13 September

Andrea Mantegna – artist

Genius led the way with his use of perspective

The painter Andrea Mantegna died on this day in 1506 in Mantua.  He had become famous for his religious paintings, such as St Sebastian, which is now in the Louvre in Paris, and The Agony in the Garden, which is now in the National Gallery in London.  But his frescoes for the Bridal Chamber (Camera degli Sposi) at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua were to influence many artists because of his innovative use of perspective.  Mantegna studied Roman antiquities for inspiration and was also an eminent engraver.  He was born near Padua in about 1431 and apprenticed by the age of 11 to the painter, Francesco Squarcione, who had a fascination for ancient art and encouraged him to study fragments of Roman sculptures.  Mantegna was one of a large group of painters entrusted with decorating the Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani in Padua.  Read more…

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Girolamo Frescobaldi – composer

Organist was a ‘father of Italian music’

Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi, one of the first great masters of organ composition, was born on this day in 1583 in Ferrara.  Frescobaldi is famous for his instrumental works, many of which are compositions for the keyboard, but his canzone are of historical importance for the part they played in the development of pieces for small instrumental ensembles and he was to have a strong influence on the German Baroque school.  Frescobaldi began his career as organist at the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in 1607. He travelled to the Netherlands the same year and published his first work, a book of madrigals, in Antwerp.  In 1608 he became the organist at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and, except for a few years when he was court organist in Florence, he worked at St Peter’s until his death.  Read more…

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Fabio Cannavaro - World Cup winner

Defender captained azzurri to 2006 triumph

The footballer and coach Fabio Cannavaro, who was captain of the Italy team that won the 2006 World Cup in Germany, was born on this day in 1973 in Naples.  In a hugely successful playing career, the central defender was part of the excellent Parma team that won the UEFA Cup and the Coppa Italia under coach Alberto Malesani in the late 1990s, winning another Coppa Italia in 2002 with Pietro Carmignani in charge.  But his biggest glories were to come after he left Italy to play for Real Madrid under the Italian coach Fabio Capello, winning La Liga twice, in 2006 and 2007.  His 136 appearances for the Italian national team made him the most capped outfield player in history and the feat of winning La Liga and the World Cup in the same year helped him win the coveted Ballon d’Or, awarded annually by the magazine France Football. Read more…

Saverio Bettinelli – writer

Jesuit scholar and poet was unimpressed with Dante

Poet and literary critic Saverio Bettinelli, who had the temerity to criticise Dante in his writing, died at the age of 90 on this day in 1808 in Mantua.  Bettinelli had entered the Jesuit Order at the age of 20 and went on to become known as a dramatist, poet and literary critic, who also taught rhetoric in various Italian cities.  In 1758 he travelled through Italy and Germany and met the French writers Voltaire and Rousseau.  Bettinelli taught literature from 1739 to 1744 at Brescia, where he formed an academy with other scholars. He became a professor of rhetoric in Venice and was made superintendent of the College of Nobles at Parma in 1751, where he was in charge of the study of poetry and history and theatrical entertainment.  After travelling to Germany, Strasbourg and Nancy, he returned to Italy.  Read more…

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Francesco Manelli – Baroque composer

Theorbo player staged the world’s first public opera

Musician and opera composer Francesco Manelli, who is remembered for the important contribution he made to bringing commercial opera to Venice, was born on this day in 1595 in Tivoli in Lazio.  Manelli (sometimes spelt Mannelli) was also a skilled player of the theorbo, which is a plucked string instrument belonging to the lute family that has a very long neck.  From the age of ten, Manelli used to sing in Tivoli's Duomo, the Basilica Cattedrale di San Lorenzo Martire, and he was taught music by the various maestri di cappella working there at that time.  Manelli moved to Rome with the intention of studying for a career in the church, but after meeting and marrying a singer, Maddalena, he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to music.  In 1627, Manelli went back to Tivoli where he himself became a maestro di cappella at the Duomo, a post he held for two years.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Andrea Mantegna: Making Art (History), edited by by Stephen J Campbell and Jérémie Koering

