Beatrice Cenci - Roman heroine

Aristocrat's daughter executed for murder of abusive father

Guido Reni's portrait of Beatrice, in prison
clothes, is thought to have been painted in 1662

Beatrice Cenci, the daughter of an aristocrat whose execution for the murder of her abusive father became a legendary story in Roman history, was born on this day in 1577 in the family's palace off the Via Arenula, not far from what is now the Ponte Garibaldi in the Regola district.

Cenci's short life ended with her beheading in front of Castel Sant'Angelo on 11 September 1599, with most of the onlookers convinced that an injustice had taken place.

Her father, Francesco Cenci, had a reputation for violent and immoral behaviour that was widely known and had often been found guilty of serious crimes in the papal court. Yet where ordinary citizens were routinely sentenced to death for similar or even lesser offences, he was invariably given only a short prison sentence and frequently bought his way out of jail.

Romans appalled at this two-tier system of justice turned Beatrice into a symbol of resistance against the arrogance of the aristocracy and her story has been preserved not only in local legend but in many works of literature.

In the early 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was living in Italy, was so moved by her story that he turned it into a drama in verse entitled The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

Subsequently, the story has been the subject of at least a dozen plays and short stories, including works by Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Antonin Arnaud, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Alberto Moravia. It has also inspired at least two full-length novels and five operas or musical dramas.

The Palazzo dei Cenci, off Via Arenula, was the Cenci
family's palatial home in the 16th century

The Mannerist painter Guido Reni painted a portrait of Cenci that is on display at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica  in Palazzo Barberini. A sculpture of her carved by the American sculptor Harriet Goodhue Hosmer in 1857 can be found at the University of Missouri-St Louis.  The Italian director, Lucio Fulci, made a film of her life in 1969.

According to the legend, Francesco Cenci, one of the wealthiest men in Rome, abused his first wife Ersilia Santacroce and his sons and repeatedly raped Beatrice while living in the Palazzo Cenci. He was jailed for incest among other crimes but always freed early.

Beatrice's elder sister, Antonina, escaped when she was granted permission by the papal authorities to marry without her father's consent. But Beatrice was sent away, along with Cenci's second wife, Lucrezia, to live in the family's country castle at La Petrella del Salto in the Abruzzi mountains, together with his son by his second marriage, Bernardo.

There the abuse continued, leading Beatrice to write to her brother, Giacomo, in desperation.  When he joined them at the castle, in 1598, they devised a plot to kill Francesco.

With the help of two servants - one of whom, Olimpio, was thought to have been Beatrice's lover - they drugged Francesco and then bludgeoned him to death with a hammer, before throwing him off a balcony in the hope it would look like an accident.

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer's sculpture of Beatrice Cenci
at the University of Missuori-St Louis

However, the papal police decided to investigate what had happened, found blood in Francesco's bed and placed the family and Olimpio, under house arrest, where they were subjected to interrogation and torture.

Olimpio died without revealing that Beatrice was the mastermind but the others confessed one by one. All were sentenced to death with the exception of Bernardo, who was told he would witness the executions, serve a prison sentence and then live his life as a galley slave, although in the event he was released from prison after a year.

A protest on the streets of Rome by people who knew the circumstances behind the murder gained a short postponement of the execution. Yet Pope Clement VIII, anxious not to legitimise familial murders, showed no mercy.

Following the executions, Beatrice was buried in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, on Gianicolo hill in Trastevere.  The legend has it that every year on the night before the anniversary of her death, she comes back to the bridge where she was executed, carrying her severed head.

The plaque commemorating Beatrice Cenci on
Via di Monserrato in Rome

Travel tip:

Evidence of how much the story of Beatrice Cenci means to Rome can be found on Via di Monserrato, along the route the Cenci family members took on the morning of their executions, from the Corte Savella prison to Castel Sant'Angelo, accompanied by members of the Brotherhood of St. John the Decapitated. On the 500th anniversary of her death, the city put up a plaque, bearing the inscription: "From here, where once stood the prison of Corte Savella, on September 11, 1599 Beatrice Cenci was taken to the gallows, an exemplary victim of unfair justice."


Travel tip:

Some of the relics of the day of the execution have made their way to the Museo Criminologico in Via del Gonfalone, off the Lungotevere dei Sangallo. These include the so-called “sword of justice” that killed Lucrezia and Beatrice, as well as clothes worn by the monks who accompanied them. There is also a replica of a stripped man being drawn and quartered, which was the fate of Giacomo.


