Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Altobello Melone's portrait of Cesare Borgia

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a Cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.

Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a Cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.

His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.

Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan.

He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.

Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy and deposed all his vicars in the Romagna and Marche regions.

Cesare was made condottiero - military leader - in command of the papal army and sent to capture Imola and Forli.

He returned to Rome in triumph and received the title Papal Gonfalonier from his father.

Niccolò Machiavelli

He subsequently took over Pesaro, Faenza and Rimini and laid siege to Piombino, later commanding French troops in the sieges of Naples and Capua, causing the collapse of Aragonese power in southern Italy.

Cesare was planning the conquest of Tuscany when he received news of his father’s death in 1503.

Machiavelli later wrote that had Cesare been able to win the support of Pope Julius II his success would have continued, but the new Pope went back on his promises.

Cesare was betrayed in Naples and imprisoned and his land was retaken by the Papacy.

He was transferred to Spain where his imprisonment continued in various castles. Eventually he escaped and tried to recapture his lands but he was ambushed by his enemies and received a fatal wound from a spear.

Cesare was originally buried inside the Church of Santa Maria in Viana in northern Spain but his bones were later expelled and buried under the street outside. He was dug up twice by historians and then reburied. After years of petitions being turned down because he had resigned as a Cardinal, he was finally moved back inside the church in 2007,  some 500 years after his death.

Travel tip:

Cesare Borgia was born in Rome and studied law at an educational institution, the Studium Urbis, which has now become the Sapienza University of Rome. It was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII as a centre for ecclesiastical studies and expanded in the 15th century to include schools of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology.  It moved from being the papal university to the university of the city of Rome in 1870.  The main campus is situated just north of Termini Station.

Piazza Aurelio Saffi in Forlì.

Travel tip:

At the height of his power, Cesare Borgia controlled the Papal States, now part of the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Faenza, Forlì and Rimini are among the historic cities he conquered. The area is one of the wealthiest in Italy, containing Romanesque and Renaissance cities.  It is a centre of production in the food and automobile industries, home to top-end car manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati.

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Vincenzo Coronelli – globe maker

Friar whose globes of the world were in big demand

A portrait of Vincenzo Coronelli that
appeared in his atlas, Atlante Veneto

Vincenzo Coronelli, a Franciscan friar who was also a celebrated cartographer and globe maker, was born on this day in 1650 in Venice.

He became famous for making finely-crafted globes of the world for the Duke of Parma and Louis XIV of France.

This started a demand for globes from other aristocratic clients to adorn their libraries and some of Coronelli’s creations are still in existence today in private collections.

Coronelli was the fifth child of a Venetian tailor and was accepted as a novice by the Franciscans when he was 15. He was later sent to a college in Rome where he studied theology and astronomy.

He began working as a geographer and was commissioned to produce a set of globes for Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma. Each finely crafted globe was five feet in diameter.

One of the pair of beautiful globes Coronelli
made for Louis XIV of France

After one of Louis XIV’s advisers saw the globes, Coronelli was invited to Paris to make a pair of globes for the French King.

The large globes displayed the latest information obtained by French explorers in north America. They are now in the François-Mitterand national library in Paris.

Other original globes made by Coronelli can be seen in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice and the Angelo Mai Civic Library in Bergamo.

Coronelli died at the age of 68 in Venice having created hundreds of maps and globes during his lifetime.

Travel tip:

The Civic Library (Biblioteca Civica) Angelo Mai where Coronelli’s globes are displayed in the elegant entrance hall, is located in Piazza Vecchia at the centre of Bergamo’s upper town. The library was founded in 1768 and houses more than 700,000 books, original manuscripts and scrolls.

The Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai stands on the beautiful
Piazza Vecchia at the centre of historic Bergamo

Travel tip:

The Biblioteca Marciana on the left side of the Piazzetta leading into St Mark’s Square in Venice is one of the oldest public manuscript depositories in Italy and houses one of the greatest collections of classical texts in the world as well as a pair of Coronelli’s 110-centimetre diameter globes.

(Photo of globe by Myrabella CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Gianfranco Ferré - fashion designer

Sought to create clothes for real women 

Gianfranco Ferré

Gianfranco Ferré, who became one of the biggest names in Italian fashion during the 1980s and 1990s, was born on this day in 1944 in Legnano, a town in Lombardy north-west of Milan, between the city and Lake Maggiore, where in adult life he made his home.

Ferré was regarded as groundbreaking in fashion design in the same way as Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent in that his clothes were created with real people rather than catwalk models in mind, yet without compromise in terms of aesthetic appeal.

At the peak of his popularity, his clients included Sharon Stone, Elizabeth Taylor, the Queen of Jordan, Paloma Picasso, Sophia Loren and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Ferré first trained to be an architect, placing emphasis on the structure of his garments in which strong seams were often a prominent feature. He was once dubbed the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion, which was taken to be a reference to the powerful horizontals in his designs.  His staff addressed him as "the architect".

