15 February

Charlie Cairoli - circus clown

Milan-born performer who became a Blackpool legend

The circus clown Charlie Cairoli, who would at his peak set a world record by appearing at the Blackpool Tower Circus in England for 40 consecutive seasons, was born in Affori, now a suburb of Milan but then a town in its own right, on this day in 1910.  Cairoli performed at the Tower for the first time in 1939 and returned every year until 1979, quitting only when his health began to fail him.  The run was not broken even by the outbreak of the Second World War, which Britain entered soon after he arrived, or his own arrest as a suspected ‘enemy alien’. He was the Tower’s most popular attraction for almost all of those years.  Cairoli, though born in Italy, was actually from a French family, albeit one of Italian descent, who christened him Hubert Jean Charles Cairoli.  His father, Jean-Marie, was also a clown; his mother, Eugenie, came from another French circus family with Italian heritage, the Rocono. Charles - known as Carletto - and his brother Louis-Philippe became part of the show as young children. Carletto made his debut at the age of seven.   At that age, he was doing little more than fetching and carrying for his parents, who were the stars.  Read more…

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Destruction of Monte Cassino Abbey

Historic monastery flattened in Allied bombing raid

The Abbey of Monte Cassino, established in 529 and the oldest Benedictine monastery in the world, was destroyed by Allied bombers on this day in 1944 in what is now acknowledged as one of the biggest strategic errors of the Second World War on the Allied side.  The Abbey was attacked despite an agreement signed by both sides with the Vatican that the historic building would be respected as occupying neutral territory.  But Allied commanders, who had seen their infantrymen suffer heavy casualties in trying to advance along the Liri valley, the route of the main highway between Naples and Rome, were convinced that the Germans were using the Abbey, which commands sweeping views of the valley, at least as a point from which to direct operations.  This perception was reinforced by a radio intercept, subsequently alleged to have been wrongly translated, which suggested a German battalion had been stationed in the Abbey, ignoring a 300-metre area around it that was supposed to be out of bounds to soldiers on both sides.   Knowing the outrage their action would prompt, military sources in Britain and the United States leaked details of their suspicions to the newspapers, who obligingly printed stories that seemed to justify the plan.   Read more…

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Galileo Galilei – astronomer and physicist

Scholar has been judged to be the founder of modern science 

Renaissance scientist Galileo Galilei was born on this day in 1564 in Pisa.  His astronomical observations confirmed the phases of Venus, discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter and analysed sunspots. Also among his inventions was a military compass.  Galileo was educated at a monastery near Florence and considered entering the priesthood but he enrolled instead at the University of Pisa to study medicine.  In 1581 he noticed a swinging chandelier being moved to swing in larger and smaller arcs by air currents. He experimented with two swinging pendulums and found they kept time together although he started one with a large sweep and the other with a smaller sweep. It was almost 100 years before a swinging pendulum was used to create an accurate timepiece.  He talked his father into letting him study mathematics and natural philosophy instead of medicine and by 1589 had been appointed to the chair of Mathematics at Pisa.  He moved to the University of Padua where he taught geometry, mechanics and astronomy until 1610.  Galileo met with opposition from other astronomers and was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615.  Read more…

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Totò – comic actor

50 years on, remembered still as Italy’s funniest performer

The comic actor Antonio De Curtis, universally known as Totò and still winning polls as the most popular Italian comedian of all time a half-century after his death, was born on this day in 1898 in Naples.  Totò had a distinguished career in theatre, wrote poetry and sang, but is best remembered for the 97 films in which he appeared between 1937 and his death in 1967, many of which were made simply as a platform for his inimitable talent.  Although he worked in dramatic roles for some of Italy’s most respected directors, it was for his comedy that he was most appreciated.  His characters were typically eccentric, his acting style sometimes almost extravagantly expressive both physically and vocally.  In his humour, he drew on his body and his face to maximum effect but also possessed an inherent sense of timing in the way he delivered his lines. Often, at the peak of his screen career with his characters so well defined, he would dispense with much of his script and simply ad lib, giving free rein to the cynicism and irreverence that came naturally.  Such was his popularity that after his death from a heart attack at the age of 69 he was given funerals both in Rome, where he lived, and in his native Naples.  Read more…

