Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel – poet and revolutionary

Noblewoman who sacrificed her life for the principle of liberty

Eleonora Fonseca Partinel was inspired by the
French Revolution to join the Jacobins

A writer and leader of the movement that established the Parthenopean Republic in Naples, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was hanged on this day in 1799 in a public square near the port.

A noblewoman, she would have expected her execution to be carried out by beheading, but had given up her title of marchioness when she became involved with the Jacobins, founded by supporters of the French Revolution, who were working to overthrow the monarchy.

Pimentel had asked to be beheaded anyway, but the restored Bourbon monarchy showed her no mercy, reputedly because she had written pamphlets denouncing Queen Maria Carolina as a lesbian.

On the day of her execution, Pimentel was reputed to have stepped calmly up to the gallows, quoting Virgil by saying: ‘Perhaps one day this will be worth remembering.’ She was 47 years of age.

Pimentel was born in Rome in 1752 into a noble Portuguese family. As a child she wrote poetry, read Latin and Greek and learnt to speak several languages.

Her family had to move to Naples because of political difficulties between Portugal and the Papal States, of which Rome was the capital.

A plaque marks the birthplace of
Pimentel in Campo Marzio in Rome

As an adult, Pimentel became part of literary circles in Naples and exchanged letters with other literary figures.

She had a long correspondence with Pietro Metastasio, the Italian court poet in Vienna, who was a prominent librettist at the time, and Voltaire, the French writer, who was an outspoken advocate for civil liberties.

Pimentel married a lieutenant in the Neapolitan army and gave birth to a son, Francesco, who died at the age of eight months. She had no other children as she suffered two subsequent miscarriages, following alleged mistreatment by her husband, and eventually the couple separated.

In the 1790s Pimentel became involved in the Jacobin movement in Naples, which was working to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. She was one of the leaders of the revolution that installed the Pathenopean Republic in the city in January 1799, which was proclaimed from the Certosa di San Martino, citing liberty and equality for all along the lines of the French model.

Pimentel was the director of Monitore Napoletano, the republic’s newspaper, for which she wrote most of the content. She also translated books and articles into the Neapolitan dialect to try to win popular support. When the republic was overthrown, after just five months, she was arrested on the orders of the restored Bourbon monarchy and sentenced to death.

The Certosa di San Martino occupies a commanding
position on too of the Vomero hill

Travel tip:

The Certosa di San Martino in Naples, from which the short-lived republic was proclaimed, is a former monastery complex that is now a museum. It is one of the most visible landmarks of the city, perched high on the Vomero hill overlooking the bay. Today the museum houses paintings, porcelain, jewellery, Neapolitan costumes, and old presepi, nativity scenes made in the city.  

The Piazza Mercato is an open space not far from the main
port of Naples between Corso Umberto I and the waterfront 

Travel tip:

Piazza Mercato, where Pimentel and her fellow revolutionaries were executed, is in the heart of Naples not far from the port. Overlooked by the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, it had been the setting for many other historic events in the city, including the beheading in 1268 of Corradino, a 16-year-old King of Naples.

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Cesare Prandelli – football coach

Led Italy to the final of Euro 2012

Cesare Prandelli

The former head coach of the Italian national football team, Cesare Prandelli, was born on this day in 1957 in Orzinuovi, near Brescia.

Under Prandelli’s guidance, the Azzurri finished runners-up in the European Championships final of 2012 and qualified for the finals of the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.

Despite winning a two-year extension to his contract, he quit after Italy’s elimination at the group stage in Brazil, which he considered was the honourable course of action after a very  disappointing tournament in which the Azzurri beat England in their opening match but then lost to Costa Rica and Uruguay.

As a player, Prandelli had been a member of a highly successful Juventus team in the early 1980s, winning Serie A three times and the European Cup in 1985 – albeit on a night overshadowed by tragedy at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. 

After beginning his coaching career as youth team coach with Atalanta in Bergamo, his last club as a player, he twice achieved promotion from Serie B, with Hellas Verona in 1999 and Venezia in 2001.

But it was his achievements in Serie A with Fiorentina that impressed the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).

Prandelli guided Italy to the semi-finals
of the Euro 2012 tournament

Appointed in the summer of 2005, he had immediate success, transforming the team from relegation strugglers to finish in fourth place, winning qualification for the Champions League, although the prize was then snatched away from them after the investigation into the Calciopoli bribes scandal found the Tuscan club to be heavily involved.

