19 August

Andrea Palladio - the world's favourite architect

Humble stonecutter became his profession's biggest name

Andrea Palladio, the humble stonecutter who became the most influential architect in the history of his profession, died on this day in 1580, aged 71.  The cause of his death is not clear but some accounts say he collapsed while inspecting the construction of the Tempietto Barbaro, a church in Maser, a town in the Veneto not far from Treviso.  He was initially buried in a family vault in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, the city in which he spent most of his life, but later re-interred at the civic cemetery, where a chapel was built in his honour.  Examples of Palladio's work can be found all over the region where he lived and in Venice, where he was commissioned to build, among other architectural masterpieces, the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the focal point of the view across the lagoon from St Mark's Square through the Piazzetta.  Read more…

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Salomone Rossi - violinist and composer

Leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance 

The composer and violinist Salomone Rossi, who became a renowned performer at the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and is regarded as the leading Jewish musician of the late Renaissance, is thought to have been born on this day in 1570.  Jews had periodically been persecuted in the Italian peninsula for hundreds of years. At around the time of Rossi’s birth, Pope Pius V expelled all Jews from all but two areas of the papal states and Florence established a ghetto, in which all Jews within the city and the wide Grand Duchy of Tuscany were required to live.  The Mantua of Rossi’s day was more enlightened than many Italian cities, however. Jews were not only tolerated but were often allowed to mix freely with non-Jews. The liberal atmosphere allowed Jewish writers, musicians and artists to have an important influence on the culture of the day.   Read more…

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Nanni Moretti - film director

Award winning filmmaker helped shape politics

Giovanni ‘Nanni’ Moretti, film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, was born on this day in 1953 in Brunico in South Tyrol.  Moretti has been a prominent opponent to Silvio Berlusconi’s governments and policies in Italy. In his 2006 film, Il Caimano, a comedy drama focusing on allegations about Berlusconi’s lifestyle, he played the role of Berlusconi himself.  Moretti’s parents, who were both teachers, were from Rome but he was born while they were on holiday in Trentino-Alto Adige. His father, Luigi Moretti, taught Greek at Sapienza University in Rome.  While growing up Moretti developed a passion for the cinema and water polo. He started making films as a hobby and played in the junior national water polo team in 1970.  His first feature film, Io sono un autarchico - I am Self-sufficient, was released in 1976.  Read more…

Cesare Prandelli – football coach

Led Italy to the final of Euro 2012

The former head coach of the Italian national football team, Cesare Prandelli, was born on this day in 1957 in Orzinuovi, near Brescia.  Under Prandelli’s guidance, the azzurri finished runners-up in the European Championships final of 2012 and qualified for the finals of the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.  Despite winning a two-year extension to his contract, he quit after Italy’s elimination at the group stage in Brazil, which he considered was the honourable course of action after a very disappointing tournament in which the azzurri beat England in their opening match but then lost to Costa Rica and Uruguay.  As a player, Prandelli had been a member of a highly successful Juventus team in the early 1980s, winning Serie A three times and the European Cup in 1985 – albeit on a night overshadowed by tragedy at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Perfect House: A Journey with the Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio, by Witold Rybczynski

Renaissance master Andrea Palladio's architectural DNA can be seen on modern-day icons from Buckingham Palace to the White House, from numerous English stately homes to Virginian plantation houses. In The Perfect House, Witold Rybczynski travels along the Brenta River in northeastern Italy to experience the surviving original Palladian villas for himself. He sets out to discover how a rustic 16th-century stonemason, born Andrea di Pietro, first had to become 'cultured' before he could be one of the most respected architects of all time, and how Palladio managed to bring the elegance of Ancient Rome to the Venetian countryside. Out of the chaos of hired cars and cheap flights, towns packed with 'Ristoranti Palladio' and herds of tourists, Rybczynski savours moments of epiphany as he contemplates Palladio's perfect houses. Part travelogue, part historical biography, part architectural guide, The Perfect House is a delightful and enlightening exploration of the birth of domestic architecture and the man who spawned it.

Witold Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh, raised in Surrey and partially educated in Canada. He is an architect and Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. 