He was also well known for inevitably including variations of white dress shirts in his collections, adorned with theatrical cuffs or multiple collars.  At one point, Ferré blouses were an essential in the wardrobe of high-flying career women.

Ferré won the Italian fashion industry's 'Oscar' - the Occhio D'Oro Award - six times and became the first designer from outside France to be made artistic director of Christian Dior in Paris, for whom he worked between 1989 and 1997.

From high school in Legnano, Ferré moved to the Politecnico di Milano University, where he graduated with a degree in architecture.  His first job was in the design studio of a furniture company but amused himself by designing accessories for a girl friend that were noticed by the owners of a boutique in Portofino, who asked him to design for them.

The Basilica of San Magno in Legnano, where the funeral
of Gianfranco Ferré took place in 2007

After a period working for a rainwear company, he founded his own company, Baila, in 1974, and four years later in 1978 founded his own fashion house in the Brera district of Milan with his friend and business partner, Franco Mattioli.  He launched his first collection of pret-a-portér (ready-to-wear) clothing for women, which was followed the same year by a more sporty line, Oaks by Ferré. His first man's collection was released in 1982 and added a perfume range in 1984.

On leaving Dior, he returned to full-time to working on the Ferré clothing and accessory lines, which by now had substantial export sales in the United States.  But he and Mattioli fell out over the direction of the company and in 2000 they sold 90 per cent of Gianfranco Ferré SpA, although Ferré stayed on as creative director. 

Ferré died in 2007 at the age of 62, a few days after being admitted to hospital in Milan, having suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.  A big, bear-like figure, nonetheless always beautifully dressed in one of his trademark three-piece suits, he had always struggled to control his weight and had had at least one stroke previously. 

He was buried in his home town of Legnano after a funeral attended by giants of the fashion world, including Giorgio Armani, Valentino Garavani and Donatella Versace.

Travel tip:

Legnano is famous for being the only town, apart from Rome, to which reference is made in the Italian national anthem, thanks to the historic Battle of Legnano, in which the Lombard League inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1176.  Almost 700 years later, Garibaldi referred to the battle as an inspiration in the struggle for unification of Italy.  The 16th century Basilica of San Magno, where Gianfranco Ferré's funeral took place, is the town's most important building.

Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore

Travel tip:

Lake Maggiore is the largest lake in Italy at some 34 miles (64km) long, its most northerly extremity extending into Switzerland.  While the upper end is of alpine character, the lake in general enjoys a mild climate all year round and is famous for the greenery of its surrounding terrain and for its gardens, many growing rare and exotic plants, in particular those located on the Borromean Islands and Isola Bella.

(Photo of Basilica of San Magno by Heimdall CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Photo of Isola Bella by MbDortmund GFDL 1.2)

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Pope Pius VII

Compromise candidate elected by conclave-in-exile in Venice

Pope Pius VII, a portrait by Jacques-Louis David,
which can be seen in the Louvre in Paris

Pope Pius VII was born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti on this day in 1742 in Cesena in Emilia-Romagna.

He was elected Pope in a conclave that was forced to meet on the island of San Giorgio in Venice in 1799 because Rome was occupied by the French.  He was crowned with a papier mâché version of the Papal tiara in 1800 because the French had seized the original.

It was the last conclave to be held outside Rome.

Chiaramonti was a monk of the order of Saint Benedict as well as being a distinguished theologian. He was granted the title, Servant of God, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.

Chiaramonti had joined the order of Saint Benedict at the age of 14. He was later ordained as a priest and went on to teach at Benedictine colleges in Parma and Rome.

After one of his relatives was elected Pope Pius VI, Chiaramonti had a series of promotions that resulted in him becoming a Cardinal.

The island of San Giorgio in the Venice lagoon, where
the papal conclave of 1799 took place

When the French revolutionary army invaded Italy in 1797, Cardinal Chiaramonti advised people to submit to the newly-created Cisalpine Republic, set up to rule in northern Italy by the French.

Following the death of Pope Pius VI while he was in French captivity, Chiaramonti became the compromise candidate for the papacy after others in the running were unacceptable to the Austrian cardinals.  He was elected in March 1800, taking the name of Pius VII to honour his predecessor.

He opposed the slave trade and condemned freemasons. He had the Arch of Constantine restored in Rome and enriched the collection in the Vatican library with manuscripts and books, although much of his papacy was spent trying to remain on good terms with France and prevent further conflict.  He was himself imprisoned for a while in 1809.

In July 1823 he fractured his hip in a fall in the papal apartments and became bedridden. He died the following month and is now buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The reading room at the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena

Travel tip:

Cesena, the birthplace of Pope Pius VII, is a city in Emilia-Romagna, south of Ravenna and west of Rimini. One of the main sights in the town is the 15th century Biblioteca Malatestiana, which houses many valuable manuscripts and was the first public library in Europe. It is now a listed UNESCO World Heritage site.

Travel tip:

After being briefly interred in the Vatican grottoes, Pope Pius VII was buried inside a tomb in St Peter’s Basilica and had a monument created for him by the Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorvaldsen.

(Photo of Biblioteca Malatestiana by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

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