4 December

Costantino Rocca - golfer

Italian whose success inspired Open champion

Costantino Rocca, who until recently was the most successful Italian in the history of international golf, was born on this day in 1956 in Almenno San Bartolomeo, near Bergamo in northern Italy.  Rocca, who turned professional at the age of 24 in 1981, enjoyed his best years in the mid-1990s, peaking with second place in the Open Championship at St Andrews in 1995.  He was beaten by the American John Daly in a four-hole play-off but was perhaps as popular a runner-up as there has been in the history of the tournament after the incredible putt he sank on the final green to deny Daly victory inside the regulation 72 holes.  Needing a birdie to be level with Daly at the top of the leaderboard after the American finished six under par, Rocca appeared to have blown his chance when his poorly executed second shot - a chipped approach that was meant to leave him in easy putting distance of the hole - did not even make it safely on to the green, coming to rest in an area known colloquially as ‘the Valley of Sin’.  It left him 65ft - almost 20m - short of the hole, needing somehow to hole a putt that had first to go uphill and then break sharply to the right.  Read more…

_________________________________________

Luigi Galvani - physicist and biologist

Scientist who seemed to give dead frog new life

Luigi Galvani, the first scientist to discover bioelectricity, died on this day in 1798 in Bologna.  Galvani discovered that the muscles in the leg of a dead frog twitched when struck by an electrical spark. This was the beginning of bioelectricity, the study of the electrical patterns and signals of the nervous system.  The word ‘galvanise’, to stimulate by electricity, or rouse by shock and excitement, comes from the surname of the scientist.  Galvani studied medicine at Bologna University and, after graduating in 1759, became an honorary lecturer of surgery and then subsequently of theoretical anatomy.  He became the first scientist to appreciate the relationship between electricity and animation when he was dissecting a frog one day. His assistant touched an exposed nerve in the leg of the frog with a metal scalpel that had picked up an electrical charge. They both saw sparks and the frog’s leg kicked. The phenomenon was dubbed ‘galvanism’.  In 1797 Galvani refused to swear loyalty to the French, who were then occupying northern Italy, and lost his academic position at the university and also his income.  Read more…

______________________________________

Gae Aulenti – architect

Designer who made mark in Italy and abroad

The architect Gae Aulenti, who blazed a trail for women in the design world in post-War Italy and went on to enjoy a career lasting more than half a century, was born on this day in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, a small town midway between Venice and Trieste.  In a broad and varied career, among a long list of clients Aulenti designed showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti, furniture for Zanotta, department stores for La Rinascente, a railway station in Milan, stage sets for theatre and opera director Luca Ronconi and villas for wealthy private clients.  She lectured at the Venice and Milan Schools of Architecture and was on the editorial staff of the design magazine, Casabella.  Yet she is best remembered for her part in transforming redundant buildings facing possible demolition into museums and galleries, her most memorable project being the interior of the Beaux Arts-style Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris, where she turned the cavernous central hall, a magnificent shed lit by arching rooflights, into a minimalist exhibition space for impressionist art.  Aulenti also created galleries at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Palau Nacional in Barcelona.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Pope Adrian IV

The warlike conduct of England’s one and only pontiff

The only Englishman to have ever sat on the papal throne, Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope on this day in 1154 in Rome.  Breakspear, who was from Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, had previously been created Cardinal Bishop of Albano by Pope Eugene III.  After his election as Pope, Breakspear took the name of Adrian IV (also known as Hadrian IV) and immediately set about dealing with the anti-papal faction in Rome.  After Frederick Barbarossa, Duke of Swabia, caught and hanged the leader of the faction, a man known as Arnold of Brescia, Adrian crowned Frederick as Holy Roman Emperor in 1155 to reward him.  He then formed an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, against the Normans in Sicily.  Adrian raised mercenary troops in Campania to fight alongside the Byzantine forces and the alliance was immediately successful, with many cities giving in, either because of the threat of force or the promise of gold.  But the Normans launched a counter attack by land and sea and many of the mercenaries deserted leaving the Byzantine troops outnumbered and forced to return home.  Read more…