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18 August

NEW - Fernanda Pivano - writer and translator

Played key role in popularising American literature in Italy

The writer and translator Fernanda Pivano, who became an important figure in Italian literary circles for translating and writing about the greats of 20th century American literature, from Ernest Hemingway to the so-called Beat Generation, died in Milan on this day in 2009.  She was 92, having enjoyed a literary career spanning half a century. Her final article in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera was published only a month before her death.  As well as Hemingway, with whom she developed a close friendship after meeting him for the first time in 1949, Pivano - whose first name was usually shortened to Nanda - translated into Italian works by classic American writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Dorothy Parker.  In the 1950s, she became fascinated by the culture and ideals of what became known as the Beat Generation.  Read more… 

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Francesco Canova da Milano – lutenist and composer

Brilliant virtuoso performed for popes and noblemen

Lute player and composer Francesco Canova da Milano was born on this day in 1497 in Monza near Milan in Lombardy.  Nicknamed il Divino by his contemporaries, Francesco Canova da Milano was known throughout Europe as the leading composer of his time for the lute. More of his work has been preserved than that of any other lutenist from the period and he influenced the work of other composers for more than a century after his death.  Francesco’s father, Benedetto, and his older brother, Bernardino, were also talented musicians.  Francesco studied the lute as a child and by 1514 he was known to be a member of the papal household in Rome. He and his father became private musicians to Pope Leo X in 1516.  His father was employed until 1518, but Francesco stayed with Leo X till the pope’s death in 1521. Read more…

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Gianni Rivera - footballer and politician

Milan legend served in the Italian Parliament and as MEP

Gianni Rivera, a footballer regarded as one of Italy's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1943 in Alessandria, a city in Piedmont some 90km east of Turin and a similar distance south-west of Milan.  Rivera played for 19 years for AC Milan, winning an array of trophies that included the Italian championship three times, the Italian Cup four times, two European Cup-Winners' Cups and two European Cups.  He won 63 caps for the Italian national team, playing in four World Cups, including the 1970 tournament in Mexico, when Italy reached the final.  Later in life, he entered politics, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament from 1987 to 2001 and serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 2005 to 2009.  Rivera had a tough upbringing in Alessandria, which suffered heavy bombing during the later stages of the Second World War. Read more… 

Antonio Salieri - composer

Maestro of Vienna haunted by Mozart rumours

Antonio Salieri, the Italian composer who in his later years was dogged by rumours that he had murdered Mozart, was born on this day in 1750 in Legnago, in the Veneto.  Salieri was director of Italian opera for the Habsburg court in Vienna from 1774 to 1792 and German-born Mozart believed for many years that “cabals of Italians” were deliberately putting obstacles in the way of his progress, preventing him from staging his operas and blocking his path to prestigious appointments.  In letters to his father, Mozart said that “the only one who counts in (the emperor’s eyes) is Salieri” and voiced his suspicions that Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the poet and librettist, were in league against him.  It emerged that the young composer had told friends in the final weeks of his life that he feared he had been poisoned.  Salieri was immediately the prime suspect.  Read more…

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Beatrice Borromeo - journalist and model

Glamorous aristocrat who specialises in gritty real-life stories

The journalist Beatrice Borromeo, a descendant of one of Italy’s oldest aristocratic families and married to a member of the Monegasque royal family, was born on this day in 1985 in Innichen (San Candido) in the German-speaking province of South Tyrol in northeast Italy.  Although born into wealthy high society, Borromeo was driven by her political and humanitarian beliefs from an early age, taking part in demonstrations in Milan against the government of Silvio Berlusconi in her teenage years and deciding to pursue a career in journalism, working full time for the Italian daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.  Since marrying long-time boyfriend Pierre Casiraghi - grandson of Prince Rainier III and the actress Grace Kelly - and having two children, she has devoted much of her energy towards making documentary films, but always on hard-hitting topics. Read more…

