25 March

NEW - Saint Catherine of Siena

Pious woman from ordinary family helped the Pope reorganise the church

Caterina Benincasa, who was to one day become a patron saint of Rome, Italy and Europe, was born on this day in 1347 in Siena in Tuscany.  She is remembered for her writings, all of which were dictated to scribes, as she did not learn to write until late in life. While carrying out Christ’s work in Italy, she wrote about 380 letters, 26 prayers, and four treatises of Il libro della divina dottrina, better known as The Dialogue. These works were so influential and highly regarded she was later declared a Doctor of the Church.  Caterina was the youngest of 25 children born to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a poet, and Jacopo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer. She is said to have had her first vision of God when she was just five years old and at the age of seven, Caterina vowed to give her whole life to God.  She refused to get married when her parents tried to arrange it, cut off her hair to make herself look less attractive and began to fast. She did not want to take a nun’s veil, but to live an active life full of prayer in society, following the model of the Dominicans.  When she was in her early 20s, Caterina said she had experienced a spiritual espousal, or mystical marriage, to Christ.  Read more…

__________________________________________________________

Mina - pop star

Italy’s all-time top selling female artist

The pop singer Anna Maria Mazzini, better known simply as Mina, was born on this day in 1940 in the Lombardy city of Busto Arsizio.  Since her debut single in 1958, Mina has sold well in excess of 150 million records, which makes her the top-selling female performer in Italian music history. Only her fellow 60s star Adriano Celentano can boast larger figures.  The pair worked together on one of Italy’s biggest-selling albums of all-time in 1998. Mina Celentano sold an impressive 2.365 million copies. They revived the collaboration in 2016 with Tutte Le Migliori.  Mina also enjoys an iconic status in the history of female emancipation in Italy as a result of the sensational ban imposed on her by the state television station RAI in 1963 following her affair with a married actor, Corrado Pani, by whom she became pregnant.  Despite pressure from the Catholic Church, whose position as the guardians of Italy’s public morals was still very strong at the time, the broadcaster was forced by the weight of public opinion, as well as Mina’s unaffected record sales, to rescind the ban the following January.  Read more…

_________________________________________________________

Francesco I - Grand Duke of Tuscany

Florentine ruler at heart of Medici murder mystery

Francesco I, the Medici Grand Duke whose death at the age of 46 became the subject of a murder mystery still unsolved 430 years later, was born on this day in 1541 in Florence.  The second to be given the title Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco was the son of Cosimo I de' Medici, the first to hold the title, and Eleonor of Toledo.  Like his father, Francesco was often a despotic leader, but while Cosimo's purpose was to maintain Florence's independence, Francesco's loyalties were not so clear. He taxed his subjects heavily but diverted large sums to the empires of Austria and Spain.  He continued his father's patronage of the arts, supporting artists and building the Medici Theatre as well as founding the Accademia della Crusca and the Uffizi Gallery. He was also interested in chemistry and alchemy and spent many hours in his private laboratory.  It was his personal life that he is remembered for, beginning with an unhappy marriage to Joanna of Austria, youngest daughter of Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary.  Joanna was reportedly homesick for her native Austria, and Francesco was unfaithful from the start.  Read more… 

________________________________________________________

Veronica Franco – courtesan and poet

The literary talent of a popular prostitute

The beautiful courtesan, Veronica Franco, was born on this day in 1546 in Venice.  A cortigiana onesta, literally 'honest courtesan', but really meaning intellectual and high class, Veronica is remembered for the quality of her poetry as well as her profession.  In the 16th century Venice was renowned for the number of its courtesans and Veronica became one of the most famous of them.  She had three brothers who were educated by tutors and fortunately her mother, a former cortigiana onesta herself, had ensured that Veronica shared that education.  Veronica was married in her mid-teens to a physician, but she soon initiated divorce proceedings.  She asked her husband to return her dowry but he refused, and with a young child to support, she had no choice but to become a courtesan.  She was a great success and was able to support her family well for the next few years.  By the time she was 20, Veronica was among the most popular and respected courtesans in Venice.  Among her clients were King Henry III of France and Domenico Venier, a wealthy poet whose salon she joined.  As a member of the Venetian literati, Veronica participated in discussions and contributed to collections of poetry.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Tina Anselmi - ground-breaking politician

