Dante Alighieri – poet

Famous son of Florence remains in exile

Sandro Botticelli's portrait of Dante,
painted in 1495

Dante Alighieri, an important poet during the late Middle Ages, died on this day in 1321 in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.

In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.

Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend.

Therefore Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy.

His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.

Dante was also the first poet to use the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, terza rima.

Dante was born around 1265 in Florence into a family loyal to the Guelphs. By the time he was 12 he had been promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, the daughter of a member of a powerful, local family.

He had already fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari, whom he first met when he was only nine.

A beautiful depiction of Dante and Beatrice in Florence, by
the English artist Henry Holliday in 1883

Years after his marriage to Gemma, Dante claimed to have met Beatrice again and wrote several sonnets to her, without ever getting to know her properly, an example of courtly love.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs and when the Black Guelphs took power, Dante, a White Guelph was condemned to exile and ordered to pay a fine.

Dante, who was in Rome at the time, did not pay the fine and was condemned to perpetual exile. If he had returned to Florence he could have been burned at the stake.

By 1315 Florence had been forced to grant an amnesty to those in exile in exchange for public penance and the payment of a heavy fine, but Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

He accepted an invitation from Prince Guido Novello da Polenta to go to Ravenna in 1318. He finished Paradiso and died there, possibly of malaria, at about the age of 56.

The tomb of Dante Alighieri at the Church
of San Pier Maggiore in Ravenna

Dante was buried at the Church of San Pier Maggiore and a tomb was erected for him there in 1483.

Florence made repeated requests for the return of Dante’s remains but Ravenna has always refused. A tomb was built for him in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence but it has remained empty.

Travel tip:

Ravenna, where Dante lived in exile until his death in 1321, has a wealth of well-preserved late Roman and Byzantine architecture and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture is the Basilica of San Vitale, which is famous for its fine Byzantine mosaics. The city of Ravenna is mentioned by Dante in Canto V of his Inferno.

Dante's house in Via Santa Margherita in
Florence, which is now a museum

Travel tip:

Dante’s house in Via Santa Margherita in Florence is now a museum, il Museo Casa di Dante, open daily to the public from 10 am till six pm in summer and from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am till five pm between October and March. The museum is spread over three floors with exhibits illustrating the life and works of the great poet.


(Photo of Dante's tomb by Pivari CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Dante's house by Sailko CC BY-SA 3.0)

More reading:

Petrarch - the writer whose work inspired the the modern Italian language

Ludovico Ariosto - the father of humanism

Books:

The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

Dante: The Story of His Life, by Marco Santagata


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Andrea Mantegna – artist

Genius led the way with his use of perspective

The painter Andrea Mantegna died on this day in 1506 in Mantua.

Mantegna's San Sebastian is at
the Louvre in Paris

He had become famous for his religious paintings, such as St Sebastian, which is now in the Louvre in Paris, and The Agony in the Garden, which is now in the National Gallery in London.

But his frescoes for the Bridal Chamber (Camera degli Sposi) at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua - Mantova in Italian - were to influence many artists who followed him because of his innovative use of perspective.

Mantegna studied Roman antiquities for inspiration and was also an eminent engraver.

He was born near Padua - Padova - in about 1431 and apprenticed by the age of 11 to the painter, Francesco Squarcione, who had a fascination for ancient art and encouraged him to study fragments of Roman sculptures.

Mantegna was one of a large group of painters entrusted with decorating the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua.

Much of his work was lost when the Allied forces bombed Padua in 1944, but other early work by Mantegna can be seen in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio and in the Church of Santa Giustina in Padua.

Mantagna's Miracolo di San Giacomo in the Ovetari
Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani in Padua

The artist later came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, the father of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, and in 1453 he married Jacopo’s daughter, Nicolosia.

By 1459 he had moved on to Verona, where he painted a grand altarpiece for the Church of San Zeno and the following year he was appointed court artist by the Marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga of Mantua.

Mantegna’s frescoes for the Camera degli Sposi are considered among his best works and include portraits of members of the Gonzaga family.

The artist went on to paint nine pictures of the Triumphs of Caesar, drawing on his classical knowledge, which are also considered by experts to be among his finest works. These were sold in 1628 to King Charles I of England and are now in Hampton Court Palace.