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Umberto Guidoni - astronaut

First European to step on to the International Space Station

The astronaut Umberto Guidoni, who spent almost 28 days in space on two NASA space shuttle missions, was born on this day in 1954 in Rome.  In April 2001, on the second of those missions, he became the first European astronaut to go on board the International Space Station (SSI).  After retiring as an active astronaut in 2004, Guidoni began a career in politics and was elected to the European Parliament as a member for Central Italy.  Although born in Rome, Guidoni’s family roots are in Acuto, a small hilltown about 80km (50 miles) southeast of the capital, in the area near Frosinone in Lazio known as Ciociaria.  Interested in science and space from a young age, Guidoni attended the Gaio Lucilio lyceum in the San Lorenzo district before graduating with honours in physics specialising in astrophysics at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1978. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Beat Generation, by Jamie Russell

In Search of the Beats: Were they angel-headed hipsters, dope-smoking dropouts or the most exciting group of writers in postwar American literature? Their stories of drugs, sex and the search for an alternative to 'squaresville' have cornered the market in cult literature, remaining hip even while being taught on university courses and in schools. On the Road, Naked Lunch and Howl have become milestones of underground literature and the key Beats (Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg) are mythic figures of contemporary pop culture. The Beat Generation, published by Pocket Essentials, provides an introductory essay examining the importance of the writers and their work in American culture. Separate chapters are devoted to the lives and work of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. Later chapters discuss the other members of this movement (Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke and many more), the Beats on film, and their influence on the counterculture of the 60s.

Jamie Russell is a freelance journalist. He writes for Mondo, Hotdog and Popcorn and is the author of Queer Burroughs, a study of William Burroughs.

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Fernanda Pivano - writer and translator

Played key role in popularising American literature in Italy

Fernanda Pivano, pictured in 1979 with Allan Ginsberg.
one of the Beat Generation writers she so admired

The writer and translator Fernanda Pivano, who became an important figure in Italian literary circles for translating and writing about the greats of 20th century American literature, from Ernest Hemingway to the so-called Beat Generation, died in Milan on this day in 2009.

She was 92, having enjoyed a literary career spanning half a century. Her final article in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera was published only a month before her death.

As well as Hemingway, with whom she developed a close friendship after meeting him for the first time in 1949, Pivano - whose first name was usually shortened to Nanda - translated into Italian works by classic American writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Dorothy Parker.

In the 1950s, she became fascinated by the culture and ideals of what became known as the Beat Generation, introducing Italy to the works of writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs from a movement characterised by a rejection of the materialism and conformity of postwar America.

Born in Genoa in 1917, Pivano came from a well-to-do family. Her father, Riccardo Newton Pivano, was a banker of partial Scottish heritage. Her mother, Mary, was the daughter of Francis Smallwood, an Englishman who was one of the founders of the Italian Berlitz language school. 

Pivano was educated initially at a Swiss school before her family moved to Turin when he was a teenager, where she attended the Liceo classico Massimo d'Azeglio.

Pivano in 1949, the year she married
the celebrated designer, Ettore Sottsass

There, she was introduced to American literature by her teacher, the writer Cesare Pavese, who had already translated some American fiction into Italian.  Among her classmates was Primo Levi, who would become famous later for writing about his survival of the Auschwitz death camp. 

Pivano graduated with a thesis on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which also won a prize from the Centre for American Studies in Rome. She also graduated in philosophy.

She and Pavese, who was in his 20s when he was her teacher, met again some years later, after he returned to Turin from a three-year exile in Calabria imposed for alleged anti-Fascist activity. Their relationship developed into intimacy and he is said to have twice proposed marriage but was turned down by Pivano, who went on to marry the celebrated architect and designer, Ettore Sottsass. 

During that time, Pavese gave her several books in English by American authors, which would launch her career as a translator. Among them were the Spoon River Anthology, by the poet Edgar Lee Masters, which was her first published work, and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. 

Pivano was arrested herself during World War Two, along with her brother, Franco, after a raid by the Fascist authorities on the Einaudi publishing house discovered the contract - mistakenly addressed to Franco - to publish A Farewell to Arms, which Mussolini’s government banned on the grounds that it was disrespectful to the honour of the armed forces. 