______________________________________

Saint Giovanni Calabria

Priest offered himself to God to save a Pope

Giovanni Calabria, who dedicated his life to helping the poor and the sick, died on this day in 1954 in Verona.  Roman Catholics throughout the world will celebrate his feast day today as a result of his canonisation by Pope John Paul II in 1999.  When Pope Pius XII became ill in 1954, Calabria offered himself to God to die in the place of the Pope. Pius XII began to get better and went on to live for another four years, but Calabria died the next day. After the Pope recovered he sent a telegram of condolence to Calabria’s congregation.  Giovanni Calabria was born in 1873 in Verona. He was the youngest of the seven sons of Luigi Calabria, a cobbler, and Angela Foschio, a maid servant.  Calabria was only a young child when his father died but he had to drop out of school to become an apprentice.  However, a rector at his local church saw his potential and gave him private tuition to prepare him for an exam that would determine whether he could begin studying for the priesthood.  But first Calabria had to serve in the army where he converted his fellow soldiers and was renowned for the strength of his faith. Read more…

_______________________________________

Book of the Day: Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport, by Simon Martin

The Italian love affair with sport is passionate, voracious, all-consuming. It provides a backdrop and a narrative to almost every aspect of daily life in Italy and the distinctively pink-coloured newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is devoured by almost half a million readers every day. Narrating the history of modern Italy through its national passion for sport, Sport Italia provides a completely new portrayal of one of Europe's most alluring, yet contradictory countries, tracing the highs and lows of Italy's sporting history from its Liberal pioneers through Mussolini and the 1960 Rome Olympics to the Berlusconi era. By interweaving essential themes of Italian history, its politics, society and economy with a history of the passion for sport in the country, Simon Martin tells the story of modern Italy in a fresh and colourful way, illustrating how and why sport is so strongly embedded in both politics and society, and how it is inseparable from the concept of Italian national identity. Showing sport's capacity to both unite and deeply divide, this fascinating book reveals a novel and previously unexplored element of the history of a society and its state.  Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for Sports History in 2012.

Simon Martin is the author of Football and Fascism: The National Game under Mussolini, which won the Lord Aberdare Prize in 2004. He holds a PhD from University College, London and has taught there, as well as at the University of Hertfordshire, the University of California, Rome programme, the New York University in Florence and the American University of Rome. 

Buy from Amazon

Home

3 December

NEW - Nino Martoglio - writer and film director

Journalist and playwright whose films inspired post-war neorealism 

The journalist, playwright and theatre and film director Nino Martoglio was born in Belpasso, a town in the foothills of volcanic Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, on this day in 1870.  Martoglio is widely considered to be Sicily’s finest dialect playwright and by some to be the founder of Sicilian theatre.  He was also an acclaimed poet, basing a good deal of his verse on the everyday conversations of working class Sicilians, written to amuse. His collection, Centona, is still sold today.  Later in a career that was ended abruptly by his death in an accident, Martoglio directed a number of silent films, the style of some of which prompted critics to describe them as forerunners of the post-war neorealism movement.  The son of a journalist and a school teacher, Martoglio studied sailing as a young man and obtained a captain’s licence. Yet he sought a career in journalism and joined the editorial staff of La Gazzetta di Catania, a daily newspaper founded by his father, Luigi.  In 1889, he launched a weekly magazine, D’Artagnan, a Sicilian language periodical devoted to art, literature and theatre, sharp political satire and the plight of the people of Civita, a poor neighbourhood in Catania.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Nicolò Amati - violin maker