After his death at about the age of 75 in Mantua, Mantegna’s sons set up a monument to him in the Church of Sant’Andrea.

Mantegna's ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi shows how he
created an illusion of depth through his use of perspective

Mantegna’s main artistic legacy is considered to be the introduction of spatial illusionism, as exemplified by the ceiling cupola of the Camera degli Sposi, which although flat appears concave. This use of perspective was followed by other artists for centuries.

Travel tip:

Mantua is an atmospheric old city in Lombardy, to the south east of Milan, famous for its Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family between 1328 and 1707. The Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the life of Ludovico Gonzaga and his family. The beautiful backgrounds of imaginary cities and ruins reflect Mantegna’s love of classical architecture.

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea in Mantua.

Travel tip:

The 15th century Basilica of Sant’Andrea, which houses Andrea Mantegna’s tomb, is in Piazza Mantegna in Mantua. Mantegna was buried in the first chapel on the left, which contains a picture of the Holy Family and John the Baptist that had been  painted by him. The church was originally built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims who came to Mantua to see a precious relic, an ampoule containing what were believed to be drops of Christ’s blood mixed with earth. This was claimed to have been collected at the site of his crucifixion by a Roman soldier.

(Photo of the Basilica of Sant'Andrea by Geobia CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Nazis free captive Mussolini

Extraordinary daring of Gran Sasso Raid

Mussolini, centre, is escorted to a waiting aircraft after being
 freed from his captors. SS captain Otto Skorzeny is on his left.

One of the most dramatic events of the Second World War in Italy took place on this day in 1943 when Benito Mussolini, the deposed and imprisoned Fascist dictator, was freed by the Germans.

The former leader was being held in a remote mountain ski resort when 12 gliders, each carrying paratroopers and SS officers, landed on the mountainside and took control of the hotel where Mussolini was being held.

They forced his guards to surrender before summoning a small aircraft to fly Mussolini to Rome, from where another plane flew him to Austria.  Even Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister, professed his admiration for the daring nature of the daylight rescue.

Known as the Gran Sasso Raid or Operation Oak, the rescue was ordered by Adolf Hitler himself after learning that Mussolini's government, in the shape of the Grand Fascist Council, had voted through a resolution that he be replaced as leader and that King Victor Emmanuel III had ensured that the resolution was successful by having the self-styled Duce arrested.

The Campo Imperatore Hotel at the time of the raid.

The Italian government by then had decided defeat in the War was inevitable following the Allied invasion of Sicily and the damage inflicted by Allied bombers on Rome.  Despite the weaknesses of Italy's military capability being exposed in Greece, Albania and North Africa, Mussolini made an impassioned speech to the Grand Council before his arrest, insisting they fight on. Yet many of his former supporters, including his son-in-law, the foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, turned against him.

Hitler was furious. He regarded Mussolini not only as the only leader capable of organising the Italian forces, but as a personal friend. He denounced his successor, Marshall Pietro Badoglio, as a traitor.  The Italian government, by this time preparing to switch sides and declare war against Germany, tried to keep Mussolini's whereabouts a secret, moving him from one offshore island to another and them to remote areas of the mainland.

But the SS captain, Otto Skorzeny, personally chosen by Hitler to plan and organise Mussolini's rescue, intercepted coded radio messages and established that the former dictator's place of captivity since late August had been the Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort built on a plateau in Italy's Gran Sasso massif in Abruzzo, high in the Apennine Mountains, around 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) above sea level.  It was guarded by 200 Carabinieri soldiers and accessible only by a funicular railway.

The only viable way of reaching the hotel was from the air.  Dropping troops by parachute was seen as too dangerous because of the altitude but Skorzeny had an alternative plan. His reconnaissance identified what he thought was a strip of grassy land near the hotel, which he believed would be suitable to land troop-laden gliders. These had the added benefit of being effectively noiseless, which would lend the attack an element of surprise.

The Germans landed gliders on the mountainside in order
to take troops to the scene of the rescue

In the event, the grassy strip turned out to be strewn with rocks but Skorzeny ordered his pilots to attempt to land anyway, which was a considerable gamble.  It paid off as all bar two gliders touched down safely, including his own.