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14 February

NEW - Jacopo Bassano – painter

Artist loved brilliant colours and drew his inspiration from real life

The artist who became known as Jacopo Bassano died on this day in 1592 in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto in northern Italy.  He was born in about 1510 in Bassano del Grappa.  According to some accounts, he was christened Jacopo dal Ponte, although the inscription on his statue in the town names him Giacomo da Ponte. His father, Francesco il Vecchio, was already a successful painter in Bassano and had established a workshop that produced mostly religious works.  Jacopo became an apprentice in his father’s workshop while still a young boy. He made his way to Venice when he was about 20, where he studied under Bonifazio de Pitati, who was also known as Bonifazio Veronese.  While in Venice, he met famous artists, such as Titian and il Pordenone, and his work from this period shows Titian’s influence and demonstrates his lifelong appreciation of the great artist’s work.  Jacopo Bassano’s earliest paintings also show his love of the brilliant colours used by Titian.  Bassano’s Supper at Emmaus (1538), originally commissioned for a church, uses rich luminous colours that distinguish the figures from their background.  Read more…

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The Feast of the Lovers

A day for flowers, chocolates and padlocks

Today is called La festa degli innamorati (The Feast of the Lovers) in Italy when couples celebrate their love for each other.  Italian lovers give each other flowers and chocolates and celebrate with romantic dinners just like the rest of the world.  Chocolatiers Perugina make a special version of their Baci chocolate for the occasion in a shiny, red wrapper with a red cherry in the centre rather than the traditional hazelnut.  Florence and Venice are traditionally considered to be the most romantic places in Italy, but Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, puts on several days of celebration for the festival each year, featuring a programme of poetry, music and events, including a Romeo and Juliet half-marathon.  The streets around Piazza Bra and Juliet’s house and balcony are illuminated along with the tallest building in the city, the Lamberti tower.  The recent fashion for locking padlocks - lucchetti dell’amore - to bridges, railings and lamp posts to demonstrate never-ending love was started in Italy after the publication of the novel Ho voglio di te (I want you) by Federico Moccia in 2006.  Read more…

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Otto e mezzo - Fellini's masterpiece

Creative crisis spawned director's tour de force

The film Otto e mezzo (8½), regarded by some critics as the director Federico Fellini's greatest work, was released in Italy on this day in 1963.  It was categorised as an avant-garde comedy drama but the description hardly does it justice given its extraordinary individuality, evolving from conception to completion as an interweaving of fantasy and reality in which life not so much imitates art as becomes one and the same thing.  By the early 60s, Fellini was already a three-times Oscar winner following the success of La strada, Nights of Cabiria and La dolce vita, the last-named having also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.  La dolce vita had signalled Fellini's move away from the neo-realism that characterised cinema in Italy in the immediate post-war years towards the surreal interpretations of life and human nature that became popular with later directors and came to define Fellini's art.  While that movie was generating millions of dollars at the box office and turning Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg into international stars, Fellini was under pressure from his producers to come up with a sequel.  Read more…

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Valentina Vezzali – fencer

Police officer is Italy’s most successful female athlete

The fencer Valentina Vezzali, whose three Olympic and six World Championship individual gold medals make her Italy’s most decorated female athlete of all time, was born on this day in 1974 in the town of Iesi in Marche.  A police officer who sat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies as a representative for Marche until 2018, Vezzali retired from competition after the 2016 World Championships.  Her haul of six Olympics golds in total – three individual and three from the team event – has not been bettered by any Italian athlete, male or female.  Two other Italian fencers from different eras – Edoardo Mangiarotti and Nedo Nadi – also finished their careers with six golds. Fencing has far and away been Italy’s most successful Olympic discipline, accruing 49 gold medals and 125 medals in total, more than twice the number for any other sport.  Alongside the German shooter Ralf Schumann, the Slovak slalom canoeist Michal Martikán and the Japanese judo player Ryoko Tani, Vezzali is one of only four athletes in the history of the Summer Olympics to have won five medals in the same individual event.  Read more…

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San Valentino and Sant’Antonino

Celebrations for two different Italian saints

Saint Valentine, a third century Roman martyr, is commemorated with a feast day on this day every year.  His name has become associated with the tradition of courtly love but all that is really known about him is that he was martyred and buried at a cemetery on the Via Flaminia in Rome on 14 February.  His feast day was first established in 496 by a Pope who revered him. It is thought he was imprisoned and tortured and then hastily buried, but that his disciples later retrieved his body.  During the Middle Ages it was believed that birds paired in mid-February and this is probably why Saint Valentine’s Day became associated with romance.  But while lovers all over the world raise a glass to Saint Valentine on this day, residents and visitors in Sorrento celebrate the festival of Sant’Antonino, the city’s patron saint.  Sant’Antonino Abate died on 14 February, 626. He is credited with saving the life of a child swallowed by a whale and also protecting Sorrento against plague and invasion.  Each year on the anniversary of his death, a silver statue of Sant’Antonino is carried in a procession through the streets of Sorrento. 

