18 July

NEW - Angelo Morbelli - painter

Artist known for socially conscious themes

Angelo Morbelli, a painter who won acclaim for his socially conscious genre scenes, was born on this day in 1853 in the Piedmont city of Alessandria.  Initially a painter of landscapes and historical scenes, he switched quite early in his career to contemporary subjects, many of which reflected his own social concerns. He had a particular interest in the lives of the elderly and the fate of the women who laboured in the region’s rice fields.  He was a proponent of the Divisionist style of painting that was founded in the 1880s by the French post-Impressionist Georges Seurat. In Divisionism, rather than physically blending paints to produce variations in colour, the painter constructed a picture from separate dots of paint that by their proximity would produce an optical interaction. Divisionists believed this technique achieved greater luminosity of colour.  Morbelli developed his painting as a student at the prestigious Brera Academy in Milan but his original ambitions had been in the field of music.  The son of a wealthy vineyard owner from Casale Monferrato, about 35km (22 miles) north of Alessandria, Morbelli had shown a remarkable aptitude for the flute but was forced by illness into a change of direction.  Read more…

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Gino Bartali - cycling star and secret war hero

Tour de France champion was clandestine courier

Gino Bartali, one of three Italian cyclists to have won the Tour de France twice and a three-times winner of the Giro d’Italia, was born on this day in 1914 in the town of Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence.  Bartali’s career straddled the Second World War, his two Tour successes coming in 1938 and 1948, but it is as much for what he did during the years of conflict that he is remembered today.  With the knowledge of only a few people, Bartali repeatedly risked his life smuggling false documents around Italy to help Italian Jews escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps.  He hid the rolled up documents inside the hollow handlebars and frame of his bicycle and explained his frequent long-distance excursions as part of the training schedule he needed to maintain in order to keep himself in peak physical fitness.   In fact, he was carrying documents from secret printing presses to people who needed them in cities as far apart as Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Assisi, and the Vatican in Rome.  Sometimes he would pull a cart that contained a secret compartment in order to smuggle Jewish refugees in person into Switzerland.  Read more…

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William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan. Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.  Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time, aware that Italy needed to make up ground on some other western countries in that area of business.  His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round, with the added benefit that the moulds used to produce eggs at Easter did not need to be dismantled and stored away once the Easter holiday had passed.  Salice came up with the Kinder Sorpresa. Read more...

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Mysterious death of Caravaggio

Experts divided over how brilliant artist met his end

The death of the brilliant Renaissance artist Caravaggio is said to have occurred on this day in 1610 but the circumstances and even the location are disputed even today.  Official records at the time concluded that the artist died in the Tuscan coastal town of Porto Ercole, having contracted a fever, thought to have been malaria.  However, there is no record of a funeral having taken place, nor of a burial, and several alternative theories have been put forward as to what happened to him.  One, which came to light in 2010 on the 400th anniversary of the painter's death, is that Caravaggio's death was caused by lead poisoning, the supposition being that lead contained in the paint he used entered his body either through being accidentally ingested or by coming into contact with an open wound.  This was supported by research led by Silvano Vincenti, a prominent art historian and broadcaster, who claimed to have found evidence that Caravaggio had been buried at a cemetery in Porto Ercole that was built over in the 1950s.  Some remains were transferred to the municipal cemetery in Porto Ercole.  Read more…

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Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed

The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.  An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.  He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, whose work tried to capture the power and energy of modern industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change, in that his focus was primarily on exploring the dynamics of light and movement.  Giacomo Balla was the son of a seamstress and a waiter who was an amateur photographer. He lost his father at the age of nine, at which point he gave up an early interest in music and began working in a lithograph print shop.  Read more…

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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, who increased the wealth of the Vatican by buying shares in big corporations, was born on this day in 1884 in Rome.  Di Jorio was considered to be the power behind the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, popularly known as the Vatican Bank, which he served for 60 years.  As a young man he had been sent to the prestigious Pontifical Roman Seminary and he became a Catholic priest in 1908.  Di Jorio worked in an administrative role for the Vatican to begin with, but in 1918, when he was still in his early 30s, he took up the position of president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione - The Institute of Religious Works.  He was directed by Pope Pius XI to form a close working relationship with Bernardino Nogara, a layman working as a financial adviser to the Vatican. Nogara helped di Jorio build up the Vatican’s financial strength.  After the Lateran Treaty settled the Roman Question and made the Vatican an independent state, di Jorio was chosen to run the Vatican Bank and allowed to buy shares in any company, even if it made products that were contrary to Catholic Church teaching.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Painting Light - Italian Divisionism 1885-1910, by Renato Miracco

