19 June

Francesco Moser - Giro d’Italia winner

Only two riders have won more road races

The cycling champion Francesco Moser, winner of the 1984 Giro d’Italia and the 1977 World road racing championship among 273 road victories in his career, was born on this day in 1951 in Palù di Giovo, a village about 10km (6 miles) north of Trento in northern Italy.  Only the great Belgians Eddy Merckx (525) and Rik Van Looy (379) won more road races than Moser, who was at his peak during the late 1970s and early 1980s.  One of his proudest achievements was to break Merckx’s record for the greatest distance covered in one hour.  He became renowned as a specialist in the so-called Monuments, the five road races among what are generally termed the Classics considered to be the oldest, hardest and most prestigious one-day events in cycling.  Of those events, Moser won the Paris-Roubaix three times, the Giro di Lombardia twice and the Milan-San Remo once.  Moser attributed his cycling prowess to growing up on the family farm in Val di Cembra, working in steep-sided vineyards in an era when most of the work was carried out by hand, rather than machinery.  Family members used bicycles to move around the estate.  Read more…

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Pier Angeli - Hollywood star

Actress hailed for talent and beauty died tragically young

The actress Pier Angeli, a Hollywood star in the 1950s and 60s, was born on this day in 1932 in Cagliari, Sardinia.  She won awards in Italy and in America at the start of her career, when she was likened by some critics to the Swedish-born star Greta Garbo.  Described by the actor Paul Newman as "the most beautiful Italian actress of the century", Angeli was also a fixture in the gossip columns.  Linked romantically with a number of Hollywood's leading male actors, she dated Kirk Douglas and became close to the celebrated 'rebel' James Dean before marrying another star, the Italian-American actor and singer, Vic Damone.  It would be the first of two marriages.  She had a son, Perry, with Damone but they divorced after four years.  A second marriage, to the Italian composer, Armando Trovaioli, produced another son, Andrew, but they also divorced.  Born Anna Maria Pierangeli, the daughter of an architect, she had a twin sister, Maria Luisa, who would also become an actress.  Her mother, Enrica, used to dress the girls to resemble the American child star, Shirley Temple. The family moved to Rome when she was three.  Read more…

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Francesco Baracca – flying ace

Italy’s most successful First World War fighter pilot

Italy’s top fighter pilot of the First World War, Francesco Baracca, died in action on this day in 1918.  He had been flying a strafing mission against Austro-Hungarian ground troops in support of an Italian attack on the Montello Hill, about 17km (11 miles) north of Treviso in the Veneto, on which he was accompanied by a rookie pilot, Tenente Franco Osnago.  They split from one another after being hit by ground fire but a few minutes later, Osnago saw a burning plane falling from the sky.  Witnesses on the ground saw it too. Osnago flew back to his base but Baracca never returned.  Only when the Austro-Hungarian troops were driven back was the wreckage of Baracca’s Spad VII aircraft found in a valley.  His body was discovered a few metres away.  A monument in his memory was later built on the site. Osnago, fellow pilot Ferruccio Ranza and a journalist recovered his body. It was taken back to his home town of Lugo in the province of Ravenna, where a large funeral was held.  It is thought that Baracca was seeking to provide Osnago with cover from above as he swooped on enemy trenches when he was attacked by an Austrian plane.  Read more…

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Marisa Pavan - actress

Twin sister of tragic star Pier Angeli

The actress Marisa Pavan, whose twin sister Pier Angeli was a Hollywood star in the 1950s and 1960s, was born on this day in 1932 as Maria Luisa Pierangeli in Cagliari, Sardinia.  Pavan’s career ran parallel with that of her sister, who was born 20 minutes before her, but she rejected the re-invention as an ultra-glamorous starlet that Pier Angeli underwent within the Hollywood studio system.  She turned roles down when she felt they did not have enough substance and did not hesitate to sack agents if she felt they were putting her forward for unsuitable parts.  She refused to sign up to any one studio.  Her biggest success was The Rose Tattoo, the 1955 film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play in which she played the daughter of the central character, played by Anna Magnani - with whom she is pictured - one of postwar Italian cinema’s most respected actresses.  Magnani won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow, with Pavan receiving a nomination for best supporting actress at the Academy Awards and although that award went to someone else she did have the substantial compensation of winning a Golden Globe for the role.  Read more…