In another clever move, Skorzeny had taken with him an Italian military commander sympathetic to the German cause in General Fernando Soleti, who stepped out of his glider and immediately ordered the Italian guards advancing towards the invasion party not to shoot, threatening them with execution for treason if they disobeyed.

The ensuing confusion gave the Germans opportunity to take control and the entire Italian protection squad surrendered without a shot fired.  The only injury was to a radio operator, whom Skorzeny struck with his rifle butt to stop him summoning assistance.

Skorzeny found Mussolini's room and is said to have greeted the dictator with the words 'Duce, the Fuhrer has sent me. You're free!'. He immediately ordered a small aircraft known as the Storch (Stork), designed to take off and land in limited spaces, to fly to the hotel so that he could complete the next leg of the rescue.

The Hotel Campo Imperatore as it is today

The mission almost came to grief at this stage after Skorzeny, determined that he would deliver Mussolini personally to Hitler, insisted on flying to Rome with him, even though the plane was not meant to carry more than one passenger, in addition to the pilot.  There was no spare seat but Skorzeny found he could lie on the floor, his legs stretching into the fuselage.

With 12 men holding the plane back by its wings, the pilot powered up his engine to maximum speed before ordering the men to let go, at which point the plane shot off along the makeshift runway.  It left the ground but with extra weight on board failed to gain altitude quickly enough to avoid striking a rock, sending it veering off the plateau on a downwards trajectory towards the valley below.

The watching German soldiers thought the aircraft was certain to crash but the pilot somehow managed to regain control and gain height, disappearing into the distance to reach an airstrip just outside Rome without further mishap. Skorzeny later admitted he was prepared to take the risk, fearing the consequences if the mission failed.

Later, Mussolini would return to Italy to take charge of a puppet German state, the Italian Social Republic, based in the town of Salò on Lake Garda.  Within less than two years he was dead, captured by partisans and shot as he and his mistress, Clara Petacci, tried to flee to Switzerland.

Travel tip:

The Campo Imperatore still exists as a hotel today, consisting of 45 rooms, a panoramic restaurant, bar and swimming pool. The room where Mussolini was held has been turned into a museum, its decor and furnishings preserved as they were in 1943.  It is now accessible by road in summer but the road is partially closed in winter and visitors have to transfer to the funicular railway at Fonte Cerreto, which is a town on the road between L'Aquila and Assergi.  The area is now part of the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga national park.

The Venetian column with its winged lion of St Mark
on the waterfront of Salò on Lake Garda

Travel tip:

Salò, where Mussolini spent his last months in power, albeit as the leader of a satellite state controlled by the Nazis, is situated on the western shore of Lake Garda. For three centuries part of the Republic if Venice, it was captured by the Austrians in the 19th century before being freed by Garibaldi.  Its points of interest include a Gothic-style cathedral, a column topped by the winged lion of St Mark, symbolising its link with Venice, and the 16th century Palazzo della Magnifica Patria, home to an exhibition of documents from Renaissance history, Italy's colonial wars and the Resistance against Fascism.

Read more:

Benito Mussolini and the founding of the Italian Fascists

How Italy entered the Second World War

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

(Photos of Gran Sasso Raid courtesy of German Federal Archive)
(Photo of Campo Imperatore by Ra Boe CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Scipione Borghese - adventurer

Nobleman from Ferrara won Peking to Paris car race

Scipione Borghese (left) and journalist Luigi Barzini
pictured with Borghese's Itala car

The Italian adventurer Prince Scipione Borghese, who won a car race since described as the most incredible of all time, was born on this day in 1871 in Migliarino in Emilia-Romagna, not far from Ferrara.

Borghese was a nobleman, the eldest son of Paolo, ninth Prince of Sulmona.  He was described as an industrialist and politician but he was also a mountaineer and a keen participant in the revolution in transport that began when the first petrol-powered motor vehicles appeared in the late 19th century.

In 1907 the French newspaper, Le Matin, which was keen to promote the growing motor industry in France, challenged readers to prove their theory that the car would open up the world's horizons, enabling man to travel anywhere on the planet.

When it asked for volunteers to take part in a drive from Paris to Peking (Beijing) - a 5,000-mile journey - Borghese's taste for the daring was immediately excited.