Grandson of Andrea Amati produced some of world's finest instruments

Nicolò Amati, who is acknowledged as the greatest in the line of Amati violin makers in the 16th and 17th centuries, was born on this day in 1596 in Cremona.  The grandson of Andrea Amati, who is credited by most experts with being the inventor of the violin in its four-stringed form, Nicolò followed his father, Girolamo, and uncle, Antonio, into the family business.  Girolamo and Antonio went their separate ways in around 1590, Antonio setting up a different workshop, which was thought to specialize in lutes.  Initially, Nicolò made instruments that were very similar to those created by Girolamo but later began to add refinements of his own, the most significant of which came between 1630 and 1640 when he created the Grand Amati design.  This model, slightly wider and longer than the violins his father had produced, yielded greater power of tone than the smaller instruments and soon became sought after.  The bubonic plague outbreak that swept through Italy between 1629 and 1633 claimed the lives of both Girolamo and Nicolò's mother, Laura, and that of his main rival in violin manufacture at the time, Giovanni Paolo Maggini, from the Brescian school.  Read more…

______________________________________

Nino Rota – composer

Musician and teacher composed soundtrack for The Godfather 

Giovanni ‘Nino’ Rota, composer, conductor and pianist, was born on this day in 1911 in Milan.  Part of a musical family, he started composing with an oratorio based on a religious subject at the age of 11, but he was to go on to produce some of the best-known and iconic music for the cinema of the 20th century.  Rota studied at the Milan Conservatory and then in Rome before he was encouraged by the conductor, Arturo Toscanini, to move to America, where he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.  When he returned to Milan he took a degree in Literature and then began a teaching career. He became a director of the Liceo Musicale in Bari in 1950 and kept this post until his death. Orchestra conductor Riccardo Muti was one of his students.  Rota wrote film scores from the 1940s onwards for all the noted directors of the time, including Franco Zeffirelli, Luchino Visconti and Eduardo de Filippo. He wrote the music for all Federico Fellini’s films from The White Sheik in 1952 to Orchestral Rehearsal in 1978. He composed the score for Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather and won an Oscar for best original score for The Godfather Part II in 1974.  Read more...

________________________________________

Carlo Oriani - cyclist and soldier

Giro winner died in World War One

The champion cyclist Carlo Oriani, winner of the 1913 Giro d’Italia, died on this day in 1917 in the aftermath of the Battle of Caporetto in the First World War.  The battle was a disastrous one for the Italian forces under the command of General Luigi Cadorna, with 13,000 soldiers killed, 30,000 wounded and 250,000 captured by the victorious army of Austria-Hungary. Countless other Italian troops fled as it became clear that defeat was inevitable.  Oriani, who had previously served his country in the Italo-Turkish War in 1912, was a member of the Bersaglieri, the highly mobile elite force traditionally used by the Italian army as a rapid response unit. He had joined the corps in part because of his skill on a bicycle, which had replaced horses as one of the means by which the Bersaglieri were able to get around quickly.  The Battle of Caporetto took place from October 24 to November 19, near the town of Kobarid on the Austro-Italian front, in what is now Slovenia.  Oriani survived the battle but it was during the retreat that Italian soldiers had to cross the Tagliamento, which links the Alps and the Adriatic and in the winter months is a fast-flowing river, with enemy forces in pursuit.  Read more…

______________________________________

Matilde Malenchini – painter

The tempestuous life of a talented Tuscan artist

The painter Matilde Malenchini was born on this day in 1779 in Livorno in Tuscany. She was well-known for her paintings of church interiors but turned to portrait painting later in life to make money to help her survive after her long relationship with Belgian writer Louis de Potter ended. Matilde was born into the Meoni family and married the painter and musician Vincenzo Francesco Malenchini at the age of 16. Although they soon separated, she kept his name for the rest of her life.  In 1807 she went to study at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence under the guidance of Pietro Benvenuti. To earn money and practise her art, she copied the works of old Italian and Dutch masters in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  After being given a four-year annual stipend by Elisa Bonaparte, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in 1811, Matilde went to Rome to study at the Pontificia Accademia romana delle belle arti di San Luca, in Rome. There she met the French Governor of the Papal States, General Francois de Mollis, who was an art collector. He bought 18 of her paintings and helped her establish a studio in the convent of Trinità dei Monti.  Read more…