Former partisan became Italy’s first female cabinet minister

The politician Tina Anselmi, who made history in 1976 as the first woman to hold a ministerial position in an Italian government and later broke new ground again when she was appointed to chair the public inquiry into the infamous Propaganda Due masonic lodge, was born on this day in 1927 in Castelfranco Veneto.  Anselmi was chosen as Minister for Labour and Social Security and then Minister for Health in the government led by Giulio Andreotti from 1976 to 1979.  In 1981, she became the first woman to lead a public inquiry in Italy when she was asked to head the commission looking into the clandestine and illegal P2 masonic lodge, which had among its members prominent journalists, members of parliament, industrialists, and military leaders and was suspected of involvement in many scandals in pursuit of an ultra-right agenda.  Anselmi’s political views were heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Veneto during the years of Mussolini and war. She was from a comfortable background - her father was a pharmacist in Castelfranco Veneto, while her mother ran an osteria with her grandmother.  Read more…

Home

Saint Catherine of Siena

Pious woman from ordinary family helped the Pope reorganise the church

Tiepolo's 1746 painting of St Catherine, in
 the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

Caterina Benincasa, who was one day to be canonized as Saint Catherine of Siena, a patron saint of Rome, Italy and Europe, was born on this day in 1347 in Siena in Tuscany.

She is remembered for her writings, all of which were dictated to scribes, as she did not learn to write until late in life. While carrying out Christ’s work in Italy, she wrote about 380 letters, 26 prayers, and four treatises of Il libro della divina dottrina, better known as The Dialogue. These works were so influential and highly regarded she was later declared a Doctor of the Church.

Caterina was the youngest of 25 children born to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a poet, and Jacopo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer. She is said to have had her first vision of God when she was just five years old and at the age of seven, Caterina vowed to give her whole life to God.

She refused to get married when her parents tried to arrange it, cut off her hair to make herself look less attractive and began to fast. She did not want to take a nun’s veil, but to live an active life full of prayer in society, following the model of the Dominicans.

When she was in her early 20s, Caterina said she had experienced a spiritual espousal, or mystical marriage, to Christ, and she began serving the poor and sick in Siena and attracted a group of followers.

Alessandro Franchi's 19th century painting depicts
a young Caterina cutting off her long hair

She started to travel around Italy to promote church reform. She strongly believed the return of Pope Gregory XI to Rome was the best way to bring peace to Italy and she went to Avignon to be an unofficial advocate of this. She was then sent by him to negotiate peace with Florence.

In 1377 she founded a women’s monastery of strict observance in an old fortress outside Siena.

The next Pope, Urban VI, invited Caterina to Rome to help reorganise the church. She lived at the court meeting individual nobles to convince them to support the Pope and sending letters to other princes and cardinals urging them to obey him.

She tried to win back the support of Queen Joan I of Naples for the papacy, although Urban VI had previously excommunicated the queen for supporting the antipope. Being trusted by the Pope with such important work was rare for a woman in the Middle Ages.

By the time Caterina was 33 her habit of extreme fasting, eventually living just off the daily Eucharist, had made her ill. She became unable to eat and drink at all and lost the use of her legs. She died on 29 April, 1380 following a stroke. Her last words had been: ‘Father, into Your Hands I commend my soul and my spirit.’

Lorenzo Lotto's 1533 painting, St Catherine with the
Holy Family, is in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo

Pope Urban VI celebrated her funeral and her burial in the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva near the Pantheon in Rome. Her head and thumb were later entombed in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena, where they remain.

Caterina had a spiritual adviser and friend from about 1374 until her death named Raymond of Capua. He wrote what is known as the Legenda Major: a Life of Caterina, which was completed in 1395.

Tommaso Caffarini, also known as Thomas of Siena, wrote an account of Caterina’s life and compiled a set of documents with testimony from many of her disciples as part of the process for her canonisation. An anonymous Florentine wrote Miracoli della Beata Caterina, about the miracles she performed.

The devotion to Caterina di Siena grew rapidly after her death. She was canonised in 1461 by Pope Pius II, who was himself from Siena and her feast day was established on 29 April. She was declared patron saint of Rome in 1866 and of Italy, together with St Francis of Assisi, in 1939. She was proclaimed patron saint of Europe in 1999 by Pope John Paul II.

Caterina’s Dialogue, letters and prayers have given her a prominent place in the history of Italian literature.

Caterina's home in Siena is now a shrine, which
houses a museum dedicated to her life

Travel tip:

Siena in Tuscany, where Caterina was born and lived for much of her life, has made a shrine out of the house she lived in with her parents. It has a museum dedicated to her life and is open to visitors in Vicolo di Tiratolo off Costa Sant’Antonio.  The nearby Basilica of San Domenico has a Cappella Santa Caterina where her head and thumb are housed. Siena is the venue for the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena. The race is contested in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, a shell-shaped open area which is regarded as one of Europe’s finest medieval squares. It was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form the city of Siena.