The 15th-century Italian painter Andrea Mantegna is widely regarded as one of the most virtuosic and conceptually ambitious artists of the European tradition. Andrea Mantegna: Making Art (History) features a collection of readings that reveal Mantegna as challenging the parameters of art history in the demands it makes upon historical interpretation, and which explore the artist’s potentially transformative impact on the study of the early Renaissance. Essays on the artist’s devotional paintings, two of his monumental mural projects (the Camera Picta and Ovetari Chapel), signing practices, self-portraiture, and the meta-artistic character of his “stony” style provide a complement as well as an alternative to the narrowly iconographic tradition, concerned primarily with textual sources. The essays serve to enrich the narrow and restrictive conceptions of the relationship of a text with new models positioned at the confluence of ancient, Renaissance, and modern poetics. With its array of approaches and methodologies, Andrea Mantegna: Making Art (History) offers striking new insights into the life and works of one of the true defining geniuses of the early Renaissance.

Stephen J Campbell, who is Henry and Elizabeth Wisenfeld Professor at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, is a specialist in Italian art of the 15th and 16th centuries, focusing on the artistic culture of North Italian court centres, on the Ferrarese painter Cosimo Tura, and the Paduan Andrea Mantegna.  Jérémie Koering is professor of early modern art history at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland.

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12 September

Nazis free captive Mussolini

Extraordinary daring of Gran Sasso Raid

One of the most dramatic events of World War Two in Italy took place on this day in 1943 when Benito Mussolini, the deposed and imprisoned Fascist dictator, was freed by the Germans.  The former leader was being held in a remote mountain ski resort when 12 gliders, each carrying paratroopers and SS officers, landed on the mountainside and took control of the hotel where Mussolini was captive.  They forced his guards to surrender before summoning a small aircraft to fly Mussolini to Rome, from where another plane flew him to Austria.  Even Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime prime minister, professed his admiration for the daring nature of the daylight rescue.  Known as the Gran Sasso Raid or Operation Oak, the rescue was ordered by Adolf Hitler himself after learning that Mussolini's government had voted through a resolution that he be replaced as leader. Read more… 

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Lorenzo II de’ Medici – Duke of Urbino

Short rule of the grandson of Lorenzo Il Magnifico

Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, was born on this day in 1492 in Florence.  The grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Lorenzo II ruled Florence from 1513 to 1519.  Niccolò Machiavelli addressed his work, The Prince, to Lorenzo II, advising him to accomplish the unification of Italy under Florentine rule by arming the nation and expelling its foreign invaders.  When Lorenzo was two years old, his father, who became known as Piero the Unfortunate, was driven out of Florence by Republicans with the help of the French.  The Papal-led Holy League, aided by the Spanish, defeated the rebels in 1512 and the Medici family was restored to Florence.  Lorenzo II’s uncle, Giuliano, ruled Florence for a year. Another uncle, Pope Leo X, made Lorenzo the Duke of Urbino after expelling the legitimate ruler of the duchy, Francesco Maria della Rovere.  Read more…

Eugenio Montale - poet and translator

Influential writer one of six Italians to win Nobel Prize in Literature

Eugenio Montale, who became one of the most influential Italian writers of the 20th century and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975, died on this day in 1981 in Milan at the age of 84.  Montale's most famous work is often considered to be his first, a collection of poems he published in 1925 under the title Ossi di seppia - Cuttlefish Bones. These poems established his use of stark imagery, his introspective tone and his fascination with themes such as desolation, alienation and mortality, and the search for elusive meaning in a fragmented world.  Later collections such as Le occasioni (1939) - The Occasions - and La bufera e altro (1956) - The Storm and Other Things - reinforced his reputation as one of Italian literature’s 20th century greats.  Montale was born in 1896 in a building overlooking the botanical gardens of the University of Genoa. Read more… 

