Filippo Juvarra – architect

Baroque designer influenced the look of ‘royal Turin’

Agostino Masucci's portrait of Filippo Juvarra

Architect and stage set designer Filippo Juvarra was born on this day in 1678 in Messina in Sicily.

Some of his best work can be seen in Turin today as he worked for Victor Amadeus II of Savoy from 1714 onwards. The buildings Juvarra designed for Turin made him famous and he was subsequently invited to work in Portugal, Spain, London and Paris.

Juvarra was born into a family of goldsmiths and engravers but moved to Rome in 1704 to study architecture with Carlo and Francesco Fontana.

He was commissioned to design stage sets to begin with, but in 1706 he won a contest to design the new sacristy at St Peter’s Basilica.

He then designed the small Antamoro Chapel for the church of San Girolamo della Carità with his friend, the French sculptor, Pierre Le Gros. He was later to design the main altar for the Duomo in Bergamo in Lombardy.

One of his masterpieces was the Basilica of Superga, built in 1731 on a mountain overlooking the city of Turin, which later became a mausoleum for the Savoy family.

The magnificent Basilica of Superga overlooking Turin
 is considered to be Juvarra's masterpiece

It was said to have taken 14 years to flatten the mountain top and it was very costly to bring the stones and other supplies to the peak for the build.

As chief court architect, Juvarra designed many other churches in Turin, the Palace of Stupinigi, built as the royal hunting lodge outside Turin, and the façade of the Palazzo Madama in the royal centre of the city. His later works are among the finest examples of the early Rococo style in Italy.

The architect moved to Madrid to supervise the construction of a new palace for Philip V and he designed other buildings for the city, but he died in 1736 less than nine months after arriving in Spain.

His designs were all executed after his death by his pupils and they strongly influenced the work of the other architects who came after him.

The waterfront at Messina, with the colossal church
 of Christ the King dominating the scene

Travel tip:

Messina, where Juvarra was born, is a city in northeast Sicily, separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily and is home to a large Greek-speaking community. The 12th century cathedral in Messina has a bell tower which houses one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933.

Hotels in Messina from Booking.com

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Superga, designed by Juvarra overlooking Turin, was tragically destined to be the site of an air disaster in 1949, when a plane carrying the entire Torino football team crashed into a wall at the back of the church, killing all 31 people on board.

More reading:

How Italy lost one of its greatest players in the Superga plane crash

Also on this day:

1274: The death of the philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas

1481: The birth of architect and painter Baldassare Peruzzi

1785: The birth of novelist Alessandro Manzoni 

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Augusto Odone – medical pioneer

Father who invented ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ for sick son

Augusto Odone devoted his life to caring
for his stricken son Lorenzo

Augusto Odone, the father who invented a medicine to treat his incurably ill son despite having no medical training, was born on this day in 1933 in Rome.

Odone’s son, Lorenzo, was diagnosed with the rare metabolic condition ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy) at the age of six. Augusto and his American-born wife, Michaela, were told that little could be done and that Lorenzo would suffer from increasing paralysis and probably die within two years.

Refusing simply to do nothing, the Odones, who lived in Washington, where Augusto was an economist working for the World Bank, threw themselves into discovering everything that was known about the condition and the biochemistry of the nervous system, contacting every doctor, biologist and researcher they could find who had researched the condition and assembled them for a symposium.

Drawing on this pooled knowledge, and with the help of Hugo Moser, a Swiss-born professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, they eventually came up with the idea of combining extracts of olive oil and rapeseed oil in a medicine that would break down the long-chain fatty acids in the human body that were considered a major cause of the nerve damage suffered by people with ALD.

The medicine, which seemed to slow the progression of Lorenzo’s disease, soon became known as Lorenzo’s Oil. Against all odds, Lorenzo survived until the day after his 30^th birthday, having lived more than 20 years beyond his doctors’ gloomy forecasts.

Lorenzo (left), with his father, lived for 22 years longer
 than doctors predicted after his diagnosis

The Odones, moreover, were convinced that Lorenzo drew some pleasure from being alive. He showed signs that he enjoyed music and listening to stories and responded to voices, even though for the last 22 years of his life he was paralysed, blind and unable to speak, could only be fed through a tube and required round-the-clock nursing care. He communicated by blinking and wiggling his fingers.

