Francis V – Duke of Modena

Jacobite claimant was forced to flee his own duchy

Francis V, Duke of Modena: a portrait by
Luigi Manzini, painted between 1845 and 1850

The last reigning Duke of Modena, Francis V, was born on this day in 1819 in Modena.

He was the son of Francis IV of Modena and Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy.

After the death of his mother in 1840, Francis was considered by Jacobites to be the next legitimate heir to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland.

He succeeded as Duke of Modena in 1846 on the death of his father and also held the titles of Archduke of Austria and royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia.

During the 1848 revolutions in Italy, Francis was forced to flee from Modena after an uprising, but he was restored to his duchy backed by Austrian troops the following year.

He had to flee again in 1859 after the duchy was invaded by the armies of France and Piedmont. In March 1860, the new King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, ordered Modena to be incorporated into his new kingdom.

Francis went to live in Vienna and died there in 1875. After his death, his niece, Maria Theresa of Austria Este, became the new Jacobite claimant.

The Ducal Palace in Modena

Travel tip:

The Duchy of Modena and Reggio was an Italian state from 1452 to 1859. The Ducal Palace in Modena, which was built in the 17th century but not completed until the reign of Francis V, now houses a military museum and library. Modena has now become famous as the birthplace of opera singers Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni.

Travel tip:

An obelisk was erected in Reggio Emilia, part of Francis V’s territory, to mark the Duke’s marriage to Princess Adelgunde of Bavaria in 1842.

More reading:

The day the unified Italy proclaimed its first King


(Photo of the Ducal Palace in Modena by Alessandro Vito Lipari CC BY-SA 4.0)

Home

Tintoretto – painter

Dyer’s son whose work still adorns Venice

Tintoretto: this 1548 self-portrait is housed
 in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Renaissance artist Tintoretto died on this day in 1594 in Venice.

Known for his boundless energy, the painter was also sometimes referred to as Il Furioso.

His paintings are populated by muscular figures, make bold use of perspective and feature the colours typical of the Venetian school.

Tintoretto was an expert at depicting crowd scenes and mythological subjects and during his successful career received important commissions to produce paintings for the Scuola Grande di San Marco and the Scuolo Grande di San Rocco.

Tintoretto was born Jacopo Comin, the son of a dyer (tintore), which earned him the nickname Tintoretto, meaning 'little dyer'.

He was also sometimes known as Jacopo Robusti as his father had defended the gates of Padua against imperial troops in a way that was described as ‘robust’ at the time.

As a child, Tintoretto daubed on his father’s walls so the dyer took him to the studio of Titian to see if he could be trained as an artist.

Things did not work out and Tintoretto was quickly sent home. Although Tintoretto later claimed to be an admirer of Titian, the famous artist remained distant towards him so Tintoretto studied on his own and practised his technique day and night.

One of Tintoretto’s early pictures, which is still in the Church of the Carmine in Venice, is the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, one of Tintoretto's
 early works, can be found in the Church of the Carmine

He then painted four subjects from Genesis and, two of these, Adam and Eve and The Death of Abel, are now in the Accademia Museum in Venice.

In 1546 he painted three of his major works, The Worship of the Golden Calf, The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and The Last Judgement, for the Church of Madonna dell’Orto in Canareggio.

Then in 1548 he was commissioned for four pictures about the life of St Mark for the Scuola Grande di San Marco. From 1565 onwards Tintoretto produced many paintings for the walls and ceilings of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

The last important picture painted by Tintoretto was a vast canvas entitled Paradise, which takes up an entire wall of the Great Council Chamber in the Doge’s Palace. A painted sketch of it is also in the Louvre in Paris.

In May 1594, after suffering severe stomach pains and fever, Tintoretto died aged 75 and was buried in the Church of Madonna dell’Orto.

The Church of the Madonna dell'Orto in
Venice, where Tintoretto is buried

Travel tip:

The Church of Madonna dell’Orto in Cannaregio, where Tintoretto is buried, is one of the finest Gothic churches in Venice. In his painting, The Adoration of the Golden Calf on the left wall, the figure carrying the calf is said to represent Tintoretto himself.

Travel tip:

Tintoretto lived with his family in a house near the Church of Madonna dell’Orto overlooking the Fondamento dei Mori from 1574 till his death in 1594. He was born, lived and died in Cannaregio and is believed to have left Venice only once in his life.

Home

Giacomo Matteotti - martyr of freedom

Politician kidnapped and murdered by Fascist thugs

Giacomo Matteotti

A brave and historic speech made in the Italian parliament on this day in 1924 marked the start of a crisis for Benito Mussolini's Fascist government.

The young socialist politician who delivered the speech, denouncing the Fascist victory in the general election held in April of that year as having been won through fraud and violence, was subsequently kidnapped and murdered.

Giacomo Matteotti, the 29-year-old founder and leader of the Unified Socialist Party, accused Mussolini's party of employing thugs to intimidate the public into voting Fascist and said that changes to electoral law were inherently corrupt in that they were framed to make a Mussolini government almost inevitable.