More reading:

How a dramatic storm took the life of the poet Shelley

The tragic nun whose funeral brought Rome to a standstill

The work that turned Alberto Moravia into a major literary figure

Also on this day:

1778: The birth of the poet and revolutionary Ugo Foscolo

1908: The birth of six-times Italian prime minister Amintore Fanfani

(Picture credits: sculpture by Quartermaster; plaque by Lalupa; via Wikimedia Commons)


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Carolina Morace - footballer and coach

Prolific goalscorer first woman in Italian Football Hall of Fame

Carolina Morace won the Women's Serie A
title 12 times as a player

Footballer and coach Carolina Morace, the first woman to be inducted into the Italian Football Hall of Fame, was born on this day in 1964 in Venice.

Morace played for 20 years for 10 different clubs and was the leading goalscorer in the Women's Serie A on 12 occasions, including an incredible run of 11 consecutive seasons from 1987 to 1998.

She won the Italian championship 12 times with eight of her clubs and scored an extraordinary 550 goals at an average of three in every two games at her peak, with a further 105 goals in 153 appearances for the Italy national team.

Four of those came in one match when Italy Women played England in a curtain-raiser to the pre-season Charity Shield game at Wembley in 1990, which she described as one of her proudest moments. 

Morace, the daughter of a former officer in the Italian Navy, grew up a stone’s throw away from Venice's football ground at Sant' Elena. She joined her first club in Venice when she was 11 years old, her ability to score goals allowing her to be accepted quickly in boys' teams.

Her father soon realised she needed to play at a higher level and at 14 helped her move to a club at Belluno, 120 miles north of Venice in the mountainous Dolomites.  The same year she was called into the Italy national squad for a friendly against Yugoslavia in Naples in 1978, entering the game with 15 minutes left as substitute for Betti Vignotto, for many years the leading Italian striker and team captain.

Carolina Morace during her playing days as captain and
centre forward of the Italy women's team

When Vignotto retired from international football 11 years later, she passed the captain’s armband and the number nine shirt to Morace.

During her international career, Morace took part in six European Championships as well as the inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup in China in 1991, where she scored four goals, including the first hat-trick scored at a World Cup in Italy's 5–0 win against Chinese Taipei.

Her retirement from playing came at the age of 34 at the end of the 1997-98 season, after winning her 12th Serie A title, with Modena. 

By then, Morace had begun her preparations for life outside football by completing a law degree, but remained in the game as a coach, looking after the women's team at Serie A club Lazio, where she also spent time training the club's male reserve team.

She was offered a job coaching a men's team in 1999 with Serie C club Viterbese, although she resigned after just two matches in charge, accusing the club's owner of interfering in team matters.

Morace coached the Italy women's team for five years

Morace was not long out of the dugout, however. In 2000, she was appointed coach of the Italian women's national team, where she spent five years, qualifying twice for the European Championship finals, before taking charge of the Canada women's national team in 2009.

Under her tutelage, Canada won the 2010 CONCACAF, 2010 and 2011 Cyprus Cups and 2010 Four Nations Tournament, although there was disappointment at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup when the team's top scorer, Christine Sinclair, broke her nose in the opening group match and Canada failed to qualify for the second phase.

An exacting coach who expected her players to meet certain standards and insisted on appropriate support from the national federation, she resigned in July 2011 after a dispute over budgets.  Morace improved Canada's FIFA ranking from 11th to sixth during her period in charge.

Subsequently, Morace has conducted FIFA coaching courses around the world and launched her own football academy. She had a spell coaching Australian men's team Floreat Athena FC before being appointed Trinidad and Tobago women's national team coach in December 2016.

Morace left her position with the Trinidad and Tobago team in 2017 and in 2018 signed a two-year contract to become the first coach of AC Milan Women. In 2021 she was appointed head coach of Lazio Women, working alongside the former Australia international Nicola Williams.

The church of Sant'Elena with its tall belltower, seen
from the lagoon of Venice

Away from the training ground, Morace has a legal studio in Rome and has made regular appearances as a football pundit on Italian television, as well as writing a column in the football newspaper, La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Morace announced in 2020 that she and Williams, her partner for several years, were married.