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Daniela Rocca – actress

Tragic star shunned after breakdown

The actress Daniela Rocca, who starred in the hit big-screen comedy Divorce, Italian Style, was born on this day in 1937 in Sicily.  The movie, in which she starred opposite Marcello Mastroianni, won an Academy Award for its writers and acclaim for former beauty queen Rocca, who revealed a notable acting talent.  Yet this zenith in her short career would in some ways also prove to be its nadir after she fell in love with the director, Pietro Germi.  The relationship she hoped for did not materialise and she subsequently suffered a mental breakdown, which had damaging consequences for her career and her life.  Born in Acireale, a coastal city in eastern Sicily in the shadow of the Mount Etna volcano, Rocca came from poor, working class roots but her looks became a passport to a new life. She entered and won the Miss Catania beauty contest before she was 16. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943, by John Gooch

While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. Then, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains in southern France and Africa. This decision proved a dreadful miscalculation, dooming Italy to its own prolonged and unwinnable war, immense casualties and an Allied invasion in 1943 which ushered in a terrible new era for the country.  John Gooch's new book is the definitive account of Italy's war experience. Beginning with the invasion of Abyssinia and ending with Mussolini's arrest, Gooch brilliantly portrays the nightmare of a country with too small an industrial sector, too incompetent a leadership and too many fronts on which to fight.  Everywhere - whether in the USSR, the Western Desert or the Balkans - Italian troops found themselves against either better-equipped or more motivated enemies. The result was a war entirely at odds with the dreams of pre-war Italian planners. Mussolini's War shows the centrality of Italy to the war, outlining the brief rise and disastrous fall of the Italian military campaign.

John Gooch is one of the world's leading writers on Italy and the two world wars. His books include Mussolini and His Generals and The Italian Army and the First World War. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds. 

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11 September

NEW - Bernardo Accolti – poet and politician

Writer rose to become a duke but died in poverty

One of the most popular and well-known Italian love poets of the late Renaissance, Bernardo di Benedetto degli Accolti, was born on this day in 1458 in Arezzo In Tuscany.  Referred to as ‘Unico Aretino’ because of his noble origins and his ability to express himself in verse, Accolti lived at many of the Italian courts and had platonic relationships with some of the most important noblewomen of his time, including Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga.  Although born into a noble family, Accolti always had ambitions to acquire more social status for himself, and he eventually managed to accumulate enough money to purchase a Duchy to rule over. While he was growing up, Accolti had lived with his family in Florence, where he received a humanist education. After moving to Rome when he was a young man, he started writing poetry. Read more… 

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Manrico Ducceschi - partisan

Brave freedom fighter whose death is unsolved mystery

Manrico ‘Pippo’ Ducceschi, who led one of the most successful brigades of Italian partisans fighting against the Fascists and the Nazis in the Second World War, was born on this day in 1920 in Capua, a town in Campania about 25km (16 miles) north of Naples.  Ducceschi’s battalion, known as the XI Zona Patrioti, are credited with killing 140 enemy soldiers and capturing more than 8,000. They operated essentially in the western Tuscan Apennines, between the Garfagnana area north of Lucca, the Valdinievole southwest of Pistoia, and the Pistoiese mountains.  He operated under the name of Pippo in honour of his hero, the patriot and revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini.  Ducceschi's success in partisan operations led to him being placed at the top of the Germans' ‘most wanted’ list. Even his relatives were forced to go into hiding.  Read more…

Scipione Borghese - adventurer

Nobleman from Ferrara won Peking to Paris car race

The Italian adventurer Prince Scipione Borghese, who won a car race that has since been described as the most incredible of all time, was born on this day in 1871 in Migliarino in Emilia-Romagna.  Borghese was a nobleman, the eldest son of Paolo, ninth Prince of Sulmona.  He was described as an industrialist and politician but he was also a mountaineer and a keen participant in the revolution in transport that began when the first petrol-powered motor vehicles appeared in the late 19th century.  In 1907 the French newspaper, Le Matin, challenged readers to prove their theory that the car would open up the world's horizons, enabling man to travel anywhere on the planet.  When it asked for volunteers to take part in a drive from Peking (Beijing) to Paris - a 5,000-mile journey - Borghese's taste for the daring was immediately excited.   Read more…

