Francesco Guicciardini - writer and diplomat

Friend of Machiavelli among first to record history in context

A portrait by an unknown artist
of Francesco Guicciardini

The historian and statesman Francesco Guicciardini, best known for writing Storia d'Italia, a book that came to be regarded as a classic history of Italy, was born on this day in 1483 in Florence.

Along with his contemporary Niccolò Machiavelli, Guicciardini is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.

Guicciardini was an adviser and confidant to three popes, the governor of several central Italian states, ambassador, administrator and military captain.  He had a long association with the Medici family, rulers of Florence.

Storia d'Italia - originally titled 'La Historia di Italia' - was notable for Guicciardini's skilful analysis of interrelating political movements in different states and his ability to set in context and with objectivity events in which sometimes he was a direct participant.

Born into a prominent Florentine family who were influential in politics and long-standing supporters of the Medici, Giucciardini was educated in the classics before being sent to study law at a number of universities, including Padua, Ferrara and Pisa.

The title page from Guicciardini's
work in an early printed version

He was interested in pursuing a career in the priesthood but his father, Piero, considered the church to have become decadent, with too many of the clergy drawn to it because of the potential for wealth and power.

Consequently, after graduating in civil law, Guicciardini set up a successful legal practice, finding clients within the leading Florentine families and merchant organisations.

He earned his first political appointment, in the highly prestigious role of Florence's ambassador to Spain, at the age of just 28.

After the restoration of the Medici to power in Florence in 1512, following a period in exile, Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici was elevated to the papacy as Leo X.  Guicciardini returned to Florence and was appointed by Leo X as governor of Modena.

This began a period of service to the popes that lasted until 1534.

For a time he was a military strategist, although his reputation was damaged with the Sack of Rome by troops of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, in 1527, when the papal forces of Pope Clement VII, ultimately under the command of Guicciardini, were unable to resist.

Soon afterwards, Guicciardini returned to Florence only to find that the Medici had been expelled and a new republic established. Because of his close ties to the Medici, Guicciardini was declared a rebel and had his property confiscated. He left Florence in 1529.

The statue of Guicciardini
at the Uffizi Gallery

The republic collapsed a year later and, under the command of Clement VII, Guicciardini was given the task of punishing the Florentine citizens for their resistance to the Medici.

His next assignment was the governorship of Bologna, the most important city in the northern Papal States. He resigned after the death of Clement VII in 1534 and returned to Florence, where he was hired to advise the new duke, Alessandro de' Medici.

Alessandro was assassinated in 1537, after which Guicciardini aligned himself with Cosimo I de' Medici, then only 17 and new to the political system. It was not long, however, before he retired to his villa in Arcetri, just outside Florence, where he spent his last years working on Storia d'Italia.  He died there in 1540.

Guicciardini had been friends with Machiavelli. Guicciardini was from a higher social background, but the two are said to have established a rapport because of mutual regard for each other's intellect.  They did not always agree but their discussion of political ideas influenced each other's work.

The Villa Ravà in Arcetri, where Guicciardini retired

Travel tip:

Arcetri, located in the hills south of the centre of Florence beyond the Arno river, was a village in the time of Guicciardini.  It is famous also as the place in which the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei was kept under house arrest by the Roman Inquisition and as the home of the Arcetri Observatory. Guicciardini is said to have lived in a house called Villa Ravà while he was writing his Storia d'Italia.

Palazzo Guicciardini is now an hotel

Travel tip:

The 15th-century Palazzo Guicciardini, the family's home in Via Santo Spirito in Florence, situated just across the street from a house once owned by Niccolò Machiavelli and a short walk from the Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio, is now a beautifully appointed hotel, comprising just eight rooms, many of which feature frescoed walls and ceilings by the Mannerist painter Bernardo Poccetti, whose work can be found in several churches and palaces in the city, including the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. There is a statue of Guicciardini in the Uffizi.