Prandelli himself was not party to any wrongdoing but had to deal with the consequences as Fiorentina began the following season with a 15-point penalty. Remarkably, despite the handicap, they qualified for the UEFA Cup by finishing sixth. Had they started level with the rest of the field they would have been third. Prandelli was named Serie A’s Coach of the Year.

In each of the following two seasons, the viola did qualify for the Champions League, achieving a last 16 place for the first time in their history in the 2009-10 season, on the back of which he was approached by the FIGC in May 2010 and appointed as Marcello Lippi’s successor in charge of the national team.

Prandelli was head coach of the Azzurri for 56 matches, winning 25 of them and losing 14. The high spots came in Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, when Italy qualified unbeaten from their group before beating England in a penalty shoot-out in the quarter-finals and knocking out Germany in the semis, when Prandelli’s protégé, Mario Balotelli, scored both goals.

They lost the final 4-0 to Spain but Prandelli’s team won popular approval and on their return to Italy were invited to meet the president, Giorgio Napolitano, at a reception at the Palazzo Quirinale.

Prandelli (centre) introduces striker Mario Balotelli to
the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano

Since resigning from the Italy job, Prandelli has had unhappy spells in Turkey with Galatasaray, where he was sacked after just 147 days in charge, and in Spain with Valencia, where he resigned after 10 matches.  He is currently working in Dubai with the Emirates Arabian Gulf League club Al-Nasr.

Off the field, Prandelli suffered the tragedy of losing his wife Manuela to cancer in 2007, after 25 years of marriage.  They had met in Orzinuovi as teenagers.  They had a daughter, Carolina, and a son, Nicolò, who worked for the Italian national team as a fitness coach in the build-up to Euro 2012.

The Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II in Orzinuovi

Travel tip:

Orzinuovi, a town of 12,500 people situated about 32km (20 miles) south-east of Brescia, is typical of many municipalities in Lombardy in that it is clean, orderly and understatedly elegant. The attractive Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II is a long, wide thoroughfare at the heart of the town lined with porticos on each side.

The Stadio Artemio Franchi, with the Torre del Maratona
away to the left, in Florence

Travel tip:

Fiorentina’s home ground, the Stadio Artemio Franchi, is one of Italy’s most historic football venues, constructed entirely from reinforced concrete to a design by the celebrated architect Pier Luigi Nervi, who included a 70-metre (230ft) tower – La Torre del Maratona – that is a landmark on the Florence skyline. The stadium hosted matches at the 1934 and the 1990 World Cups. It is likely to be the club’s home for only a short while longer, however, with plans approved for a now 40,000-seater stadium as part of the redevelopment of north-west Florence, to be completed in time for the 2021-22 season.

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Antonio Salieri - composer

Maestro of Vienna haunted by Mozart rumours

Antonio Salieri was director of Italian opera
in the Habsburg court of Joseph II

Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer who in his later years was dogged by rumours that he had murdered Mozart, was born on this day in 1750 in Legnago, in the Veneto.

Salieri was director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna from 1774 to 1792 and German-born Mozart believed for many years that “cabals of Italians” were deliberately putting obstacles in the way of his progress, preventing him from staging his operas and blocking his path to prestigious appointments.

In letters to his father, Mozart said that “the only one who counts in (the emperor’s eyes) is Salieri” and voiced his suspicions that Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the poet and librettist, were in league against him.

Some years after Mozart died in 1791 at the age of just 35, with the cause of death never definitively established, it emerged that the young composer - responsible for some of music’s greatest symphonies, concertos and operas - had told friends in the final weeks of his life that he feared he had been poisoned and suspected again that his Italian rivals were behind it. Salieri was immediately the prime suspect.

Despite being put forward as truth in works of literature such as Pushkin’s Little Tragedy and hardly discouraged by the portrayal of Salieri in the film Amadeus, it is largely accepted now that the story is a myth and that the two composers enjoyed a relatively cordial and mutually respectful relationship.

Mozart felt the Italians in Vienna wanted
to block the progress of his career

Yet Salieri had to live with the rumours during his lifetime. Rossini apparently teased him about it and Mozart’s father-in-law pointedly shunned him. When he became old and mentally frail, Salieri began to believe he must be guilty and while in a deranged state he supposedly confessed to the murder.

Salieri began his musical studies at home in Legnago, taught by his older brother Francesco, and by the organist of the Legnago Cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni. When he was about 13, both his parents died. He was looked after by another brother, a monk in Padua, before for unknown reasons becoming the ward of a Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo.

While living in Venice, Salieri’s continuing musical studies brought him to the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who was so impressed with his protégé's talents that he took him to Vienna, where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of Salieri's musical education.