________________________________________

Angela Luce – actress

Film star and singer was born in Spaccanapoli

Neapolitan actress and singer Angela Luce was born Angela Savino on this day in 1937 in Naples.  She has worked for the theatre, cinema and television, is well-known for singing Neapolitan songs, and has written poetry and song lyrics.  At 14 years old, Angela took her first steps towards stardom when she took part in the annual music festival held at Piedigrotta in the Chiaia district of Naples, singing the Neapolitan song, Zi Carmeli.  Her cinema career began in 1956, when she was only 19, when she appeared in Ricordati di Napoli, directed by Pino Mercanti. Since then she has appeared in more than 80 films and has worked for directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Amendola, Luigi Zampa and Pupi Avati.  Angela won a David Donatello award for L’amore molesto directed by Mario Martone and was also nominated for the Palma d’Oro at Cannes.  She has acted opposite such illustrious names as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio de Sica and Totò.  Her voice has been recorded in the historic archives of Neapolitan songs and she has won prizes for her singing.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Mario Borghezio – controversial politician

Lega Nord MEP renowned for extremist views

Mario Borghezio, one of Italy’s most controversial political figures whose extreme right-wing views have repeatedly landed him in trouble, was born on this day in 1947 in Turin.  Borghezio was a member of Lega Nord, the party led by Umberto Bossi that was set up originally to campaign for Italy to be broken up so that the wealthy north of the country would sever its political and economic ties with the poorer south.  He has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1999 and has served on several committees, including Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Petitions.  He was even undersecretary to the Ministry of Justice from 1994-95.  Yet he had regularly espoused extremist and racist views, to the extent that even the right-wing British party UKIP, with whom he developed strong links, moved to distance themselves from him over one racist outburst.  It was at their behest that he was expelled from the European Parliament’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy group after making racist remarks about Cecile Kyenge, Italy’s first black cabinet minister, whom he said was more suited to being a housekeeper.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Book of the Day: The Poetry of Nino Martoglio, introduced, edited and translated by Gaetano Cipolla

This is a selection of poems from the Centona, a well known collection of poems by Nino Martoglio, who was the founder of Sicilian dialect theater in Italy. Catania's most famous poet, Martoglio urged Luigi Pirandello to write for the theatre and co-authored two plays with him. These poems, ably translated by Gaetano Cipolla, provide a realistic view of every aspect of Sicilian life. The book is a tour de force for the poet and his translator. The Poetry of Nino Martoglio, which begins with a comprehensive biographical introduction, is a bilingual edition, in which the poems in the original Sicilian dialect appear facing Cipolla's English translation.

Gaetano Cipolla was born in Sicily and emigrated to the US in 1955. After earning his PhD at New York University in 1974, he taught Italian language and literature at a number universities including NYU, Marymount, Lehman College and St. John's. He has translated numerous Sicilian poets into English and received many awards. 

Buy from Amazon

Booking.com

Home

Nino Martoglio - writer, theatre and film director

Journalist and playwright whose movies inspired post-war neorealism 

Nino Martoglio is considered by some
as the founder of Sicilian theatre

The journalist, playwright and theatre and film director Nino Martoglio was born in Belpasso, a town in the foothills of volcanic Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, on this day in 1870.

Martoglio is widely considered to be Sicily’s finest dialect playwright and by some to be the founder of Sicilian theatre.  He was also an acclaimed poet, basing a good deal of his verse on the everyday conversations of working class Sicilians, written to amuse. His collection, Centona, is still sold today.

Later in a career that was ended abruptly by his death in an accident, Martoglio directed a number of silent films, the style of some of which prompted critics to describe them as forerunners of the post-war neorealism movement.