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More reading:

How the name of Machiavelli became associated with political cunning

The founding of the Medici dynasty

Leo X - the Medici Pope who supported the arts

Also on this day:

1853: The opera La Traviata is performed in public for the first time

(Picture credits: Villa Rava and Palazzo Guicciardini by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)


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Alessandro Volta – scientist

Invention sparked wave of electrical experiments

Alessandro Volta as depicted in a painting
by an unknown artist

Alessandro Volta, who invented the first electric battery, died on this day in 1827 in Como.

His electric battery had provided the first source of continuous current and the volt, a unit of the electromotive force that drives current, was named in his honour in 1881.

Volta was born Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta in 1745 in Como.

He became professor of physics at the Royal School of Como in 1774. His interest in electricity led him to improve the electrophorus, a device that had been created to generate static electricity. He discovered and isolated methane gas in 1776, after finding it at Lake Maggiore and was then appointed to the chair of physics at the University of Pavia.

Volta was a friend of the scientist Luigi Galvani, a professor at Bologna University, whose experiments led him to announce in 1791 that the contact of two different metals with the muscle of a frog resulted in the generation of an electric current.

Italy's 10,000 lire note used to have an image of Volta
on the front and the Tempio Voltiano on the reverse

Galvani interpreted that as a new form of electricity found in living tissue, which he called animal electricity.

Volta felt that the frog merely conducted a current that flowed between the two metals, which he called metallic electricity. He began experimenting in 1792 with metals alone and found that animal tissue was not needed to produce a current.

This provoked much controversy between the animal-electricity adherents and the metallic-electricity advocates, but Volta won the argument when he unveiled the first electric battery in 1800.

Known as the voltaic pile, or the voltaic column, Volta’s invention led to further electrical experiments.

Within six weeks, English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used a voltaic pile to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen, thus discovering electrolysis and creating the field of electrochemistry.

In 1801 in Paris, Volta demonstrated the way his battery generated an electronic current in front of Napoleon, who made Volta a count and a senator of the Kingdom of Lombardy.

A statue at the University of Pavia
commemorates Volta's work

Francis I, Emperor of Austria, made Volta director of the philosophical faculty at the University of Padua in 1815.

Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago, a frazione of Como, which is now named Camnago Volta in his honour. He died there on 5 March 1827, just after his 82nd birthday, and he was buried in Camnago Volta.

He is commemorated with a statue at the University of Pavia and another in Piazza Volta in Como. A house in the Via Brera in Milan in which he lived in the early part of the 19th century is marked with a plaque.

Travel tip:

Como, where Volta was born and died, is a city at the foot of Lake Como. It has become a popular tourist destination because it is close to the lake and has many attractive churches, gardens, museums, theatres, parks and palaces to visit. The Villa Olmo, built in neoclassical style there in 1797 by an aristocratic family, has hosted Napoleon, Ugo Foscolo, Prince Metternich, Archduke Franz Ferdinand I and Giuseppe Garibaldi, to name but a few of the eminent people who have stayed there.

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The Tempio Voltiano by Lake Como houses a museum
dedicated to the life of Alessandro Volta

Travel tip:

The Tempio Voltiano is in a public garden near the side of the lake in Como and houses a museum dedicated to the life and work of Alessandro Volta. The museum has a collection of scientific instruments used by the inventor, including his early voltaic piles, and some of his personal belongings and awards he received. A picture of the temple used to be featured on the back of a 10,000 lire banknote, with Volta’s portrait on the front.

More reading:

How Luigi Galvani appeared to give new life to a dead frog

The transatlantic message that marked a breakthrough for Marconi

Paolo Gorini's technique pioneered preservation of corpses

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1834: The birth of 19th century opera star Marietta Piccolomini

1922: The birth of controversial writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini

(Picture credits: Volta statue by Nemo_bis; Tempio Voltiano by Christophe.Finot; via Wikimedia Commons)


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Lucio Dalla - musician

Cantautore inspired by the great Caruso

Lucio Dalla was inspired by stay in Sorrento

The singer/songwriter Lucio Dalla was born on this day in 1943 in Bologna.