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Jacopo Bassano – painter

Artist loved brilliant colours and drew his inspiration from real life

The statue of Jacopo Bassano in the
town from which he took his name 

The artist who became known as Jacopo Bassano died on this day in 1592 in Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto in northern Italy.

He was born in about 1510 in Bassano del Grappa.  According to some accounts, he was christened Jacopo dal Ponte, although the inscription on his statue in the town names him Giacomo da Ponte. His father, Francesco il Vecchio, was already a successful painter in Bassano and had established a workshop that produced mostly religious works.

Jacopo became an apprentice in his father’s workshop while still a young boy. He made his way to Venice when he was about 20, where he studied under Bonifazio de Pitati, who was also known as Bonifazio Veronese.

While in Venice, he met famous artists, such as Titian and il Pordenone, and his work from this period shows Titian’s influence and demonstrates his lifelong appreciation of the great artist’s work.  Jacopo Bassano’s earliest paintings also show his love of the brilliant colours used by Titian.

Bassano’s Supper at Emmaus (1538), originally commissioned for a church, uses rich luminous colours that distinguish the figures from their background. Unusually, he places Christ towards the back of the scene, allowing the figures around him to play a more significant part. He dresses them in 16th century clothes rather than in robes in the classical Roman tradition. He includes food on the table and there is a dog and a cat in the picture, showing he has drawn on contemporary life for his inspiration rather than just sticking to the stylistic conventions of his age.

Bassano's The Last Supper shows the influence
of such artists as Durer and Raphael on his work

After his father’s death in 1539, Jacopo Bassano returned to Bassano del Grappa and took over the running of the family workshop. He married a local woman, Elisabetta Merzari, in 1546.

His painting of The Last Supper in 1542 shows the influence on his work of Mannerism and indicates that he had seen the paintings of Durer and Raphael because his figures seem alive, with muscles and sinews, in the style of those two great artists.

After about 1550 he started experimenting with light and he was one of the first painters to paint a ‘nocturne’, a scene taking place at night time, which was to make his paintings even more highly valued.  He also tended to place his subjects in a natural landscape with carefully painted trees and flowers.

A portrait of Bassano painted
by his son, Girolamo

His four sons, Leandro Bassano, Francesco Bassano the Younger, Giovanni Battista da Ponte and Girolamo da Ponte, all worked in his workshop and followed him closely in style and subject matter.

After Jacopo’s death in 1592, his sons produced numerous works in his style, making it difficult for art historians to establish which pictures were created by Jacopo Bassano himself and which were the work of his sons.

His work is considered unique because it incorporated diverse artistic influences. He is believed to have learnt from Durer, Parmigianino, Tintoretto and Raphael, even though he lived permanently in Bassano del Grappa, mainly by seeing their prints, of which he became an avid collector.

The Ponte degli Alpini was designed by the
great architect Andrea Palladio

Travel tip:

Bassano del Grappa, where Jacopo Bassano was born and died, and from which he got his professional name, is an historic town at the foot of Monte Grappa in the Vicenza province of the Veneto, about 35km (22 miles) northeast of the city of Vicenza. The town is famous for inventing grappa, a spirit made from the grape skins and stalks left over from wine production, which is popular with Italians as an after dinner drink to aid digestion. A famous sight in the town is the Ponte degli Alpini, a bridge designed by Andrea Palladio.

The Basilica di Santa Giustina can be found off
Padua's large square, Prato della Valle

Travel tip:

Jacopo Bassano painted altarpieces for churches in Padua, Treviso, and Belluno as well as for churches in his home town and Venice. In the Basilica di Santa Giustina in Padua, his work, Santa Giustina enthroned with the saints Sebastian, Antonio Abate and Rocco, was painted by him in around 1560 with the help of his son, Francesco. It is considered one of his best works and also one of the most original examples of the Venetian Mannerist culture. The Basilica Church of Santa Giustina, which is the ninth largest Christian church in the world, is at the corner of Prato della Valle where it is joined by Via Avazzano and Via Ferrari. The church contains the remains of Santa Giustina, a devout young woman who was martyred in 304, and is also home to the tomb containing the body of St Luke the Evangelist, who was credited with writing the Gospel according to St Luke. Next door to the basilica there is a Benedictine monastery with frescoed cloisters and a famous library that can be visited by arrangement.