The novel was based on Hemingway’s experiences serving with the Red Cross in Italy in World War One.  He described the catastrophic Italian defeat at the Battle of Caporetto in some detail. Fortunately she and her brother were released after interrogation.

Pivano in 2006, still championing young
American writers at the age of 89

After marrying Sottsass in 1949, Pivano made the first of several visits to the United States in the mid-50s. She had a deep admiration for American culture, especially its ideals of freedom and democracy, which she contrasted with the fear and repression of Fascist Italy.  

Her first awareness of the Beat Generation of writers came when she read a poem by Allen Ginsberg, entitled Howl, in 1957, in an issue of the Evergreen Review.  She regarded the poem's innovative language and counterculture themes as a powerful expression of the freedom she so admired. 

She wrote her first article about the Beat Generation in the Italian culture and philosophy magazine aut aut (either or) in 1959 and set out to meet as many of the movement’s writers as she could. She met Ginsberg in Paris in 1961 and became friends with Kerouac, Burroughs and Gregory Corso, not only as their translator but confidante.

Her promotion of their work through her own writings encouraged a generation of young Italian poets and writers, including Gianni Milano and Antonio Infantino.

Two important documentaries preserved the history of Pivano’s life. She collaborated with the psychoanalyst and film director Ottavio Rosati, a close friend since the 1970s, on Generations of Love - The Four Americas of Fernanda Pivano, and with Luca Facchini on A Farewell to Beat.

Her work can be researched at the Riccardo and Fernanda Pivano Library in Corso di Porta Vittoria in Milan. The library, which includes her father’s collection, was inaugurated in 1998. It contains published and unpublished examples from the writer’s literary career.

Pivano, who was divorced from Ettore Sottsass in the 1990s, died at the Don Leone Porta clinic in Milan. Her funeral was held at the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano in Genoa. After cremation, her remains were buried at the port city's Staglieno Cemetery, next to her mother.

Via Alessandro Manzoni, the fashionable street
in Milan where Pivano lived with her husband

Travel tip:

Nanda Pivano and Ettore Sottsass shared a large apartment on Milan’s fashionable Via Manzoni during their marriage, their home at times welcoming many of the American writers for whom Pivano’s work did much to make them appreciated by Italian readers. Via Manzoni leads from the Piazza della Scala northwest towards Porta Nuova and Piazza Cavour, with notable buildings that include the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, which specialises in Northern Italian and Netherlandish/Flemish artists, and the Grand Hotel et de Milan, where the opera composer Giuseppe Verdi died in 1901. Part of the street forms the one boundary of the quadrilatero della moda, Milan’s up-market fashion district. The street commemorates the 18th century writer, Alessandro Manzoni, born in Milan, whose epic novel The Betrothed, is regarded as one of the great works of Italian literature. 

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The Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano, the
church in Genoa where Pivano's funeral was held

Travel tip:

The Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano in Genoa, where Fernanda Pivano’s funeral took place, is a stunning example of Renaissance architecture and one of the city's major religious landmarks. Located in a residential area on the hills above the city centre, work on the church began in 1522 but was not completed until the 19th century. It follows a Greek cross plan with four symmetrical façades. Built in Renaissance style, it has later Neoclassical additions, including a monumental façade featuring Corinthian pilasters and statues by Claude David. It boasts five domes and originally has four bell towers, now reduced to two, giving it a commanding presence. The art treasures that can be seen inside the church include St Francis of Assisi receives stigmata by Guercino, the celebrated 17th century Baroque painter from Ferrara.