Dalla is most famous for composing the song, Caruso, in 1986 after staying in the suite the great tenor used to occupy overlooking the sea at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento.

Dalla started playing the clarinet when he was young and joined the Rheno Dixieland Band in Bologna along with the future film director, Pupi Avati.

Avati was later to say that his film Ma quando arrivano le ragazze? was inspired by his friendship with Dalla.

In the 1960s the band won first prize in the traditional jazz band category at a festival in Antibes. After hearing Dalla’s voice, his fellow cantautore - the Italian word for singer/songwriter - Gino Paoli suggested he try for a solo career as a soul singer, but his first single was a failure.

Dalla had a hit with 4 Marzo 1943, originally entitled Gesu Bambino, but the title was changed to the singer’s birth date so as not to cause offence.

In the 1970s Dalla started a collaboration with the Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi, who wrote the lyrics for three of his albums.

Watch Pavarotti and Lucio Dalla on stage at Modena in 1992

When the association ended, Dalla decided to write the lyrics for his songs himself and his subsequent Banana Republic album was a success in 1979.

The song, Caruso, released in 1986, was his most famous composition. It has been covered by many other artists since, including Luciano Pavarotti and Julio Iglesias.

Dalla played various instruments,
including saxaphone, as well as singing

In the book Caruso the Song - Lucio Dalla e Sorrento, Raffaele Lauro, a writer from Sorrento, recalls that Dalla booked the very suite at the Excelsior Vittoria that Caruso had occupied during the final weeks of his life in 1921. While staying there Dalla composed the song, inspired by his love for Sorrento, his respect for the great tenor and his fondness for classic Neapolitan songs. The Fiorentino family, who owned the Excelsior Vittoria, were later to dedicate a suite to Dalla.

The version of Caruso sung by Pavarotti sold more than nine million copies and Dalla was invited to sing Caruso in a duet with Pavarotti in a 'Pavarotti and Friends' concert in Modena in 1992.

Andrea Bocelli included his version of the song on his first international album, Romanza, which sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Dalla was made a Commander and subsequently a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bologna.

The singer songwriter died three days before his 69th birthday in 2012, after suffering a heart attack in a hotel in Montreux in Switzerland, where he had been performing the night before.

About 50,000 people attended his funeral in Bologna and his hit song, Caruso, entered the Italian singles chart after his death, peaking at number two for two consecutive weeks.

The single was also certified platinum by the Federation of the Italian Music Industry.

The bronze sculpture on Lucio Dalla near his home in Bologna

Travel tip:

Dalla was awarded an honorary degree by the University in his home town of Bologna, which had been the first in the world when it was established in 1088. The University attracted popes and kings, as well as students of the calibre of Dante, Copernicus and Boccaccio. You can visit the university’s former anatomy theatre in the oldest surviving building, the Archiginnasio, in Piazza Galvani, which is open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 1pm, admission free. A short distance from the Archiginnasio, in Piazza dei Celestini, a bronze sculpture of Dalla sitting on a bench was unveiled in 2016 close to the house where he lived.

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The Excelsior Vittoria is one of  Sorrento's oldest and most
famous hotels and was a favourite of Caruso

Travel tip:

The Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria is a familiar landmark for visitors who approach Sorrento by sea. The three 19th century buildings that comprise the hotel sit high on the cliff above the port of Marina Piccola, where boats arrive from Naples and the islands. The Excelsior Vittoria is probably Sorrento’s most famous hotel and it has now achieved global recognition as part of the Leading Hotels of the World group. From the imposing wrought-iron entrance gates in Piazza Tasso, a long driveway lined with orange trees leads to the entrance and reception area. At the back of the hotel, the terrace has panoramic views over the bay of Naples and of Vesuvius across the water. Tenor Enrico Caruso was famously photographed in front of those views during his final stay in 1921. The Excelsior Vittoria had been opened as a hotel by the Fiorentino family in 1834 and is still, to this day, run by their descendants.