Travel tip:

The island of Sant'Elena lies at the eastern tip of the group of islands that make up Venice and forms part the Castello sestiere (district).  Linked to the rest of the city by three bridges, the area has developed around the Church of Sant'Elena and its monastery, originally built in the 12th century.  Sant'Elena also includes the Parco delle Rimembranze, an attractive green space - rare in Venice - that was created to commemorate soldiers who died in the Second World War. Nearby there is a naval college, the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo football stadium, the Venice Bienniale buildings and a residential area.

Find a Venice hotel with tripadvisor

The pretty Piazza Doumo in Belluno

Travel tip:

Belluno, where the teenaged Morace had to travel to play at a standard that suited her ability, is a beautiful town in the Dolomites, surrounded by rocky slopes and dense woods that make for an outstanding scenic background. The architecture of the historic centre has echoes of the town's Roman and medieval past. Around the picturesque Piazza Duomo can be found several fine buildings, such as the Palazzo dei Rettori, the Cathedral of Belluno and Palazzo dei Giuristi, which contains the Civic Museum.

Belluno hotels from Hotels.com

More reading:

Antonio Cabrini, hero of 1982 now coaches Italy's women

Toto Schillaci - international novice who took Italia '90 by storm

How Lazio star Giorgio Chinaglia became a sensation in New York

Also on this day:

The Feast Day of Saint Agatha of Sicily

1578: Death of portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni


(Picture credits: Church of Sant'Elena by Didier Descouens; Piazza Duomo by Kufoleto; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Eugenio Corti - soldier and writer

Author drew on his experiences on the front line

Eugenio Corti

Eugenio Corti, the writer most famous for his epic 1983 novel The Red Horse, died on this day in 2014 at the age of 93.

He passed away at his home in Besana in Brianza in Lombardy, where he had been born in January 1921.

The Red Horse, which follows the life of the Riva family in northern Italy from Mussolini's declaration of war in the summer of 1940 through to the 1970s, covers the years of the Second World War and the evolution of Italy's new republic.

Its themes reflect Corti's own view of the world, his unease about the totalitarianism of fascism and communism, his faith in the Christian Democrats to tread a confident path through the conservative middle ground, and his regret at the decline in Christian values in Italy.

It has been likened to Alessandro Manzoni's novel I promessi sposi - The Betrothed - for its strong moral tone and for the way that Corti employs the technique favoured by Manzoni of setting fictional characters in the novel against a backcloth of actual history, with real people and events written into the plot.

Italian soldiers were exposed to horrendous conditions
and extreme weather on the Russian Front

The Red Horse, which took Corti more than a decade to write, became a literary phenomenon in Italy, selling so many copies it needed to be reprinted 25 times.   It was voted the best book of the 1980s in a survey in Italy and has been translated into six languages, including Japanese.  Corti was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature

Corti, who enjoyed success also with Few Returned and The Last Soldiers of the King, based much of his work on his experiences fighting in Mussolini's army on the Russian Front and later as a member of the Italian Freedom Fighters, fighting alongside the Allies against the Nazis.

His philosophy was shaped by his family background, which had deep Catholic roots.  His paternal grandmother, Josephine Ratti, was the cousin of Achille Ratti, who became Pope Pius XI.  The family had a strong belief in doing charitable Christian work. Among his nine brothers was a missionary in Uganda and a priest in Chad.  There was also a powerful work ethic, typified by his father, Mario, who left school at 13 yet built up a textile business that at one time employed 1,200 people in five factories.

It was while studying classics at the Collegio San Carlo in Milan that Eugenio decided he could best express his beliefs through writing but his life changed after he was called up for compulsory military service in 1941. Appointed a Lieutenant of Artillery, he was allowed to decide where he wanted to serve.  He chose the Russian Front because he wanted to "understand the communist world."

Within a few months of his arrival at the front in June 1942, Mussolini's army was in retreat.  In fact, Corti was one of only a handful to escape as a 30,000-strong Italian force was encircled, finding his way back to Italy despite harsh winter weather conditions. He survived a phase of the conflict in which 115,000 Italian soldiers died.

On his return to barracks in Bolzano he refused the offer of discharge on medical grounds and was posted to Nettuno, south of Rome.  When Mussolini was arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III and an armistice signed with the Allies, Corti joined the Italian Freedom Fighters to fight against the Nazis.