Their story attracted attention all over the world.  It became the subject of a film, entitled Lorenzo’s Oil, directed by George Miller and starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon, that was a box office hit and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

The movie attracted criticism from medical experts for portraying scientists as unfeeling, although the Odones had been outspoken in their comments about the response of the medical establishment to their attempts to find a treatment.

Doctors also criticised the film for suggesting that Lorenzo’s Oil was a cure for ALD, although the medicine is still used today and has been shown to delay the onset of symptoms if prescribed before they develop.

Lorenzo seemed a normal
child until the age of four

Augusto Odone, whose mother was a novelist and his father a general in the Italian army, grew up in Gamalero, a village in Piedmont, not far from Alessandria.  He was educated at the University of Rome before attending the University of Kansas on a scholarship.  He joined the World Bank in 1969.

He devoted much of his life to raising money for research before deciding in 2010, two years after Lorenzo’s death, to move back to Italy, settling in Acqui Terme, about 20km (12 miles) from Gamalero.  He died there in 2013, aged 80, having survived Michaela, his second wife, by 13 years.

His daughter by his first marriage is the Kenyan-born English journalist and novelist, Christina Odone.

La Bollente in Acqui Terme

Travel tip:

Acqui Terme in Piedmont, which is situated about 100km (62 miles) southeast of Turin, is a town of just over 20,000 people best known for the local wine, Brachetto d’Acqui, and for the hot sulphur springs that were discovered during the Roman era, which bubble up at a temperature of 75 degrees Celsius, emerging at a site in the centre of the town where a small pavilion, called La Bollente, was built in 1870.

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Travel tip:

Alessandria, a city of 94,000 people about equidistant from Turin and Milan, is notable for the Cittadella, the 18^th century star fort across the Tanaro river from the city, which is one of the best preserved fortifications of that era, with the outer wall and defensive towers still intact.  It is also home to a military museum that contains more than 1500 uniforms, weapons and other memorabilia from the Italian Army.

Find a hotel in Alessandria with Tripadvisor

More reading:

How Renato Dulbecco's research led to greater understanding of cancer

The first physiologist to explain human movement

Camillo Golgi - the greatest nueroscientist of the 19th century

Also on this day:

1483: The birth of historian Francesco Guicciardini

1853: Verdi's La Traviata is performed for the first time

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Marietta Piccolomini – soprano

Popular star who found fame as Violetta

Marietta Piccolomini had to persuade
reluctant parents to let her sing

The operatic soprano Marietta Piccolomini, who was most famous for her performances as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, was born on this day in 1834 in Siena.

Her career was relatively brief, spanning just 11 years. Yet she managed to achieve unprecedented popularity, to the extent that crowds of fans would gather outside her hotel and men would volunteer to take the place of horses in pulling her carriage through the streets.

Some critics said that the adulation she enjoyed was more to do with her youthful good looks and her acting ability than her voice, who they argued was weak and limited.

Nonetheless, she was seldom short of work and she was the first Violetta to be seen by operagoers in both Paris and London.  She had a particularly enthusiastic following in England, where she undertook several tours of provincial theatres as well as appearing in the capital.

Born Maria Teresa Violante Piccolomini Clementini, she came from a noble Tuscan family. Her musical mother, a talented amateur, would sing duets with her. However, while her family were happy to arrange lessons for her with Pietro Romani, one of Italy’s first professional singing teachers, her father was reluctant to allow her to make opera singing a career.

She made her first stage appearances in 1852, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, and at the Teatro Apollo in Rome, where she performed in two more Donizetti operas, Poliuto and Don Pasquale.

Giuseppe Verdi tried to stop
Piccolomini's Paris debut

Piccolomini took the role of Gilda in Guiseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto in Pisa in 1853 and appeared as Violetta for the first time in Turin two years later, receiving a rapturous response from the audience. It was there for the first time that she enjoyed the adulation of a star, with fans waiting outside her hotel in the hope of catching a glimpse of her.

In 1856, she was invited to reprise the role in the British premiere of La Traviata at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, where she became a favourite.  She enjoyed popularity in Dublin also.

The following year she was Violetta in the first French production of La Traviata, which was staged at the Theatre des Italiens in Paris despite attempts by Verdi, who did not have copyrights in France, to stop it going ahead.

Returning to England in 1858, she sang in Donizetti’s La figlia del reggimento and Lucia di Lammermoor, and in Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart, before embarking on a long provincial tour. Later in the year, she performed in Holland and Germany.