Also on this day:

Feste di San Valentino e di Sant’Antonino

La festa degli innamorati (The Feast of the Lovers)

1963: Fellini’s masterpiece Otto e mezzo (8½) is released in Italy

1974: The birth of triple Olympic champion fencer Valentina Vezzali

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13 February

Pierluigi Collina - football referee

Italian arbiter seen as the best in game's history

Pierluigi Collina, arguably the best and certainly the most recognisable football referee in the history of the game, was born on this day in 1960 in Bologna.  Collina, who was in charge of the 1999 Champions League final and the 2002 World Cup final, was named FIFA's referee of the year for six consecutive seasons.  He was renowned for his athleticism, his knowledge of the laws of the game and for applying them with even-handedness and respect for the players, while using his distinctive appearance to reinforce his authority on the field.  Standing 1.88m (6ft 2ins) tall and with piercing blue eyes, Collina is also completely hairless as a result of suffering a severe form of alopecia in his early 20s, giving him an intimidating presence on the field.  Growing up in Bologna, the son of a civil servant and a schoolteacher, Collina shared the dream of many Italian boys in that he wanted to become a professional footballer.  In reality, he was not quite good enough, although he was a decent central defender who played amateur football to a good standard.   When he was 17 and at college, he was persuaded to take a referee's course and displayed a natural aptitude.  Read more…

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Benvenuto Cellini – sculptor and goldsmith

Creator of the famous Perseus bronze had a dark history

The colourful life of the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini ended on this day in 1571 with his death in Florence at the age of 70.  A contemporary of Michelangelo, the Mannerist Cellini was most famous for his bronze sculpture of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, which still stands where it was erected in 1554 in the Loggia dei Lanzi of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, and for the table sculpture in gold he created as a salieri - salt cellar - for Francis I of France.  The Cellini Salt Cellar, as it is generally known, measuring 26cm (10ins) by 33.5cm (13.2ins), is now kept at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, with an insurance value of $60 million.  His works apart, Cellini was also known for an eventful personal life, in which his violent behaviour frequently landed him in trouble. He killed at least two people while working in Rome as a young man and claimed also to have shot dead Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, during the 1527 Siege of Rome by mutinous soldiers of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.  Cellini was also imprisoned for alleged embezzlement of the gems from the tiara of Pope Clement VII.  Read more…

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Fire at Teatro di San Carlo

Royal theatre reopens quickly after blaze 

Fire broke out during a dress rehearsal for a ballet at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on this day in 1816.  The flames spread quickly, destroying a large part of the building in less than an hour.  The external walls were the only things left standing, but on the orders of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, the prestigious theatre was rebuilt at once.  It was reconstructed following designs drawn up by architect Antonio Niccolini for a horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,444 seats. A stunning fresco was painted in the centre of the ceiling above the auditorium depicting a classical subject, Apollo presenting to Minerva the greatest poets of the world.  The rebuilding work took just ten months to complete and the theatre reopened to the public in January 1817.  Teatro di San Carlo had opened for the first time in 1737, way ahead of Teatro alla Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice.  Built in Via San Carlo close to Piazza Plebiscito, the main square in Naples, Teatro di San Carlo had quickly become one of the most important opera houses in Europe, known for its excellent productions.  The original theatre was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I, and took only eight months to build.  Read more…

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Isabella d’Este – Marchioness of Mantua

‘The First Lady of the world’

Isabella d’Este, who was a leading cultural and political figure during the Renaissance, died on this day in 1539 in Mantua.  She had been a patron of the arts, a leader of fashion, a politically astute ruler and a diplomat. Such was her influence that she was once described as ‘the First Lady of the world’.  Her life is documented by her correspondence, which is still archived in Mantua. She received about 28,000 letters and wrote about 12,000. More than 2000 of her letters have survived.  Isabella grew up in a cultured family in the city of Ferrara. Her father was Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and her mother was Eleanor of Naples.  She received a classical education and had opportunities to meet famous scholars and artists. She was reputed to have frequently discussed the classics and affairs of state with ambassadors who came to the court.  When Isabella was just six years old she was betrothed to Francesco, the heir to the Marquess of Mantua.  At the age of 15 she married him by proxy. He had succeeded his father and become Francesco II and she became his Marchioness.   In 1493 Isabella gave birth to a daughter, Eleonora, the first of her eight children.  Read more…

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