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18 June

NEW - Ottaviano dei Petrucci – music printer

Pioneer in printing who worked for a Doge and a Pope

Ottaviano dei Petrucci, who was the first person to print a book of polyphonic music from movable type, was born on this day in 1466 in Fossombrone near Ancona.  It is thought that Petrucci was educated at Urbino, possibly at the humanist court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who was Duke of Urbino apart from a brief period from 1482 until his death in 1508.  To learn the art of printing, in 1490 Petrucci went to Venice, then the most advanced centre for printing in Italy.  In 1498, Petrucci petitioned the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, for the exclusive right to print music for the next 20 years, which was granted. There are no examples of printed music produced by other Venetian printers until 1520.  Over the years, he continued to refine his technique and he held music printing monopolies in Venice until 1511. He produced books of printed music at the rate of a new book every few months.  His collection of 96 chansons, secular songs under the title of Harmonice Musices Odhecaton - One Hundred Songs of Harmonic Music - published in Venice in 1501, was the first book of polyphonic music to be printed from movable type.  Read more…

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Isabella Rossellini - actress and model

Daughter of ‘cinema royalty’ who became star in her own right 

The actress and model Isabella Rossellini, famed for her roles in the David Lynch-directed mystery Blue Velvet and the Oscar-winning black comedy Death Becomes Her and for 14 years the face of luxury perfume brand Lancôme, was born on this day in 1952 in Rome. Her parents were the Swedish triple Academy Award-winning actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, one of the pioneers of the neorealism movement that spawned some of Italy’s finest films. She is the eldest by 34 minutes of twin girls. Resident in the United States since 1979, when she married the American director Martin Scorsese, she has a home on Long Island, New York, where she keeps a number of animals. An active campaigner for various wildlife conservation causes, Rossellini has a MA in Animal Behaviour & Conservation after studying the subject at Hunter College, New York. Although her acting career continues, she moved in a less conventional direction by writing, directing and appearing in a series of short documentary films about sexual and reproductive behaviour in animals entitled Green Porno. Read more…

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Bartolomeo Ammannati – sculptor and architect

Florentine artist created masterpieces for his home city

Bartolomeo Ammannati, whose buildings in Italy marked the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque style, was born on this day in 1511 at Settignano near Florence.  Ammannati began his career as a sculptor, carving statues in a number of Italian cities during the 1530s.  He trained first under Baccio Bandinelli and then under Jacopo Sansovino in Venice, working with him on the Library of St Mark, the Biblioteca Marciana, in the Piazzetta.  Pope Julius III called Ammannati to Rome in 1550 on the advice of architect and art historian Giorgio Vasari. Ammannati then worked with Vasari and Giacomo da Vignola on the Villa Giulia, which belonged to the Pope.  In the same year, Ammannati married the poet Laura Battiferri and they spent the early years of their marriage in Rome.  Cosimo I de' Medici brought Ammannati back to Florence in 1555, and it was where he was to spend the rest of his career.  His first job was to finish the Laurentian Library begun by Michelangelo. He interpreted a clay model sent to him by Michelangelo to produce the impressive staircase leading from the vestibule into the library.   Read more…

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Fabio Capello - football manager

Veteran Champions League winner with five Serie A titles 

Fabio Capello, one of European club football's most successful managers, was born in San Canzian d'Isonzo, close to the border of Italy and Slovenia, on this day in 1946.  Capello is the winner of five Serie A titles as a coach and four as a player, plus two La Liga titles as manager of Real Madrid, and the Champions League with AC Milan.  At the time he was born, San Canzian d'Isonzo was in an area occupied by Allied forces after the end of the Second World War.  Capello’s uncle, Mario Tortul, who was from the same village near Trieste, had been a professional footballer, playing in Serie A with Sampdoria, Triestina and Padova and making one appearance for the Italian national team.  Capello began his playing career at the Ferrara-based SPAL club and went on to represent Roma, Juventus and AC Milan.  A midfielder with an eye for goal, he was a Serie A champion three times with Juventus and once with Milan, also winning the Coppa Italia with Roma and Milan.  He represented Italy 32 times, playing at the 1974 World Cup finals in West Germany.  He regards scoring the only goal against England in 1973 as Italy won at Wembley for the first time in their history as the highlight of his international career.  Read more…

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Raffaella Carrà - entertainer and TV presenter