After another season and another tour of English cities in 1859, in the autumn she made her New York debut at the Academy of Music, as Violetta in La Traviata, after which she took her repertoire of Verdi, Donizetti and Mozart roles on a successful tour of cities across America.

Her marriage in 1860 to the Marquis Francesco Caetani della Fargna effectively ended her career, although she was persuaded out of retirement in 1863 for some benefit concerts in honour of Benjamin Lumley, the former impresario of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the man who had launched her career as an international artist, who had fallen on hard times.

Piccolomini died in 1899 at her villa in Florence, having contracted pneumonia.  She was buried at the Cimitero della Porte Sante at the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte.

The Piccolomini library adjoins
Siena's beautiful cathedral 

Travel tip:

Adjoining Siena’s beautiful Italian Gothic and Romanesque cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, is the Piccolomini Library, which houses precious illuminated choir books and is decorated with frescoes by Bernardino di Betto, who was better known as Pinturicchio, which were favourites of Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who would become Pope Pius II.

The Basilica di San Miniato at Monte is a Romanesque
church standing at one of the highest points in Florence

Travel tip:

The Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, a handsome Romanesque church, stands at one of the highest points in Florence, commanding sweeping views across the city. The cemetery was established there in 1848 within the basilica’s 16^th century fortifications.  Among those interred there are the painters Giuseppe Abbati and Pietro Annigoni, the author Carlo Collodi (of Pinocchio fame), the actor Tommaso Salvini and the historian and politician Pasquale Villari.

Hotels in Florence by Booking.com

More reading:

La Traviata's premiere in Venice

Verdi: How Italy mourned the loss of a national symbol

Rigoletto debuts at La Fenice

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1827: The death of scientist Alessandro Volta

1922: The birth of writer and movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini

(Picture credits: Siena cathedral by Myrabella; Basilica di San Miniato by Rufus46)

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Birth of the Italian Constitution

Celebrations in Turin for historic Statute

Charles Albert, King of Sardinia

The Albertine Statute - Statuto Albertino - which later became the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, was approved by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, on this day in 1848 in Turin.

The Constitution was to last 100 years, until its abolition in 1948 when the Constitution of the new Italian republic came into effect.

The Statute was based on the French Charter of 1830. It ensured citizens were equal before the law and gave them limited rights of assembly and the right to a free press.

However, it gave voting rights to less than three per cent of the population.

The Statute established the three classic branches of government: the executive, which meant the king, the legislative, divided between the royally appointed Senate and an elected Chamber of Deputies, and a judiciary, also appointed by the king.

Originally, it was the king who possessed the widest powers, as he controlled foreign policy and had the prerogative of nominating and dismissing ministers of state.

In practice, the Statute was gradually modified to weaken the king’s power. The ministers of state became responsible to the parliament and the office of prime minister, not provided for in the Constitution, became prominent.

Charles Albert signs the Albertine Statute

The king, however, retained an important influence in foreign affairs and in times of domestic crisis his role was pivotal.

The social base of the constitution was gradually broadened so that by 1913 universal adult male suffrage was achieved.

Under the Fascist regime the Statute was substantially modified to put control of the Government into the hands of the Fascist Party.

Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia between 1831 and 1839, gave his name to the beginnings of the Italian Constitution as it was called the Albertine Statute.

Before the statute was drafted Charles Albert had said he would not approve it if it did not clearly state the pre-eminent position of the Catholic religion and the honour of the monarchy. Once he had obtained these concessions he approved it.

Later that day a royal edict was published in the streets of Turin laying out the 14 articles which formed the basis of the Statute.

By the evening the city was lit up by bonfires and a massive demonstration in favour of Charles Albert took place.

The full version of the Statute with all its articles was finally agreed on March 4, 1848 and approved the same day by Charles Albert.

The Piazza Castello in the heart of royal Turin

Travel tip:

Turin, the capital city of the region of Piedmont, has some fine architecture, which illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy Kings of Italy. Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of ‘royal’ Turin.

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The Palazzo Viceregio is a former royal palace

Travel tip:

The monarchs of the House of Savoy ruled from their mainland capital of Turin but styled themselves primarily Kings of Sardinia after Victor Amadeus II of Savoy was the first to rule the island after it was ceded to him by Emperor Charles VI in 1720. For a short period between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century the Palazzo Viceregio in Cagliari in Sardinia was the official royal residence after the King was exiled from Turin.

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