Inspired by the achievements of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, the school of painting known as Divisionism emerged in Italy around the end of the 19th century. Like their French counterparts, these artists were fascinated with capturing effects of light, and this pioneering exhibition explored their attempts to evoke that most elusive of subjects. Closely allied to the work of artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, the Divisionist technique was grounded in the construction of images from small dashes of pure colour that would blend in the eye of the spectator when viewed from a distance, resulting in works characterised by an intense luminosity.  Despite its close links with French artistic theories, Divisionism was very much an autonomous and independent movement, distinguished by its attempts to strike a careful balance between formal and narrative concerns. Many Italian artists, such as Giacomo Balla and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, combined their study of light and their investigation of optical phenomena with social commentary, applying their pictorial theories to depictions of the marginalised elements of society. Painting Light - Italian Divisionism 1885-1910 catalogues the paintings displayed at an exhibition of the same name staged by the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London in 2003. It also featured the work of painters such as Giovanni Segantini, Angelo Morbelli and Gaetano Previati. 

Renato Miracco is a scholar, art critic, and curator from Naples, Italy. He previously served as the Cultural Attaché of the Italian Embassy in Washington, and he is a former member of the Board of Guarantors for the Italian Academy at Columbia University.

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Angelo Morbelli - painter

Artist known for socially conscious themes

Morbelli, pictured in this self-portrait,
highlighted social issues in his work

Angelo Morbelli, a painter who won acclaim for his socially conscious genre scenes, was born on this day in 1853 in the Piedmont city of Alessandria.

Initially a painter of landscapes and historical scenes, he switched quite early in his career to contemporary subjects, many of which reflected his own social concerns. He had a particular interest in the lives of the elderly and the fate of the women who laboured in the region’s rice fields.

He was a proponent of the Divisionist style of painting that was founded in the 1880s by the French post-Impressionist Georges Seurat. In Divisionism, rather than physically blending paints to produce variations in colour, the painter constructed a picture from separate dots of paint that by their proximity would produce an optical interaction. Divisionists believed this technique achieved greater luminosity of colour.

Morbelli developed his painting as a student at the prestigious Brera Academy in Milan but his original ambitions had been in the field of music.

The son of a wealthy vineyard owner from Casale Monferrato, about 35km (22 miles) north of Alessandria, Morbelli had shown a remarkable aptitude for the flute but was forced by illness into a change of direction. At the age of seven, he contracted mastoiditis, a serious ear infection that caused him to suffer permanent hearing loss.

His parents instead encouraged him instead to study drawing, which quickly revealed a different talent, which would in time win him a scholarship granted by the Municipality of Alessandria to move to Milan and enrol at the Brera, where he studied under Giuseppe Bertini, Raffaele Casnedi and Luigi Riccardi, three renowned professors.

Morbelli's Giorni...ultimi, painted at the Pio Albergo
Trivulzio retirement home, is one of his greatest works

His early works were primarily landscapes and historical scenes. His 1880 work, La morte di Goethe - the Death of Goethe - was among the first he exhibited to bring him public attention. 

Around 1883, Morbelli shifted his focus to contemporary subjects. Notably, he depicted elderly residents of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, a retirement home and hospital in Milan that was founded in the 18th century following a bequest from Tolomeo Trivulzio, a Milanese aristocrat. 

Morbelli’s series of paintings from the home included Giorni…ultimi (Last Days), which earned him a Gold Medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. 

Early in the 1880s he married Maria Pagani, a woman with whom he would share the rest of his life. They had four children, inspiring him to paint several works on motherhood. He often painted Maria with the children at their house in Milan and in the garden of their summer residence, Villa Maria, at Colma di Rosignano Monferrato, in the hills above Casale Monferrato.

He began to experiment with Divisionism in around 1890, at first painting landscapes close to the Villa Maria.

Morbelli's Per ottanta centesimi highlighted the
exploitation of female labour in the rice fields

In the mid-90s, his interest drawn towards another social issue, he began to visit the farms in the rice fields around Vercelli, north of Casale Monferrato. A collapse in the price of rice led to the harsh exploitation of workers, mainly women, who were made to toil long hours for low wages.

His painting Per ottanta centesimi (For Eighty Cents), which depicted groups of women, standing ankle deep in water, engaged in the back-breaking work of picking the rice, was awarded the Gold Medal at the 1897 International Exhibition in Dresden.  He used photography to inform some of his work, which attracted criticism from some other painters.