Hotels in Siena by Booking.com

The Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
in Rome, which houses Catherine's remains

Travel tip:

Caterina was buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, which is in Piazza Minerva, close to the Pantheon in Rome. The basilica is the only surviving Gothic church structure left in Rome and has the original, arched vaulting inside. A sarcophagus containing the remains of Saint Catherine of Siena can be seen behind the high altar.  Among the works of art in the church are Michelangelo's statue Cristo della Minerva (1521) and the late 15th-century (1488–93) cycle of frescoes in the Carafa Chapel by Filippino Lippi. The basilica also houses the tomb of the 15th century the Dominican friar Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Blessed John of Fiesole, born Guido di Piero) better known as the painter Fra Angelico.

Also on this day:

1541: The birth of Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany

1546: The birth of courtesan and poet Veronica Franco

1927: The birth of ground-breaking politician Tina Anselmi

1940: The birth of Mina, Italy’s all-time best-selling female pop singer

(Picture credits: Caterina's house in Siena by Gryffindor; Basilica by sonofgroucho via Wikimedia Commons)

Home

24 March

Dario Fo – writer and actor

Prolific playwright put the spotlight on corruption

Playwright and all-round entertainer Dario Fo was born in Leggiuno Sangiano in the Province of Varese in Lombardy on this day in 1926.  His plays have been widely performed and translated into many different languages. He is perhaps most well known for Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.  Fo’s early work is peppered with criticisms of the corruption, crime, and racism that affected life in Italy at the time. He later moved on to ridicule Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi and more recently his targets have included the banks and big business.  He was brought up near the shores of Lago Maggiore but moved to Milan to study. During the war he served with several branches of the forces before deserting. He returned to Milan to study architecture but gave it up to paint and work in small theatres presenting improvised monologues. In the 1950s Fo worked in radio and on stage performing his own work. He met and later married actress Franca Rame and they had a son, Jacopo, who also became a writer.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Luigi Einaudi - politician and winemaker

Composer's grandfather was President of the Republic

The politician, economist, journalist and winemaker Luigi Einaudi was born on this day in 1874 in Carrù, in the province of Cuneo in what is now Piedmont.   Einaudi, who is the grandfather of the musician and composer Ludovico Einaudi and the father of publisher Giulio Einaudi, was elected President of the new Italian Republic between 1948 and 1955, the second person to occupy the post.  He was actively involved with politics from his university days, when he supported socialist movements.  For a decade he edited a socialist magazine but later took a more conservative position. After being appointed to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy in 1919, in the days when the upper house of the Italian parliament was a non-elected body, he was one of the signatories in forming the Italian Liberal Party (PLI).  The PLI initially joined forces with the Italian Fascists and it was through their support that Mussolini was able to win the 1924 general election with an absolute majority.  Einaudi had been both a journalist and an academic since graduating in law from Turin University in 1895.  Read more…

________________________________________________________

Mimmo Jodice - photographer

Camera work with shades of metaphysical art

Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Jodice, who has been a major influence on artistic photography in Italy for half a century, was born on this day in 1934 in Naples.  Jodice, who was professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli from 1969 to 1996, is best known for his atmospheric photographs of urban scenes, especially in his home city.  Often these pictures reflected his fascination with how Italian cities habitually mix the present and the future with echoes of the past in their urban landscapes, with the incongruous juxtapositions of ancient and modern that were characteristic of metaphysical art occurring naturally as part of urban evolution.  His books Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples) and Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy have been international bestsellers and he has exhibited his work all over the world.  Born in the Sanità district of Naples, Jodice was the second of four children. His father died when he was still a boy and the requirement that he find work as soon as he was able meant he had only a limited education.  Nonetheless, he was drawn towards art and the theatre, classical music and jazz.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Guido Menasci - poet, librettist and biographer

Respected writer and historian who found fame from an opera

The writer Guido Menasci, who is best known as a co-author of the libretto for composer Pietro Mascagni’s successful opera Cavalleria rusticana but was also a respected historian, was born on this day in 1867 in the Tuscan port of Livorno.  Menasci, a law graduate from the University of Pisa and briefly a prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Lucca, wrote for a number of literary magazines in Italy and beyond and produced a biography of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe that is considered a definitive work.  Fluent in French as well as Italian, he published books and gave lectures in Paris, often on the subject of art history, which was another of his fascinations.  Yet he was most famous for his work with Mascagni and his fellow librettist, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, whom he met through his involvement with literary and cultural societies in Livorno, where all three grew up.  They collaborated on a number of operas, the most famous of which by some way was Cavalleria rusticana, which was performed for the first time in 1890, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.   Based on a novella of the same name by Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria rusticana is a simple story of betrayal and revenge.  Read more…