The son of a journalist and a school teacher, Martoglio studied sailing as a young man and obtained a captain’s licence. Yet he sought a career in journalism and joined the editorial staff of La Gazzetta di Catania, a daily newspaper founded by his father, Luigi.

In 1889, he launched a weekly magazine, D’Artagnan, a Sicilian language periodical devoted to art, literature and theatre, sharp political satire and the plight of the people of Civita, a poor neighbourhood in Catania which suffered particular deprivation. It also proved to be a useful vehicle for the poems that would eventually be gathered together in the Centona collection.

Theatre began to occupy most of Martoglio's attention from around the turn of the century. In 1901, he created the Sicilian Dramatic Company, which thanks to the talents of actors such as Angelo Musco, Giovanni Grasso, Virginia Balistrieri and others enjoyed success with Sicilian language productions even in Milan, where they performed at the Teatro Manzoni in 1903. The company’s productions of comedies written by a young Sicilian playwright, Pier Maria Rosso di San Secondo, were especially popular, among them San Giovanni Decapitato - Saint John the Beheaded - which he later turned into a film.

Martoglio staged the first theatrical
works of Luigi Pirandello (above)

Martoglio’s work became still more widely known after he moved to Rome in 1904, having become unhappy with the political climate in Sicily, where he had been elected a municipal councillor in Catania. In the capital, he met and married Elvira Schiavazzi, the sister of Piero Schiavazzi, a Sardinian tenor. They would go on to have four children. 

In 1910, he founded the first "Teatro Minimo" in Rome at the Teatro Metastasio. He staged one-act plays from the Italian and foreign repertoire, as well as bringing to the stage the first theatrical works of Luigi Pirandello, by then famous as a novelist and a future Nobel Prize winner. Their collaborations included A vilanza (la bilancia) and Cappidazzu pava tutu.

Martoglio’s venture into cinema spanned two years from 1913-14. He directed the actress Pina Menichelli, one of the so-called ‘three divas’ of Italian silent movies, in Il romanzo and followed it with Capitan Blanco, Sperduti nel buio, for which he wrote the screenplay and directed in collaboration with Roberto Danesi, and Teresa Raquin.  

All his screen work emphasised the gulf in Italian society between wealth and poverty and Sperduti nel buio - Lost in the Dark - which starred Grasso and Balistrieri - veterans of Martoglio’s original company in Catania - came to be regarded as a classic of the silent film era, representative of a small number of films that made up the realismo movement in Italian cinema. 

In the 1930s, the film critic and lecturer Umberto Barbaro enthusiastically showed Sperduti nel buio in his classes at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, where his students included Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti, who would go on to become leading figures in the neorealism film movement after the Second World War.

The bust of Martoglio
in the Bellini Gardens

Martoglio’s death at the age of 50 remains something of a mystery.  After visiting the Vittorio Emanuele II Hospital in Catania on the evening of 15 September, 1921, to see one of his sons, who was being treated there, Martoglio’s body was found the following morning at the bottom of an elevator shaft in part of the hospital that was under construction.  Although there were no witnesses, the assumption was that he had suffered a tragic accident, perhaps after getting lost as he tried to find the way out. 

His body was laid to rest at the Campo Verano monumental cemetery in the Tiburtino quarter in Rome, not far from the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le mura. The cemetery is notable as the burial place of hundreds of illustrious figures from the artistic, historical, literary, musical and cinematographic world.  

Although his films were lost, presumably stolen or destroyed during World War Two, Martoglio’s nieces, Vincenza and Angela, took steps to preserve their uncle’s manuscripts.  There is a monumental bust of him in the Bellini Gardens in Catania, a short distance from the Teatro Metropolitan. 