The year that opened the millennium was important for Morbelli, who at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris received another Gold Medal - and the award of the Legion of Honor - for Giorno di festa (Day of Celebration), another painting set in the Pio Albergo Trivulzio.

Between 1902 and 1903, continuing to ponder old age and death, Morbelli set up a studio in the rooms of the hospice, where he created Il Natale dei resta (The Christmas of the Remainers), part of a cycle entitled Il poema della vecchiaia (The Poem of Old Age). The painting presented a stark image of five men sitting in a hall partly lit by the sun, among many rows of empty benches.

Morbelli’s work in the early part of the 20th century returned to painting landscapes, with work ranging from a view of Milan’s Duomo to a boat on Lake Garda. His 1913 painting Angolo di giardino (Corner of the Garden), which offered a glimpse of the family villa in Colma, was noted for the vibrant luminous depth he gave to the countryside beyond the villa’s garden.  Some of his last work was completed between 1914 and 1919 in the Usseglio valley, a mountainous area in the east of Piedmont, close to the border with France.

Between 1908 and 1903, Morbelli is said to have met Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, two important painters of the Italian Futurist movement. Divisionism was influential in the development of Futurism, whose proponents adopted some of its methods to help evoke the dynamism of the urban environment they sought to convey in their work

He was still active when, in 1919, he developed pneumonia, which led to his death in Milan on November 7, at the age of 66. 

The Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Marco was
consecrated in 1879, replacing an older church 

Travel tip:

The historic city of Alessandria, about 90km (56 miles) southeast of Turin, became part of French territory after the army of Napoleon defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in 1800 on fields to the east of the city. Alessandria has a Museum of the Battle of Marengo in Via della Barbotta in the district of Spinetta Marengo. The city was ruled by the Kingdom of Sardinia for many years and is notable for the Cittadella di Alessandria, a star-shaped fort and citadel built in the 18th century, which covers more than 180 acres on a site just across the Tanaro river and is one of the best preserved fortifications of its type.  It remained a military establishment until as recently as 2007 and now holds a permanent exhibition of about 1500 uniforms, weapons and memorabilia. The city's neoclassical Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Marco was built in between 1874 and 1879. Alessandria is also a rail hub for northern Italy. The railway station opened in 1850 to form part of the Turin to Genoa railway and now also has lines to many other towns and cities both in Piedmont and neighbouring Lombardy. 

Submerged fields in the rice-growing
area around the city of Vercelli

Travel tip:

Vercelli is best known as the centre of Italy’s rice production industry, with many of the surrounding fields in the vast Po plain submerged under water during the summer months. Rice has been cultivated in the area since the 15th century. One of Vercelli’s speciality dishes, panissa, is made from risotto rice and beans, with pork and red wine.  The city, which has around 46,500 inhabitants, is some 85km (53 miles) west of Milan and about 75km (46 miles) northeast of Turin. It is reckoned to be built on the site of one of the oldest settlements in Italy, dating back to 600BC, and was home to the world's first publicly-funded university, which was opened in 1228 but folded in 1372. Vercelli’s Basilica of Sant'Andrea is regarded as one of the most beautiful and best-preserved Romanesque buildings in Italy. The city also has an amphitheatre from the Roman period.

Also on this day:

1610: The death of Renaissance painter Caravaggio

1871: The birth of painter Giacamo Balla

1884: The birth of Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, Vatican banker

1914: The birth of cycling star and secret war hero Gino Bartali

1933: The birth of William Salice, inventor of the Kinder Egg

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17 July

Gino D'Acampo - celebrity chef

Neapolitan inherited talent from grandfather

The celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo was born on this day in 1976 in Torre del Greco, a conurbation of around 90,000 inhabitants within the Metropolitan City of Naples.  Based in England since 1995, D’Acampo is scarcely known in his native country yet his social media pages have more than two and a half million followers.  The author of 11 books on cooking, his numerous television appearances include several series of his own show, Gino’s Italian Escapes.  He owns a number of restaurants and pasta bars and is the co-owner of a company selling Italian ingredients.  His success is all the more remarkable given that he had to rebuild his life after being convicted in 1998 of burglary, an episode that took place while he was working as a waiter. He described the incident as a mistake he vowed never to repeat and has since spent time helping disadvantaged young people to learn from their mistakes.  Born Gennaro D’Acampo, he grew up around food. His grandfather, Giovanni, who had been head chef for a cruise company, owned a restaurant and although he had early aspirations to become a doctor or a dentist, he eventually enrolled at the Luigi de Medici catering school in Naples.  Read more…