There, influenced by Gassman and Christoph Gluck, he was introduced to the emperor, Joseph II, who invited him to join in chamber music sessions. His appointment in 1774 as court composer and conductor of the Italian opera made him one of the most influential musicians in Europe.

He became a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera, helping to establish many of the features of the genre. He dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna and his works were performed across Europe. In all he wrote 37 operas, enjoying great success with many from Armida in 1771 to Cesare in Farmacusa in 1800.

Although he wrote no new operas after 1804, he remained a much sought-after teacher. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven, and Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver Mozart, were among his pupils.

By the time of his death in 1825, his music was already disappearing from the repertoire but has enjoyed a revival in the last decade or so.

In 2004, the renovated La Scala in Milan reopened its doors with L'Europa riconosciuta – Europe revealed - the work Salieri had written for its first performance in 1778.

The soprano Cecilia Bartoli recorded an album devoted to his arias, while recordings have been made of Salieri overtures and some complete operas.

The Teatro Salieri in Legnago

Travel tip:

Legnago is a town in the Veneto about halfway between Verona and Ferrara, straddling the Adige river. It was formerly a centre for textile production although most of the factories have now closed. Legnago has had an important military role since the early Middle Ages. In the 19th century it was one of the Quadrilatero fortresses, the main strongpoint of the Austrian Lombardy-Venetia puppet state during the Italian Wars of Independence.  Legnago's theatre, constructed in the early 20th century, is called Teatro Salieri.

The Palazzi Mocenigo complex on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

The history of the Mocenigo family in Venice, who held influence from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries, is preserved in a complex of palaces on the Grand Canal roughly opposite the San Tomà vaporetto (water bus) stop, named the Palazzi Mocenigo.   The English poet Lord Byron stayed there in the early 19^th century. Seven of the Mocenigo family were doges. Another Palazzo Mocenigo, in the San Stae area of Santa Croce, is a museum of textiles, costumes and perfume.

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Pope Benedict XIV

Erudite, gentle, honest man was chosen as a compromise

Pope Benedict XIV succeeded Clement XII as a
compromise candidate after a six-month conclave

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini began his reign as Pope Benedict XIV on this day in 1740 in Rome.

Considered one of the greatest ever Christian scholars, he promoted scientific learning, the baroque arts and the study of the human form.

Benedict XIV also revived interest in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, reduced taxation in the Papal States, encouraged agriculture and supported free trade.

As a scholar interested in ancient literature, and who published many ecclesiastical books and documents himself, he laid the groundwork for the present-day Vatican Museum.

Lambertini was born into a noble family in Bologna in 1675. At the age of 13 he started attending the Collegium Clementinum in Rome, where he studied rhetoric, Latin, philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas became his favourite author and saint. At the age of 19 he received a doctorate in both ecclesiastical and civil law.

Benedict XIV's monument by Pietro Bracci in
St Peter's Basilica in Rome

Lambertini was consecrated a bishop in Rome in 1724, was made Bishop of Ancona in 1727 and Cardinal-Priest of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in 1728.

Following the death of Pope Clement XII, Lambertini was elected pope on the evening of August 17, 1740, having been put forward as a compromise candidate after a papal conclave that had lasted six months.

During his reign he carried out many religious reforms and issued a papal bull against the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

He also set in motion the cataloguing of the contents of the Vatican Library.

At the University of Bologna, he revived the practice of anatomical studies and established a chair of surgery and he was one of the first popes to voice displeasure about the use of castrated males in church choirs.

After a battle with gout, Benedict XIV died in 1753 at the age of 83. His final words to the people surrounding his deathbed were: ‘I leave you in the hands of God.’ He was buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Horace Walpole later described him as ‘a priest without insolence or interest, a prince without favourites, a pope without nephews.’

The anatomical theatre in the Archiginnasio
at the University of Bologna

Travel tip:

The world’s first university was established in Bologna in 1088 and attracted popes and kings as well as students of the calibre of Dante, Copernicus and Boccaccio. Benedict XIV revived anatomical studies and established a chair of surgery there while he was pope. You can visit the university’s former anatomy theatre in the oldest university building, the Archiginnasio, in Piazza Galvani. It is open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 1pm, admission free.

Travel tip:

The monument to Benedict XIV in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome was created by Pietro Bracci in 1769 in the late baroque tradition. It shows the Pope standing and blessing his flock with statues of Wisdom and Unselfishness at his feet, to reflect his character.

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