The experiences exposed him to the full horrors of war and shaped his writing. He produced his first two books - I più non ritornato (published in English as Few Returned) and I poveri cristi (The Poor Bastards) - which were essentially diaries of his own experiences, soon after the war was over.

At the same time he studied law at the Catholic Università del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he met his wife, Vanda, whom he married at Assisi in 1951.  For the next decade he worked in the family business, helping steer it through the post-War industrial crisis, returning to writing with a play, Trial and Death of Stalin, in 1962.

Eugenio Corti was interviewed for
a television documentary in 2010

He began to write full time in the early 1970s, his epic The Red Horse consuming him for a decade until publication in 1983.  His subsequent novel The Last Soldiers of the King was based on his experiences fighting against the Nazis for Victor Emmanuel III, who abdicated in 1946 shortly before the Italian people voted to scrap the monarchy.

Apart from his novels, Corti was noted for his essays on the Vatican, the Christian Democrat party and on the development of western civilization.  He continued to write well into his eighties.

Awarded a Silver Medal for Valour in recognition of his bravery and leadership on the battlefield, he was honoured by the Lombardy Region and the Province of Milan for his contributions to civilian life and industry and by the Italian state with a Gold Medal for Culture and Art before, in 1999, he was awarded the Knight Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Francesco Cossiga.

Travel tip:

The Brianza area of Lombardy, in which Eugenio Corti grew up, used to be covered with dense forests, much of which have disappeared with the industrialisation of northern Italy. One area that escaped extensive development, just to the east of Besana in Brianza, has been preserved as the Montevecchia Regional Park, a small gem near the city of Milan where visitors can enjoy verdant green spaces and wooded areas rich in flora. The crest of the hill of Montevecchia , where the forests of the Curone Valley and the Santa Croce Valley meet, represents the green heart of the park.

Nettuno beach, with the Sangallo Fortress in the foreground

Travel tip:

Nettuno and neighbouring Anzio tend to be best remembered as the point chosen by Allied forces as a landing point during the invasion of the Italian peninsula early in 1944, mainly due to the area's long stretches of beach. Many lives were lost in the battle that took place and both towns suffered heavy damage. Nonetheless, there is still much to see at Nettuno, including the ruins of a Roman port and the walled Sangallo Fortress built in 1503 by Antonio da Sangallo on behalf of Cesare Borgia, which sits next to the beach.  The Sanctuary of Nostra Signora delle Grazie e Santa Maria Goretti houses a wooden statue of Our Lady of Grace said to have been recovered in England in the 16th century after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of Catholic monasteries, when many religious statues were confiscated or desecrated.

More reading:

Mussolini's last stand

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

How Russians liberated Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi

Also on this day:

1667: The birth of painter Alessandro Magnasco

1676: The birth of 'forgotten' composer Giacomo Facco

1875: The birth of patriot and irredentist Cesare Battisti

1892: The birth of playwright Ugo Betti


(Picture credits: Nettuno beach by Stefano.niccoluci via Wikimedia Commons)


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Giuseppe Moretti - sculptor

Sienese artist who became famous in the United States

Giuseppe Moretti

The sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, who became well known in the United States as a prolific creator of public monuments, was born on this day in 1857 in Siena.

Moretti's favourite medium was marble and he considered his Head of Christ, which he carved from a block of Alabama marble in 1903, to be his greatest work.

The creation which earned him most fame, however, was the 56-foot (17.07m) statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalworking, which he made for the 1904 World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri on behalf of the city of Birmingham, Alabama as a symbol of its heritage in the iron and steel industry.

Moretti made the statue in clay in New Jersey before overseeing its casting in iron in Birmingham.  Vulcan, the largest cast iron statue in the world, was relocated to Alabama State Fairgrounds after the St Louis Exposition before being moved again to the top of Red Mountain, the ridge overlooking Birmingham, which it shares with a number of radio and television transmission towers.

Moretti's enormous statue of Vulcan on
Red Mountain, overlooking Birmingham

Although he spent much of his life away from Italy, it was in his homeland that Moretti developed his love for art and sculpture.  The nephew of Vincenzo Cardinal Moretti, a patron of the arts, he began sculpting at the age of nine with Tito Serrochi, who had a studio Siena.