Matteotti, who had already written a controversial book about the Fascists' rise to power, knew the risk he took in making the speech and is said to have told colleagues they should "get ready to hold a wake for me" as they offered him their congratulations.

Less than two weeks later, on June 10, Matteotti was walking along the banks of the River Tiber close to his home in Rome when he was attacked by five or six assailants who beat him up and bundled him into a car.  He tried to escape but was repeatedly stabbed with a sharply pointed carpenter's wood file.

Matteotti's body was not discovered until August 16, buried in a shallow grave near Riano, about 30 kilometres outside Rome, but witnesses identified the car, which was found bloodstained and abandoned a few days after he was taken.  Arrests soon followed, with the kidnap gang revealed to be members of Mussolini's secret police, the Ceka.

There was public outrage at the murder, especially over the implication that Mussolini had ordered it himself, not only on account of the May 30 speech but because Matteotti was thought to have uncovered evidence that an American oil company was funding the Fascists in return for exclusive rights to Italy's oil reserves.

Giacomo Matteotti is commemorated in the name of a
square in Bergamo in Lombardy

Opposition politicians refused to attend the Chamber of Deputies and demanded that the King, Victor Emmanuel III, dismissed Mussolini from power.  But the monarch, anxious not to expose the country to possible civil war and wary, in any case, of the republican leanings of the socialists, declined to do so.

Already under pressure from extremists in his party to abandon all pretence to democracy and impose a dictatorship on the country, Mussolini saw the king's backing as a chance to strengthen his grip.

He made a speech accepting broad responsibility for Matteotti's death as head of the Fascist party while at the same time challenging his opponents to prosecute him if they thought he was directly linked to the crime.

When they failed to do so, he began to introduce laws that would ultimately outlaw any form of opposition to the Fascist regime, marking the start of totalitarian rule.

Three of the kidnappers were jailed, although Victor Emmanuel subsequently granted them amnesty. Retried after the Second World War, the three were sentenced again to 30 years in prison, although in none of the trials could it be proved that they acted on Mussolini's direct orders.

Matteotti's body, meanwhile, had been returned to his home town of Fratta Polesine, just outside Rovigo in the Veneto region, where he had enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in a wealthy family, his interest in left-wing politics taking hold after he had left to study law at the University of Bologna. He is buried in the family crypt.

Façade of the Villa Badoer in Fratta Polesine

Travel tip:

A village of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, Fratta Polesine is notable for the Villa Badoer, built between 1557 and 1563 by the architect Andrea Palladio for a Venetian nobleman, and the first to feature the temple-like façade that would become Palladio's hallmark.

Travel tip:

Matteotti's memory is preserved in streets and squares named in his honour all over Italy, one example being the Piazza Giacomo Matteotti in in Bergamo, the elegant city north of Milan in Lombardy, where the street sign describes him as Martire della Libertà - martyr of freedom.

More reading:

Antonio Gramsci - the Communist leader Mussolini could not gag

Benito Mussolini and the founding of the Italian Fascists

The death of Mussolini

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

(Photo of Villa Badoer by Marcok CC BY-SA 3.0)

Home

Katie Boyle – actress and television presenter

Daughter of Italian Marquis became the face of Eurovision

Katie Boyle, pictured presenting the 1974
Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton

Television personality Katie Boyle was born Caterina Irene Maria Imperiali di Francavilla on this day in 1926 in Florence.

The actress, who became known for her appearances on panel games such as What’s My Line?, and also for presenting the Eurovision Song Contest on the BBC, died in 2018 at the age of 91.

She was the daughter of an Italian Marquis, the Marchese Imperiali di Francavilla, and his English wife, Dorothy Kate Ramsden.

At the age of 20, Caterina moved from Italy to the UK to begin a modelling career and she went on to appear in several 1950s films.

In 1947 she had married Richard Bentinck Boyle, the ninth Earl of Shannon, and although the marriage was dissolved in 1955, she kept the surname, Boyle, throughout her career.

Boyle was an on screen continuity announcer for the BBC in the 1950s and then became a television personality who regularly appeared on panel games and quiz programmes.

She was the presenter of the 1960, 1963, 1968 and 1974 Eurovision Song Contests, impressing viewers with her range of European languages.

Boyle has also worked in the theatre and on radio and has been an agony aunt for the TV Times.

She was later married to Greville Baylis, a racehorse owner, who died in 1976, and Sir Peter Saunders, a theatre impresario, who died in 2002.

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence, one of the city's
most famous sights, was built in 1345

Travel tip:

One of the most famous sights in Boyle’s birthplace of Florence is the Ponte Vecchio, built in 1345 and the oldest bridge remaining in the city. 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, Vasari, to link the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, via the Uffizi, allowing the ruling family, the Medici, to move about between their residences without having to walk through the streets.

Travel tip:

Work on the Uffizi in Florence began in 1560 to create a suite of offices (uffici) for the new administration of Cosimo I dè Medici. 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, which was the start of 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.

Home