The Teatro Comunale Nino
Martoglio in Belpasso

Travel tip:

The town of Belpasso, where Martoglio was born, has a population of 28,000. Located about 10km (six miles) northwest of the city of Catania, it has something of a chequered history, having twice been destroyed by the forces of nature and repositioned in consequence. In 1669, it was buried in lava following an eruption of the Mount Etna volcano which looms over Catania. Rebuilt in another location at a lower level, it was then badly damaged by an earthquake in 1693 and abandoned. The current settlement was founded two years later at a third site. Today, it is best known as the home of Condorelli, one of Sicily’s most famous brands of confectionary, biscuits and cakes. Nino Martoglio’s name is preserved in the Teatro Comunale Nino Martoglio, the town’s municipal theatre, in Via XII Traversa.

The port city of Catania, the second largest city
in Sicily, with a snow-capped Etna in the distance

Travel tip:

The city of Catania, which is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, is one of the ten biggest cities in Italy, and the seventh largest metropolitan area in the country, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. Twice destroyed by earthquakes, in 1169 and 1693, it can be compared in some respects with Naples, which sits in the shadow of Vesuvius, in that it lives with the constant threat of a natural catastrophe.  As such it has always been a city for living life to the full. In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.  It is also notable for many fine examples of the Sicilian Baroque style of architecture, including the beautiful Basilica della Collegiata, with its six stone columns and the concave curve of its façade.

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati 

1779: The birth of Tuscan painter Matilde Malenchini

1911: The birth of composer Nino Rota

1917: The death in WW1 of champion cyclist Carlo Oriani

1937: The birth of actress Angela Luce

1947: The birth of controversial politician Mario Borghezio

Home

2 December

Roberto Capucci - fashion designer

'Sculptor in cloth' who rejected ready-to-wear

The fashion designer Roberto Capucci, whose clothes were famous for their strikingly voluminous, geometric shapes and use of unusual materials, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.  Precociously talented, Capucci opened his first studio in Rome at the age of 19 and by his mid-20s was regarded as the best designer in Italy, particularly admired by Christian Dior, the rising star of French haute-couture.  It was during this period, towards the end of the 1950s, that Capucci revolutionised fashion by inventing the Linea a Scatola – the box-line or box look – in which he created angular shapes for dresses and introduced the concept of volume and architectural elements of design into clothing, so that his dresses, which often featured enormous quantities of material, were almost like sculpted pieces of modern art, to be not so much worn as occupied by the wearer.  Growing up in Rome, Capucci was artistically inclined from an early age. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and wanted to become either an architect or a film director, designing clothes initially as no more than a diversion.  Read more…

_________________________________________

Maria Bricca - war hero

Humble cook whose actions helped end siege of Turin in 1706

The unlikely war hero Maria Bricca, whose actions would precipitate a major victory for the Duchy of Savoy in the War of the Spanish Succession, was born on this day in 1684 in Pianezza, then a village about 12km (7 miles) northwest of the city of Turin.  Maria, who was born Maria Chiaberge but changed her name after she married Valentino Bricco in 1705, became an important figure in the ending of the four-month siege of Turin by the French in 1706.  She hated the French, who had sacked Pianezza in 1693 when she was just eight years old, killing villagers and looting property before her eyes. In 1706. when they took control of the castle at Pianezza, which occupied a strategic position overlooking the Dora Riparia river, it brought back memories of the scenes she had witnessed as a child.  When Maria, who was nicknamed La Bricassa, heard that Prince Eugene of Savoy had dispatched a force of 9,000 Prussian soldiers led by his ally, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, to try to take control of the castle, she knew she had information that could help them.  As a cook, she had previously worked at the castle and knew of the existence of a secret underground passage that led from the village - possibly from her own house - directly into the castle.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Paolo Tosti - composer