More reading:

How soul singer Zucchero found sweet success

Eros Ramazotti and the key to staying at the top

Raffaele Lauro - politician and Dalla fan

Also on this day:

1678: The birth of Venetian maestro Antonio Vivaldi

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Nicola Porpora – composer and teacher

Tutor of celebrated opera singers died in poverty

Nicola Porpora - a painting by an unknown artist

Nicola Porpora, who composed more than 60 operas and was a brilliant singing teacher in Italy, died on this day in 1768 in Naples.

Among his many pupils were poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, composers Johann Adolph Hasse and Joseph Haydn and the celebrated castrati, Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) and Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano).

Porpora’s most important teaching post was in Venice at the Ospedale degli Incurabili, where there was a music school for girls, in which he taught between 1726 and 1733.

He then went to London as chief composer to the Opera of the Nobility, a company that had been formed in opposition to Royal composer George Frideric Handel’s opera company.

The composer had been born Nicola Antonio Giacinto Porpora in 1686 in Naples.

He graduated from the music conservatory, Poveri di Gesù Cristo, and his first opera, Agrippina, was a success at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second opera, Berenice, was performed in Rome.

To support himself financially while composing, Porpora worked as maestro di cappella for aristocratic patrons and also taught singing.

The castrato singer Farinelli was one of Porpora's
most successful pupils

Between 1715 and 1721 he trained Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni and many other famous singers.

Among the operas he wrote in London were Polifemo, Davide e Betsabea and Ifgenia in Aulide, in which he included parts for his brilliant pupil, Farinelli.

He returned to Italy when the opera company closed and wrote several comic operas while teaching in both Venice and Naples.

He went to live in Dresden, where he was a chapelmaster, and spent time in Vienna, where he taught the young Haydn to compose. Haydn later said he had profited greatly from Porpora’s tuition in singing, composing and the Italian language.

On his return to Naples, a revised version of Porpora’s opera Il Trionfo di Camilla was staged, but it failed.

The composer’s last years were spent living in poverty in the city and when he died, on March 3, 1768, he was so poor the expenses of his funeral had to be paid for by a subscription concert.

By contrast, his former pupils Farinelli and Caffarelli were living in luxury on the fortunes they had earned as a result of the excellent teaching they had received from Porpora.

As well as his operas, Porpora composed oratorios, masses, motets and instrumental works. Two of operas, Orlando and Arianno in Nasso, one mass and his Venetian Vespers have been recorded.

Travel tip:

The Music Conservatory, Poveri di Gesù Cristo, where Porpora studied, was founded in Naples in 1589 by Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan monk. It was next to the Church of Santa Maria a Colonna on Via dei Tribunale but in 1743 it was converted into a church seminary. Via dei Tribunali is one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of the centro storico in Naples. The Church of Santa Maria della Colonna is close to the corner of Via San Gregorio Armeno, where craftsmen still carve shepherds and other figures for presepe, the traditional Neapolitan nativity scenes.

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The former Ospedale degli Incurabili can be found on
Fondamenta Zattere adjacent to the Giudecca Canal

Travel tip:

The former Ospedale degli Incurabili (hospital for incurables), where Porpora taught music in Venice, is a magnificent 16th century building, now the seat of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts. In 1527 a shelter for abandoned children was added to the hospital and the girls who had musical talent were taught to be singers.

More reading:

The short life of 'opera buffa' genius Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

How Jacopo Peri composed music history's first opera

When Teatro alla Scala opened its doors for the first time

Also on this day:

1585: Palladio's Teatro Olimpico stages its first performance

(Picture credit: Ospedale degli Incurabili by Abxbay via Wikimedia Commons)

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