he was persuaded by his partner and future wife, Priscilla Conran, to enter a cookery competition promoted by a national newspaper, in which he finished second.

Carluccio and Priscilla married in 1980, after which his new brother-in-law, the designer and entrepreneur Terence Conran, made him manager of his Neal Street Restaurant in Covent Garden, which launched him on his new career.

He bought Neal Street in 1989 and, two years later, opened a deli next door, called simply Carluccio's. The shop expanded into a mail order business and, in 1998, with Priscilla providing the business brains, he opened the first Carluccio's Caffè.  It was the first step in building a nationwide chain of restaurants, which they eventually sold for around £90 million in 2010.  He now works for the company, which has more than 80 branches in the United Kingdom alone, as a consultant.

Carluccio's television career began in 1983, when he made his first appearance in the BBC2 show Food and Drink, talking about Mediterranean food.  At the same time he was asked to write his first book, An Invitation to Italian Cooking, and soon became a familiar face as the number of cooking programmes on TV soared.  He hosted several of his own series and shared the spotlight with his former assistant at Neal Street, Gennaro Contaldo, in the hugely popular Two Greedy Italians. By coincidence, Contaldo was born in Minori, less than 20 kilometres along the Amalfi Coast from Carluccio's home town of Vietri-sul-Mare.

Carluccio was generally seen as a jolly figure with a zest for life, yet endured difficult times. Although his parents did their best to shield him, he admitted that some of his experiences growing up in wartime Italy were not pleasant. He suffered a family tragedy aged 23 when his younger brother, Enrico, 10 years' his junior, drowned while swimming in a lake. Carluccio was divorced from Priscilla Conran in 2008 and revealed in his autobiography that he had waged a long battle against depression.

In 1988, Carluccio was honoured in Italy by being made Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the equivalent to a knighthood in Britain, where in 2007 he was made an OBE.

Carluccio died in November 2017 at the age of 80 following a fall at home.

The majolica-clad dome of the Church of St John
the Baptist in Vietri-sul-Mare, Carluccio's birthplace

Travel tip:

Vietri-sul-Mare, which is situated just 12 kilometres from Salerno in Campania, is the first or last town on the Amalfi Coast, depending on the starting point.  It is sometimes described as the first of the 13 pearls of the Amalfi Coast. A port and resort town of Etruscan origins, it has been famous for the production of ceramics since the 15th century. The Church of St. John the Baptist, built in the 17th century in late Neapolitan Renaissance style, has an eyecatching dome covered with majolica tiles.

Remnants of Borgofranca's
boundary walls are still visible

Travel tip:

Borgofranca d'Ivrea is a village of 3,700 inhabitants situated just north of Ivrea in Piedmont, a town with a population of 23,000 people notable for its 14th century castle, a square structure that originally had a round tower in each corner, one of which was destroyed by an explosion in 1676 after lightning struck an ammunition store.  There is also a cathedral, parts of which date back to the fourth century, that now has an elegant neo-classical faҫade added in the 19th century.

Also on this day:

1588: The death of painter Paolo Veronese

1798: The death of the Venetian painter Canaletto

1895: The birth of aviator Antonio Locatelli

1953: The birth of high jumper Sara Simeoni

1957: The birth of TV journalist Lilli Gruber

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Lucrezia Borgia – Pope’s daughter

Notorious blonde beauty inspired painters and poets

Bartolomeo Veneto's 1520 portrait of a courtesan is
generally accepted as depicting Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, was born on this day in 1480 in Subiaco near Rome.

A reputedly beautiful woman, she entered into arranged marriages to important men to advance her family’s political position and rumours have abounded about the fate of her first two husbands.

Macchiavelli wrote about the Borgia family in his book, The Prince, depicting Lucrezia as some kind of femme fatale and this characterisation of her, whether just or unjust, has lasted over the years, being reproduced in many works of art, books and films.

Lucrezia was born to Vannozza dei Cattanei, one of Rodrigo Borgia’s mistresses, and had three brothers, Cesare, Giovanni and Gioffre.

When she was just ten years old the first matrimonial arrangement was made on her behalf but was annulled after a few weeks in favour of a better match, which was also later called off. But after Rodrigo became Pope Alexander VI, he arranged for Lucrezia to marry Giovanni Sforza.

When the Pope needed a new, more advantageous, political alliance it is thought he may have ordered the execution of Giovanni, but Lucrezia was able to warn her husband and he fled to Rome.

The marriage was eventually annulled and Lucrezia was then married to Alfonso of Aragon, who was murdered two years later.

The Castello Estense, where Lucrezia Borgia lived
 is right at the centre of the town of Ferrara

She was then married to Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. They lived in Ferrara and had several children and she eventually earned the reputation of being a respectable and accomplished Duchess, despite her affairs with other men.

During her relationship with the poet, Pietro Bembo, they exchanged love letters, which are now in the collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Byron called them ‘the prettiest love letters in the world’ when he saw them there in 1816 and also claimed to have managed to steal part of a lock of Lucrezia’s hair that was on display with them.

Lucrezia has been described as having heavy, long, blonde hair, a good complexion, hazel eyes and a graceful figure.

Rumours that she was involved in incest and possessed a hollow ring, which she used to poison men’s drinks, have never been substantiated.

After the birth of her last child to Alfonso I in 1519, Lucrezia became seriously ill and died at the age of 39 in Ferrara
.
Her surviving children went on to make good marriages and many royal and notable people today can claim Lucrezia Borgia as an ancestor.


Travel tip:

The Castello Estense in Ferrara, where Lucrezia Borgia lived after her marriage to Alfonso I d’Este, is a moated, brick-built castle in the centre of the city. It is open to the public every day from 9.30 till 5.30 pm, apart from certain times of the year when it is closed on Mondays. For more details and ticket prices visit www.castelloestense.it.

A lock of Lucrezia Borgia's hair is on display
in a glass case at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

Travel tip:

The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Piazza Pio XI in Milan was established in 1618 to house paintings, drawing and statues donated to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a library founded in the same building a few years before. In addition to the works of art, the museum keeps curiosities such as the gloves Napoleon wore at Waterloo and a lock of Lucrezia Borgia’s hair, in front of which famous poets, such as Lord Byron and Gabriele D’Annunzio are reputed to have spent a lot of time drawing inspiration. Visit www.leonardo-ambrosiana.it for more information.

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