Much-loved star with long and varied career

Raffaella Carrà, the singer, dancer, television presenter and actress often simply known as la Carrà or Raffaella, was born in Bologna on this day in 1943.  Carrà has become a familiar face on Italian TV screens as the host of many variety shows and, more recently, as a judge on the talent show The Voice of Italy.  She has also enjoyed a recording career spanning 45 years and was a film actress for the best part of 25 years, having made her debut at the age of nine.  Her best-known screen role outside Italy was alongside Frank Sinatra in the hit American wartime drama, Von Ryan’s Express.  Carrà was born Raffaella Maria Roberta Pelloni. Shew grew up in the Adriatic resort of Bellaria-Igea Marina, just north of Rimini, where her father ran a bar and her maternal grandfather an ice cream parlour.  At the age of eight, she won a place at the National Dance Academy in Rome and from there moved to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy’s oldest film school.  Her film career was never more than modestly successful. Although she has a long list of credits, she was cast mainly in small parts.   Read more…

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Ottaviano dei Petrucci – music printer

Pioneer in printing who worked for a Doge and a Pope

The first page of Petrucci's volume
 Harmonice Musices Odhecaton

Ottaviano dei Petrucci, who was the first person to print a book of polyphonic music from movable type, was born on this day in 1466 in Fossombrone near Urbino

It is thought that Petrucci was educated at Urbino, possibly at the humanist court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who was Duke of Urbino apart from a brief period from 1482 until his death in 1508.

To learn the art of printing, in 1490 Petrucci went to Venice, then the most advanced centre for printing in Italy.

In 1498, Petrucci petitioned the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, for the exclusive right to print music for the next 20 years, which was granted. There are no examples of printed music produced by other Venetian printers until 1520.

Over the years, he continued to refine his technique and he held music printing monopolies in Venice until 1511. He produced books of printed music at the rate of a new book every few months. 

Petrucci's collection of 96 chansons, secular songs under the title of Harmonice Musices Odhecaton - One Hundred Songs of Harmonic Music - published in Venice in 1501, was the first book of polyphonic music to be printed from movable type.

His books were crafted with painstaking care and are among the most beautiful examples of printed music from the entire 16th century.

An example of the music that Petrucci was able
to produce using printing presses of his time

The Harmonice Musices Odhecaton and the books that followed began a flood of printed music that revolutionized the distribution of the art form throughout Europe and beyond, and began the process by which studying, performing, and enjoying music no longer remained an exclusive privilege of the nobility, the clergy, and those they patronized, but became a treasured pastime for the middle classes.

Petrucci’s activities were interrupted by the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice in 1509, and so he returned to Fossombrone where he continued printing.

He applied for a patent with Pope Leo X for the exclusive right to print music, which was granted for several years. The Pope then rescinded the patent when Petrucci failed to produce printed keyboard music.

Papal troops ransacked Fossombrone in 1516 and Petrucci printed nothing for the next three years, possibly because his equipment had been destroyed.

The Venetian Senate asked Petrucci to return to the city in 1536, where he assisted them in printing Greek and Latin texts.

Among his total of 61 music publications are masses, motets, chansons and frottole by the foremost composers of the 15th and early 16th centuries, such as Josquin des Pres, Jean d’Okeghem, Antoine Brumet and Loyset Compere.

Petrucci also published the first book of printed lute music, Francesco Spinaccino’s Intabolatura de Lauto, in 1507.

His later work was considered extraordinary because of the complexity of the notation and the small font that he used.

Petrucci died in Venice in 1539 at the age of 73.

The town of Fossombrone in Marche occupies a
position on the banks of the Metauro river

Travel tip:

Fossombrone, a town of just under 10,000 inhabitants in the province of Pesaro e Urbino in Marche, about 25km (16 miles) east of Urbino, takes its name from the ancient Roman colony of Forum Sempronii. After changing hands several times during the Middle Ages it flourished under the control of Federico III da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, in the 15th century.  The town’s Roman heritage is visible in the remains of a statue of the god Vertumnus, the Furlo Pass, constructed by the Emperor Vespasian to shorten the passage of that mountain, the bridge of Trajannear Calmazzo, and the bridge now called Ponte della Concordia, originally built in 292 by Diocletian, which both cross the Metauro river.  There is an 18th century cathedral, dedicated to Saint Aldebrandus and Saint Augustine, built in neoclassical style.

The beautiful Renaissance Ducal Palace in Urbino
is one of the most important munuments in Italy

Travel tip:

Urbino, which is inland from the Adriatic resort of Pesaro, in the Marche region, is a majestic city on a steep hill.  It was once a famous centre of learning and culture, known not just in Italy but also in its glory days throughout Europe, attracting outstanding artists and scholars to enjoy the patronage of the noble rulers. The Ducal Palace, a Renaissance building made famous by Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, is now one of the most important monuments in Italy and is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. It is a city that is home to a number of gastronomic delights, including crescia sfogliata, a flatbread often served stuffed with melted caciotta cheese, and prosciutto di Carpegna, a local cured ham.