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Maria Salviati - noblewoman

Florentine whose line included kings of France and England

The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on this day in 1499 in Florence.  Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and a powerful figure in the mid-16th century.  Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, and Charles II and James II of England.  Married for nine years to Lodovico de’ Medici, who was more widely known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Salviati herself had Medici blood. One of a family of 10 children, her mother was Lucrezia de Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had married the politician Iacopo Salviati, who was from another major banking family in Florence.  Maria’s maternal grandfather was Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler who famously sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli.  She was married to Giovanni dalle Bande Nere when she was 18, having known him since she was 10, when he was placed in the care of her parents following the death of his mother, Caterina Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan.  As a professional soldier, her husband spent much less time with her than she would have liked and Cosimo was their only child.  Read more…

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Michele Casadei Massari - chef and restaurateur

American dream from small beginnings

The chef and businessman Michele Casadei Massari, owner and founder of the Piccolo Cafe and the Lucciola restaurant in New York City, was born on this day in 1975 in Riccione, on the Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna.  Massari had planned to become a doctor but abandoned his studies in order to pursue his dream of cooking in his own restaurant.  After working as general manager and executive chef of a restaurant at a holiday resort in Sardinia, Massari and an old school friend decided to go it alone and chose to start a business in New York.  They began by selling coffee from a kiosk on Union Square in Manhattan before graduating to a cafe selling traditional Italian food as well as salads, panini and egg dishes.  Massari and his partner opened their first Piccolo Cafe in Third Avenue, a couple of blocks from Union Square in 2010. Now they have four branches of Piccolo Cafe and a restaurant, Lucciola, that specialises in the cuisine of Bologna and Emilia-Romagna.  Only six years old when he saw the inside of a restaurant kitchen for the first time, Massari acquired his love of cooking from his grandfather, ‘Nonno Gigi’.  Read more…

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Lady Blessington’s Neapolitan Journals

Irish aristocrat fell in love with Naples

Marguerite, Lady Blessington, an Irish-born writer who married into the British aristocracy, arrived in Naples on this day in 1823 and began writing her Neapolitan Journals.  She was to stay in the city for nearly three years and her detailed account of what she saw and who she met has left us with a unique insight into life in Naples nearly 200 years ago.  Lady Blessington made herself at home in Naples and thoroughly embraced the culture, attending local events, making what at the time were adventurous excursions, and entertaining Neapolitan aristocrats and intellectuals at the former royal palace that became her home.  Those who know Naples today will recognise in her vivid descriptions many places that have remained unchanged for the last two centuries.  She also provides a valuable insight into what life was like at the time for ordinary people as well as for the rich and privileged.  A society beauty, she came to Naples during a long European tour after her marriage to Charles Gardiner, the first Earl of Blessington, and immediately became fascinated by the local customs, food and traditions. She also visited Ercolano, Paestum, Capri, Ischia and Sorrento and made an ascent of Vesuvius on an ass.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Gino's Italy: Like Mamma Used to Make, by Gino D’Acampo

In Gino D’Acampo’s words: "People have this idea that in every Italian family there are secret recipes that get passed down the generations. And it's 100 per cent true! This book is my way of celebrating the amazing women in all our families. I want to show my love and appreciation for everything they have done for me."  Drawing on the wisdom of his late mother, his 15 bossy aunties, and a whole nation of home-cooking nonnas, Gino shares the secrets to making the very best version of much-loved Italian classics. Recipes include: Grilled scallops with parsley and hazelnut butter; Oozing baked risotto; Slow-cooked pork shoulder with super-crispy crackling; Biscoff and espresso cheesecake. With over 80 recipes for the ultimate Italian classics, ranging from quick weeknight meals to classic blowouts, Gino's Italy: Like Mamma Used to Make is Gino's most iconic book yet.

Born into a large family in Torre del Greco, Gino D’Acampo's love of cooking developed from a young age when he was taught to cook by his mother and, at the age of 11, started working at his grandfather's restaurant. After training at the Luigi de Medici Catering college, Gino came to work in London and was soon discovered as a TV talent. 