How a poor boy from Abruzzo became an English knight

Paolo Tosti, the composer of the popular Neapolitan song, Marechiare, died on this day in 1916 in Rome.  Many of the light, sentimental songs he composed were performed by the top opera singers of the time and are still regularly recorded by the stars of today.  At the height of his career, Tosti was singing professor to Princess Margherita of Savoy, who later became the Queen of Italy. He then went to live in England, where his popularity grew even more.  He was appointed singing master to the British Royal Family and was eventually knighted by King Edward VII, who had become one of his personal friends.  Born Francesco Paolo Tosti in Ortona in the Abruzzo region, the composer received an early musical education in his home town and then moved on to study at the Naples Conservatory.  His teachers there were so impressed with him that they appointed him a student teacher, which earned him a small salary.  Ill health forced Tosti to return to Ortona, but while he was confined to bed, he began composing songs.  Once he had recovered from his illness he moved to live in Ancona where, it is said, he was so impoverished that he had to exist on stale bread and oranges.  Read more…

________________________________________

Gianni Versace – designer

Meteoric rise of the talented son of a dressmaker

Gianni Versace, the founder of the international fashion house Versace, was born on this day in 1946 in Reggio di Calabria in the south of Italy. He went on to start a highly successful clothing label and also designed costumes for the theatre and films. He was a personal friend of the late Princess Diana and numerous celebrities, including Elton John and Madonna.  Christened Giovanni Maria Versace, the designer literally learnt his trade at his mother’s knee as she was herself a dressmaker and employed him as an apprentice in her business from an early age.  He moved north to Milan to work in the fashion industry for other designers and, after presenting his own first signature collection in the city, opened a boutique in Via della Spiga in 1978. His career immediately took off and his exclusive designs were highly sought after.  He became one of the top designers of the 1980s and 90s and employed his brother, Santo, and his sister, Donatella, in his successful and profitable business.  One of his most famous creations was a black dress held together by safety pins, worn by the actress, Elizabeth Hurley, to a film premiere.  Read more…

________________________________________

Ferdinando Galiani - economist and philosopher

Leading figure in the Neapolitan Enlightenment

The economist and philosopher Ferdinando Galiani, whose theories on market economics are considered to be years ahead of his time, was born on this day in 1728 in Chieti, now in Abruzzo but then part of the Kingdom of Naples.  Galiani spent much of his life in the service of the Naples government, spending 10 years as secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris before returning to Naples in the role of councillor of the tribunal of commerce, being appointed administrator of the royal domains in 1777.  A fine writer and wit as well as a talented economist, Galiani wrote a number of humorous works as well as two significant treatises, the first of which, Della Moneta, was written while he was still a student, at the age of 22.  Initially published anonymously, Della Moneta - On Money - was ostensibly a work about the history of money and the monetary system, but Galiani used it as an opportunity to intervene in the Neapolitan debate on economic reform, his opinions on the development of the Neapolitan economy evolving into a theory of market value based on utility and scarcity.  Read more...

______________________________________

Book of the Day: Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion, by Dilys E Blum

Italian couturier Roberto Capucci is revered by contemporary fashion designers for his innovative silhouettes and masterful use of color and materials. Capucci refers to his creations as "studies in form," and draws inspiration from a multitude of sources, including art, architecture, and nature. This beautifully illustrated book, the companion to the first exhibition of Capucci's work in the United States, examines his career from the 1950s to the present in the context of the rise of Italian fashion.  Capucci's designs first captured the attention of the international press in 1951, when he presented his collection in Florence. Considered one of Italy's greatest talents, he experimented with construction techniques and unconventional materials such as raffia, wire, and stones. He refused to compromise his artistic vision to commercial concerns, and after withdrawing from the formal fashion world in the early 1980s, he presented one collection a year, each in a different city around the world. Featuring more than 80 extraordinary works, including the iconic "sculpture dresses" with their inventive use of pleating, color, and form, Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion is a captivating look at this brilliant designer who transcends the conventional line between fashion and art.

Dilys E Blum is the Jack M and Annette Y Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Buy from Amazon

Home