Also on this day:

1511: The birth of sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati

1943: The birth of entertainer and TV presenter Raffaella Carrà

1946: The birth of football coach Fabio Capello

1952: The birth of actress Isabella Rossellini 

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17 June

Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello - endurance racing driver

Three times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours 

Rinaldo ‘Dindo’ Capello, one of Italy’s most successful endurance racing drivers, was born on this day in 1964 in Asti, in Piedmont.  During a period between 1997 and 2008 in which there was an Italian winning driver in all bar two years, Capello won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most prestigious endurance race on the calendar, three times.  Only Emanuele Pirro, his sometime Audi teammate and rival during that period, has more victories in the race among Italian drivers, with five. Pirro won in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2007, Capello in 2003, 2004 and 2008.  Capello’s career record also includes two championship wins in the American Le Mans Series and five victories in the 12 Hours of Sebring. He is also the record holder for most wins at Petit Le Mans, the race run annually at Atlanta, Georgia to Le Mans rules, with five.  Alongside teammates Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish, he was regarded as the quiet man of the all-conquering Audi sports car team, although his contribution was every bit as impressive.   Capello’s ambitions when he began his single-seater career were the same as other young drivers - to work his way up to Formula One.  Read more…

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Giovanni Paolo Panini – artist

Painter who preserved scenes of Rome

Giovanni Paolo Panini, an artist mainly known for his views of Rome, was born on this day in 1691 in Piacenza, in Emilia-Romagna.  He is particularly remembered for his view of the interior of the Pantheon, commissioned by the Venetian collector, Francesco Algarotti, in around 1734.  The Pantheon was as much a tourist attraction in Panini’s day as it is today and Panini manipulated the proportions and perspective to include more of the interior that is actually visible from any one vantage point.  Indeed, many of his works, especially those of ruins, have slightly unreal embellishment. He sought to meet the needs of visitors for painted postcards depicting scenes of Italy and his clients were often happy with minor distortions of reality if it meant they could show off a unique picture.   As a young man, Panini trained in Piacenza  but then moved to Rome where he studied drawing. His work was to influence other painters, such as Canaletto, who resolved to do for Venice what Panini had done for Rome and, of course, enjoyed enormous fame and success.  Much in demand, Panini also became famous as the decorator of Roman palaces.  Read more...

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Sergio Marchionne - business leader

Man who saved Fiat divides opinions in Italy

Controversial business leader Sergio Marchionne was born on this day in 1952 in the city of Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy.  The former chief executive of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, who died in 2018, was credited with saving the iconic Italian motor manufacturer from potential extinction in 2004, when Fiat was on the verge of being taken into the ownership of the banks that were keeping it afloat.  It had suffered cumulative losses of more than $8 billion over the previous two years and a strategic alliance with General Motors had failed. Its share of the European car market had shrunk to an historic low of just 5.8 per cent.  Yet after the little known Marchionne was appointed chief executive at the company's Turin headquarters it took him only just over a year to bring Fiat back into profit.  When Fiat opened a new assembly line at the Mirafiori plant outside Turin in 2006, Marchionne was hailed as a hero.  The inauguration celebrations were attended by politicians of all parties and trade union leaders.  Soon, the new Fiat 500 was launched, tapping into Italian nostalgia by reprising the name that was synonymous with the optimistic years of the 1950s and ‘60s.  Read more…

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Saint Joseph of Copertino

Flying friar now protects aviators

Saint Joseph, a Franciscan friar who became famous for his miraculous levitation, was born Giuseppe Maria Desa on this day in 1603 in Copertino, a village in Puglia that was then part of the Kingdom of Naples.  Joseph was canonised in 1767, more than 100 years after his death, by Pope Clement XIII and he is now the patron saint for astronauts and aviation.  Joseph’s father, Felice Desa, had died before his birth leaving large debts. After the family home was seized to settle what was owed, his mother, Francesca Panara, was forced to give birth to him in a stable.  Joseph experienced ecstatic visions as a child at school. When he was scorned by other children he had outbursts of anger.  He was apprenticed to a shoemaker but when he applied to join the Franciscan friars he was rejected because of his lack of education.  He was accepted in 1620 as a lay brother by the Capuchin friars only to be dismissed because his constant ecstasies made him unfit to carry out his required duties.  Forced to return home he pleaded with the Franciscan friars near Copertino to be allowed to work in their stables.  Read more…

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