Aware that Florence was the cradle of Italian art, the young Moretti apparently set off on foot one day, following the road sign that pointed towards the Tuscan capital, unaware that it was more than 60km (37 miles) away.  He was taken home by a neighbour.  A few years later, he reached his intended destination by gaining a place at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

Always prepared to move in search of work, Moretti relocated to Carrara to work with marble before accepting an invitation to work in Croatia, where he might have stayed but for a devastating earthquake in Zagreb.  Instead, he moved on to Vienna and then Budapest before taking the bold decision in 1888 to emigrate to the United States.

He set up a studio in New York in partnership with the Austrian-American sculptor Karl Bitter, operating from a town house in Manhattan.  The architect Richard Morris Hunt hired him for commissions for wealthy clients in Newport, Rhode Island, including William K and Alva Vanderbilt.

The house in Manhattan's East Village that
Moretti shared with fellow sculptor Karl Bitter

A keen opera fan and an amateur singer himself, it was around this time that he joined the Liederkranz music club in New York, where he met and became friends with the great tenor, Enrico Caruso.

Work took him next to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, where he took regular commissions over a 28-year period, beginning with a series of works in the city's Schenley Park.

His popularity in Pittsburgh brought him wide attention and the commission to create Birmingham's Vulcan followed shortly afterwards.

While overseeing the casting, Moretti visited the marble quarries around Sylacauga and discovered that Alabama marble was of outstanding quality, good enough to rival the Carrara marble that was imported to the United States in large quantities each year. He hauled a block of the gleaming white stone back to his studio in Birmingham and carved The Head of Christ, a work that he carried with him to every place that he lived for the rest of his life. It is now on display at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Although he was a brilliant sculptor, Moretti was a poor businessman, in that most of his ventures ended badly and cost him money.

Giuseppe Moretti felt his Head of Christ in Alabama marble
was his finest piece of work

Ultimately, it became clear that the only way he would make money was from the fees he earned from individual commissions.  So he abandoned his ambitions to own marble quarries and focussed again on sculpting.

This explains why he was so prolific. In all, he completed 12 First World War memorials, 19 monumental works, six church sculptures, 24 memorial tablets, 14 cemetery memorials, 27 sculptures in marble, bronze, and aluminum, and 27 bronze statuettes.

There are at least 17 Moretti works in Pittsburgh's east end. Moretti's notable work in Pittsburgh includes two imposing entrances to Highland Park and four bronze Panthers erected on Panther Hollow Bridge.

In 1905, Moretti married Dorothea Long, a member of an aristocratic Boston family, in her hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts. Two years later, he encountered the work of Geneva Mercer, a student, whom he took on as an apprentice and then his assistant.

He decided to travel again and in 1909, with Dorothea and Geneva, left Alabama. During the next 13 years they lived in New York City, Florence, Havana and Pittsburgh.  One of his great achievements during this period was to complete, with Mercer's help, 97 sculptures for the Gran Teatro de la Habana in Cuba.

When he suffered another business failure in 1925, and with his health beginning to fail, Moretti decided to return to Italy, settling in a large villa and studio in Sanremo, where he died in February 1935.

The Torre del Mangia towers over Siena's Piazza del Campo

Travel tip:

Siena is best known for the twice-yearly Palio, the horse race between the city's rival contrade (parishes) that takes place in the city's expansive Piazza del Campo, but there are many other good reasons to visit.  Among them, dominating the piazza, is the 800-year old castellated Palazzo Pubblico, which contains frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Simone Martini and Duccio, and the adjoining Torre del Mangia, at 88m (289 feet) high the third tallest tower in Italy.  Visitors wanting to enjoy the stunning view from the top need patience and stamina.  A restriction on 25 people inside the tower at any one time can mean a lengthy queue in high season, followed by a 300-step climb.

Travel tip:

The Academy of Fine Arts in Florence can be found in Via Ricasoli, next door to the Galleria dell'Accamedia, which houses Michelangelo's original David. An instructional art academy, it was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of the artist and historian Giorgio Vasari. It was both a guild for working artists and a body of established artists responsible for supervising artistic production in the area.  Members have included Vasari, Michelangelo, Lazzaro Donati, Francesco da Sangallo, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Bartolomeo Ammannati, and Giambologna.

More reading:

How Giorgio Vasari wrote the world's first history of art

Giacomo Manzù - the son of a shoemaker who taught himself to sculpt

The genius of Antonio Canova almost brought marble to life

Also on this day:

1757: The birth of eye surgeon Giuseppe Forlenza



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