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16 July

Vincenzo Gemito - sculptor

Neapolitan who preserved figures from local street life

Vincenzo Gemito, one of the sculptors responsible for eight statues of former kings that adorn the western façade of the Royal Palace in Naples, was born on this day in 1852.  The statues are in niches along the side of the palace that fronts on to the Piazza del Plebiscito, displayed in chronological order beginning with Roger the Norman, also known as Roger II of Sicily, who ruled in the 12th century, and ends with Vittorio Emanuele II, who was on the throne when his kingdom became part of the united Italy in 1861.  Gemito sculpted the fifth statue in the sequence, that of Charles V, who was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 and, by virtue of being king of Spain from 1516 to 1556, also the king of Naples. Gemito was known for the outstanding realism in his work, as can be seen in his sculpture Il giocatore di carte – The Card Player - which he created when he was only 16. Born in Naples, Gemito’s first steps in life were difficult ones.  The son of a poor woodcutter, he was taken by his mother the day after his birth to the orphanage attached to the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata Maggiore in the centre of the city and left on the steps.  Read more…

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The first Coppa Italia football tournament

Tiny club from Liguria emerged the winners

The first final of the Coppa Italia, which was to become Italian football’s equivalent of England’s celebrated FA Cup knock-out competition, took place on this day in 1922.  It was won by Vado Foot-Ball Club, from Vado Ligure, a commercial and industrial port in the province of Savona in Liguria.  Vado, who defeated Udinese in the final to lift the trophy, have not won any major honours in 101 years since their famous triumph and currently play in Serie D, the fourth tier in the Italian football pyramid.  The circumstances of their victory would look quite bizarre in the context of modern-day football.  The competition itself existed only because of a major schism in the Italian championship that had taken place the year before, when 24 of the country’s major clubs broke away from the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to form their own championship after a demand for a reduction in the number of teams in the Prima Categoria - the forerunner of Serie A - was rejected.  With the likes of Pro Vercelli, Juventus, Bologna and AC Milan choosing to play in the new Italian Football Championship (CCI), the FIGC launched the Coppa Italia as an attempt to regain prestige.  Read more…

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Andrea del Sarto – painter

The brief career of an artist ‘senza errori’

Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore on this day in 1486 in Florence.  He had a brilliant career but died at the age of 43 during an outbreak of plague and afterwards his achievements were eclipsed by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.  Andrea’s father, Agnolo, was a tailor and therefore the child became known as del Sarto, meaning son of the tailor.  As a young boy del Sarto was apprenticed to a goldsmith and then a woodcarver before being sent to learn to be an artist.  He decided to open a joint studio with an older friend, Franciabigio, and from 1509 onwards they were employed to paint a series of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Del Sarto also painted a Procession of the Magi, in which he included a self-portrait, and a Nativity of the Virgin for the entrance to the church.  He married Lucrezia del Fede, a widow, in 1512 and often used her as a model for his paintings of the Madonna.  After spending a year as court painter to Francis I of France in 1518, del Sarto returned home to his wife and was offered a major commission by the Medici family.  Read more…

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St Clare of Assisi

Birth of the founder of the Poor Clares

St Clare was born on this day in 1194 in Assisi as Chiara Offreduccio, the beautiful daughter of a Count.  As a young girl Clare was extremely devout and at the age of 18 she was inspired by hearing Francis of Assisi preach and went to see him to ask for help to live her life according to the Gospel.  In 1212, Clare left her father’s home and went to the chapel of Porziuncola to meet Francis. Her hair was cut off and she was given a plain robe and veil in exchange for her rich gown.  Clare joined a convent of Benedictine nuns and when her father tracked her down refused to leave it to return home.  Francis sent her to another monastery, where she was later joined by her sister. Over the years other women came to be with them who also wanted to serve Jesus and live with no money. They became known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano because of the austere lifestyle they lived.  Clare took care of St Francis when he became old and after his death continued to lead her Order of Poor Women in the Franciscan tradition, which later became known as the Order of St Clare, also often referred to as The Poor Clares.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Cultural History of Naples, by Jordan Lancaster

Naples is an Italian city like no other. Drama and darkness are often associated with Naples, which rests beneath active Mount Vesuvius and is the home of the Camorra - the Neapolitan version of the mafia. But beyond this, Naples reveals itself to be one of the most historically and culturally vibrant cities in Europe.  From its origins in Homer's Odyssey and its founding nearly 3,000 years ago, Naples has long attracted travellers, artists and foreign rulers - from the visitors of the Grand Tour to Goethe, Nelson, Dickens and Neruda.  The stunning beauty of its natural setting coupled with the charms of its colourful past and lively present - from the ruins of Pompeii to the glittering performances of the San Carlo opera house - continue to seduce all those who explore Naples today. In the Shadow of Vesuvius is a sparkling portrait of the city - the definitive companion for anyone seeking to delve beneath its surface.

Jordan Lancaster studied at the universities of Cambridge and Bologna and holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Toronto. She taught Italian language and literature at universities in Canada and the United States before moving to Naples where she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici. 

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