Volunteers haul the Itala through a
steep mountain pass

Originally, more than 40 teams proposed to sign up.  In time, this dwindled to five vehicles and 11 men, consisting of drivers, mechanics and, in some cases, journalists who would file reports using the telegraph system as the event progressed.  Apart from Borghese, taking part were a Dutch Spyker driven by an unknown named Charles Goddard, a three-wheeler Cyclecar piloted by the father of the opera singer Lily Pons and two French De Dions.

Borghese, despite his family having lost much of their wealth through a series of misfortunes, commissioned a car powered by a seven-litre engine from the Itala company in Turin with sponsorship from tyre manufacturers Pirelli.  He would be accompanied on the journey by two more Italians - his mechanic and sometime chauffeur, Ettore Guizzardi, and Luigi Barzini, a journalist.

To avoid the monsoon rains, the proposed direction of the race was reversed to start in Peking in June 1907 with the cars driving westward to Paris. The conditions could hardly have been less car-friendly, the route taking in numerous mountain ranges and two major deserts where no provision had been made for recognisable roads.

Although the project was conceived as a demonstration of the potential of the automobile rather than a race, Borghese was determined to make it one and win it, planning assiduously to give his team the best chance.  He arranged for fuel and spare parts to be stored along the route and, before the race began, took a 300-mile ride on horseback to the mountain passes north of Peking carrying a bamboo pole cut to the width of his car to see if the Itala could squeeze through.

The route led through deserts, mountain passes and steppes to Outer Mongolia, on to Moscow and then across Russia, Poland, Germany and Belgium to Paris. There were often mountain tracks and paths rather than roads, no petrol stations and no one who had ever seen a motor car before.

The Itala was left upside down after
falling through a bridge but survived

Auguste Pons dropped out of the race after running out of fuel in the Gobi Desert and being rescued by nomadic Mongolians and Goddard failed to complete the trip but Borghese's journey was hardly plain sailing.

At one point the Itala rolled back down a narrow pass and Guizzardi only just managed to stop the car dropping into a ravine, taking him with it; at another, all three of the team were lucky to escape injury when a bridge collapsed under them.  At times, the car had to be hitched to mule trains or teams of men to cross treacherous mountain passes.

Amazingly, the car kept going and by the time they reached Moscow, Borghese and his crew were 17 days in front of their nearest pursuers, enough of a lead for Borghese even to make a detour to St Petersburg for a party.

The final leg to Paris was uneventful by comparison, although Borghese was stopped for speeding in Belgium.  When the Itala reached Paris on August 10, the lead had been extended to 20 days.

The Itala arrived at the finishing line in the French capital at 4.30pm to a huge ovation from crowds encouraged to attend by Le Matin's trumpeting of the success of their challenge. A dinner was given in Borghese's honour, attended by the Italian chargé d’affaires and prominent automobile industry figures.

Luigi Barzini, who worked as a war correspondent during the First World War and was editor at different times of both Corriere della Sera and Il Mattino, two prominent Italian newspapers, was followed into journalism by his son, also called Luigi, who was most famous for his 1964 book, The Italians, a probing analysis of the Italian national character that is credited with generating the fascination with Italian life and culture shared by many outside the country.

Ferrara has 9km of ancient walls, with walkways and cycle
paths along most of its length

Travel tip:

Migliarino, where Scipione Borghese was born, is a small town in the province in of Ferrara, a city famous for its castle, a wealth of palaces, a beautiful pink and white Duomo and the 12th century city walls that remain intact to this day, stretching to nine kilometres in length.

Travel tip:

Ferrara is the ideal city destination for cycling enthusiasts thanks to a network of cycle paths all around the city and the perimeter walls and a city centre from which cars are banned.  The self-proclaimed Città delle Biciclette - city of bicycles - since the late 1960s, Ferrara offers numerous outlets from which tourists can rent bicycles and enjoy exploring a beautiful city that combines medieval history and Renaissance elegance.

Books:

Luigi Barzini's book, Peking To Paris: Across Two Continents in an Itala, was reprinted by Penguin in 1986 and some second hand copies are still available on Amazon.

Buy Luigi Barzini junior's book, The Italians

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