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Also on this day:

1497: The birth of lutenist and composer Francesco Canova da Milano

1750: The birth of composer Antonio Salieri

1943: The birth of footballer and politician Gianni Rivera

1954: The birth of astronaut Umberto Guidoni

1985: The birth of ex-model-turned-journalist Beatrice Borromeo

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17 August

Cesare Borgia – condottiero

Renaissance prince turned his back on the Church

Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, became the first person in history to resign as a cardinal on this day in 1498 in Rome.  Cesare was originally intended for the Church and had been made a cardinal at the age of 18 after his father’s election to the Papacy. After the assassination of his brother, Giovanni, who was captain general of the Pope’s military forces, Cesare made an abrupt career change and was put in charge of the Papal States.  His fight to gain power was later the inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince.  Cesare was made Duke of Valentinois by King Louis XII of France and after Louis invaded Italy in 1499, Cesare accompanied him when he entered Milan. He reinforced his alliance with France by marrying Charlotte d’Albret, the sister of John III of Navarre.  Pope Alexander encouraged Cesare to carve out a state of his own in northern Italy. Read more…

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Franco Sensi - businessman

Oil tycoon who rescued AS Roma football club

The businessman Francesco ‘Franco’ Sensi, best known as for transforming a near-bankrupt AS Roma into a successful football club, died on this day in 2008 in the Gemelli General Hospital in Rome.  He was 88 and had been in ill health for a number of years. He had been the longest-serving president of the Roma club, remaining at the helm for 15 years, and it is generally accepted that the success the team enjoyed during his tenure - a Serie A title, two Coppa Italia triumphs and two in the Supercoppa Italiana - would not have happened but for his astute management.  His death was mourned by tens of thousands of Roma fans who filed past his coffin in the days before the funeral at the Basilica of San Lorenzo al Verano, where a crowd put at around 30,000 turned out to witness the funeral procession.  The then-Roma coach Luciano Spalletti and captain Francesco Totti were among the pallbearers. Read more…

The Milan-Monza railway

First line in northern Italy sparked industrial growth 

The first railway line laid in northern Italy was opened on this day in 1840. The line, authorised by Ferdinand I of Austria, within whose empire the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell at the time, connected the city of Milan with the smaller city of Monza, covering a distance of 12.8km (eight miles).  It was the second railway line to be built on the Italian peninsula, following on from the shorter Naples-Portici line, which had been opened in October of the previous year.  Italy was a little behind in developing railways. The first steam-powered railway engine had completed its maiden journey some 56 years earlier, in England.   But once Milan-Monza was operational, quickly followed by the first section of what would become a Milan-Venice line, the rest of Italy awoke to their potential.  By the end of the 1840s, there were nine or 10 routes, mainly in the north. Read more…

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Pope Benedict XIV

Erudite, gentle, honest man was chosen as a compromise

Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini began his reign as Pope Benedict XIV on this day in 1740 in Rome.  Considered one of the greatest Christian scholars, he promoted scientific learning, the Baroque arts and the study of the human form.  Benedict XIV also revived interest in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, reduced taxation in the Papal States, encouraged agriculture and supported free trade.  As a scholar interested in ancient literature, and who published many ecclesiastical books and documents himself, he laid the groundwork for the present-day Vatican Museum.  Lambertini was born into a noble family in Bologna in 1675. At the age of 13 he started attending the Collegium Clementinum in Rome, where he studied rhetoric, Latin, philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas became his favourite author and saint.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia: Brother and Sister of History's Most Vilified Family, by Samantha Morris

Myths and rumour have shrouded the Borgia family for centuries - tales of incest, intrigue and murder have been told of them since they themselves walked the hallways of the Apostolic Palace. In particular, vicious rumour and slanderous tales have stuck to the names of two members of the infamous Borgia family - Cesare and Lucrezia, brother and sister of history's most notorious family. But how much of it is true, and how much of it is simply rumour aimed to blacken the name of the Borgia family? In Cesare and Lucezia Borgia, the first biography solely on the siblings, Samantha Morris tells the true story of these two fascinating individuals from their early lives, through their years living amongst the halls of the Vatican in Rome until their ultimate untimely deaths, explaining how they were used in the dynastic plans of their father, a man who would become Pope. Both led lives full of intrigue and danger. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources Morris brings the true story of the Borgia siblings, so often made out to be evil incarnate, to audiences both new to the history of the Italian Renaissance and old.

Samantha Morris studied archaeology at the University of Winchester and it was there, whilst working on a dissertation about the battlefield archaeology of the English Civil War, that her interest in the Italian Renaissance began. Her main area of interest is the history of the Borgia family and the papacy of Pope Alexander VI.

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