Home

23 March

Lorenzino de’ Medici - assassin

Mystery over motive for killing cousin

Lorenzino de’ Medici, who became famous for the assassination of his cousin, the Florentine ruler Alessandro de’ Medici, was born on this day in 1514 in Florence.  The killing took place on the evening of January 6, 1537.  The two young men - Alessandro was just four years older - were ostensibly friends and Lorenzino was easily able to lure Alessandro to his apartments in Florence on the promise of a night of passion with a woman who had agreed to meet him there.  Lorenzino, sometimes known as Lorenzaccio, left him alone, promising to return with the woman in question, at which point Alessandro dismissed his entourage and waited in the apartments.  When Lorenzino did return, however, it was not with a female companion but with his servant, Piero, and the two attacked Alessandro with swords and daggers. Although a struggle ensued, they killed him.  The motive has been debated for centuries. One theory was that it was an act of revenge following a legal controversy the previous year, when Alessandro sided against Lorenzino in a dispute over the inheritance of his great, great grandfather, Pierfrancesco the Elder.  Read more…

__________________________________________________________

Ugo Tognazzi - comic actor

Achieved international fame through La Cage aux Folles

Ugo Tognazzi, the actor who achieved international fame in the film La Cage aux Folles, was born on this day in 1922 in Cremona.  Renowned for his wide repertoire in portraying comic characters, Tognazzi made more than 62 films and worked with many of Italy's top directors.  Along with Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi and Nino Manfredi, Tognazzi was regarded as one of the four top stars of commedia all'italiana - comedy the Italian way - in the 1960s and 1970s.  In 1981 he won the award for best actor at the Cannes International Film Festival for his role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Tragedia di un Uomo Ridicolo (The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man).  His work was widely acclaimed in Italy, but it was not until he was cast in the role of homosexual cabaret owner Renato Baldi in the French director Édouard Molinaro's 1979 movie La Cage Aux Folles that he became known outside Italy.   The film became in its time the most successful foreign language film ever released in the United States, with box office receipts of more than $20 million.  The film spawned two sequels in which Tognazzi reprieved the role of the mincing Baldi, who in the story was the joint owner of a night club in St Tropez that specialised in drag acts.  Read more…

__________________________________________________________

Franco Battiato – singer-songwriter

Long career of a musical philosopher

One of the most popular singer-songwriters in Italy, Franco Battiato, was born on this day in 1945 in Ionia in Sicily.  Nicknamed Il Maestro, Battiato has written many songs with philosophical and religious themes. He has also had a long-lasting professional relationship with Italian singer Alice, with whom he represented Italy at the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest.  Battiato graduated from high school at the Liceo Scientifico Archimede in Acireale, a city in the province of Catania in Sicily.  He went to Rome and then moved on to Milan, where he won his first musical contract. After his first single, La Torre, was released, Battiato performed the song on television. After some success with the romantic song E l’amore, he released the science fiction single La convenzione, which was judged to be one of the finest Italian progressive rock songs of the 1970s.  The albums of electronic music he produced in the ‘70s, obscure at the time, are now sought after by collectors.  His popularity grew after he moved away from progressive rock to a more mainstream pop style, producing music that was regarded as elegant, yet easy to listen to. Read more…

__________________________________________________________

The founding of the Italian Fascists

Mussolini launched party at 1919 Milan rally

Italy's notorious dictator Benito Mussolini officially formed what would become known as the National Fascist Party on this day in 1919 at a rally in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro.  A war veteran and former socialist activist who had moved towards a more nationalist political stance, Mussolini initially drew his followers together as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Group).  This group evolved into the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) two years later, sweeping to power in 1922 when King Victor Emmanuel III, fearing civil war after 30,000 of Mussolini's supporters, the Blackshirts, marched on Rome, asked Mussolini to form a government.  Born the son of a blacksmith in Predappio, in Emilia-Romagna, Mussolini had been an active socialist, first in Switzerland, where he had moved as a 19-year-old to seek work and avoid military service, and again when he returned to Italy.  He became a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and edited the left-wing newspaper Avanti.  But he was expelled by the PSI because of his opposition to the party's neutral stance on the First World War.  Read more…

Home