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Ulisse Aldrovandi – naturalist

Professor became fascinated with plants while under house arrest

Ulisse Aldrovandi, who is considered to be the father of natural history studies, was born on this day in 1522 in Bologna.  He became renowned for his systematic and accurate observations of animals, plants and minerals and he established the first botanical garden in Bologna, now known as the Orto Botanico dell’Università di Bologna.  Aldrovandi’s gardens were in the grounds of Palazzo Pubblico in Bologna but in 1803 they were moved to their present location in Via Irnerio, where they are run by the University of Bologna but are open to the public every day except Sunday.  The professor was also the first person to document extensively neurofibromatosis disease, which is a type of skin tumour.  Aldrovandi, who is sometimes referred to as Aldrovandus or Aldroandi, was born into a noble family. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy: Memory, Performance, and Oral Poetry, by Blake Wilson

A primary mode for the creation and dissemination of poetry in Renaissance Italy was the oral practice of singing and improvising verse to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. Singing to the Lyre is the first comprehensive study of this ubiquitous practice, which was cultivated by performers ranging from popes, princes, and many artists, to professionals of both mercantile and humanist background. Common to all was a strong degree of mixed orality based on a synergy between writing and the oral operations of memory, improvisation, and performance. As a cultural practice deeply rooted in language and supported by ancient precedent, cantare ad lyram (singing to the lyre) is also a reflection of Renaissance cultural priorities, including the status of vernacular poetry, the study and practice of rhetoric, the oral foundations of humanist education, and the performative culture of the courts reflected in theatrical presentations and Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier.

Blake Wilson was professor of music and director of the Dickinson Collegium in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until his retirement in 2017.

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Bernardo Accolti – poet and politician

Writer rose to become a duke but died in poverty

Bernardo Accolti became one of the most
popular love poets of the Renaissance

One of the most popular and well-known Italian love poets of the late Renaissance, Bernardo di Benedetto degli Accolti, was born on this day in 1458 in Arezzo In Tuscany.

Referred to as ‘Unico Aretino’ because of his noble origins and his ability to express himself in verse, Accolti lived at many of the Italian courts and had platonic relationships with some of the most important noblewomen of his time, including Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d’Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga.

Although born into a noble family, Accolti always had ambitions to acquire more social status for himself, and he eventually managed to accumulate enough money to purchase a Duchy to rule over.

While he was growing up, Accolti had lived with his family in Florence, where he received a humanist education. After moving to Rome when he was a young man, he started writing poetry.

One of his most well-known works, which has survived to this day, is his comedy in verse, Virginia, which was based on a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron and was composed for a wedding in Siena.

But the poet was then exiled from Florence for reasons that are not known and so he returned to Rome, where he was given work as a writer of papal bulls by Pope Alexander VI.

After receiving a pardon by Florence, he returned to the city, but he was exiled again in 1497. Always loyal to the Medici, he was accused of financing the attempt made by Piero Il Fatuo to conquer the city.

Accolti had lent him 200 florins to carry out a plot against Girolamo Savanorala, who was then head of the Florentine Republic. The main conspirators were caught and beheaded and Accolti was exiled permanently.

The painter Raphael painted Accolti as
one of the figures in his Parnassus fresco

But after he returned to Rome, he found his popularity as a poet had grown and he was sought after by many of the Italian courts.

Accolti travelled to Milan, Mantua, Urbino, and Naples, where he would sing his own verses and accompany them on the lute, or lira da braccio, a Renaissance stringed instrument.

He had close relationships with many of the noble ladies he encountered, but it is thought his true love was revealed in his verses to Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino. He also dedicated two sonnets to Lucrezia Borgia, but there is no evidence that he was ever her lover.

After Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope Leo X in 1513, Accolti was given high office because of his previous loyalty to the Medici family.

The first printed editions of his works were published at this time, Virginia in 1512, and a few years later, a collection of his verses.

By then he had amassed enough wealth to buy the Duchy of Nepi from the Pope, an ancient city now in the province of Viterbo in Lazio. He moved into the fortress that had been built there by the Borgias and he built a new residential wing on to it with a motto over the entrance.

But he proved to be a poor administrator and sometimes took violent reprisals against people who opposed him in the Duchy. In 1523, there was a revolt against him by the locals but he managed to suppress it with the help of the Pope’s Swiss Guards.

After being expelled from Nepi three times, Accolti was unable to gather the funds to reconquer it for a fourth time.

Pope Paul III, who had been his protector until then, revoked his title of Duke, as he was intending to give the Duchy to his own illegitimate son. Nepi was later incorporated into the Duchy of Castro.

Accolti returned to Rome, poor and desperate He died there in February 1535, leaving two illegitimate children, Alfonso Maria and Virginia.

A definitive collection of his work was published in Venice by Nicolo d’Aristotele in 1530 and it was reprinted in the year of Accolti’s death.

In 1996, a full collection of his verses was published, which included 58 previously unpublished poems that had been kept in the Vatican archives.

Accolti appears as a character in some passages of Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, and he was a close friend of Pietro Aretino, who was also a poet from Arezzo.

The beautiful Piazza Grande in Arezzo, the sloping
square, paved in red brick, at the heart of the city

Travel tip:

Arezzo is one of the wealthiest cities in Tuscany. Despite its medieval centre suffering massive damage during the Second World War, targeted for its strategic importance on the Italian rail network, many monuments, churches and museums survived or were reconstructed. Its main sights include the Basilica di San Francesco, with its beautiful History of the True Cross fresco cycle by Piero della Francesca, the central Piazza Grande, with its sloping pavement in red brick, the Medici Fortress, the duomo and a Roman amphitheatre. The original duomo was built on the nearby Pionta Hill, over the burial place of Donatus of Arezzo, who was martyred in 363. In 1203 Pope Innocent III had the cathedral moved within the city's walls, to the current site in another elevated position a short walk from Piazza Grande.  The construction of the current structure started in 1278 and continued in phases until 1511, although the façade visible today, designed by Dante Viviani, was not completed until 1914, replacing one left unfinished in the 15th century.  The interior contains several notable artworks, including a relief by Donatello, entitled Baptism of Christ, and a cenotaph to Guido Tarlati, lord of Arezzo until 1327, said to be designed by Giotto, near to which is Piero della Francesca's Mary Magdalene.  

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The Rocca - or Castello Borgia - casts an imposing
shadow over the town of Nepi in northern Lazio

Travel tip:

Nepi, the town that Accolti acquired when he bought the Duchy of Nepi, can be found 50km (31 miles) north of Rome, about 20km (12.4 miles) from Lago Bracciano. It is in the area known as ancient Etruria, having been a pre-Roman settlement before the Romans arrived and established a stronghold in 383 BC and eventually conquered the entire region. Throughout the Renaissance era, it was the feudal domain of the noble families of Lazio and passed successively from the Orsini to the Colonna and then the Borgia. The Rocca - the 15th-century Borgia Castle that was once the property of Lucrezia Borgia - dominates the skyline making it an imposing presence.  Accolti's coat of arms was discovered in a residential extension of the castle, dating it between September 1521 and the beginning of 1535. A graceful monumental aqueduct looks Roman but was built in more recent history to carry spring water. Acqua di Nepi mineral water is bottled and distributed nationwide. The ancient Porta Roman was the main gate, and is still the primary entry to the historic centre. Other attractions include the Palazzo Comunale, a Renaissance style villa built by Sangallo the Younger for Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, which has in front of it a fountain presumed to have been the world of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

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Also on this day:

1522: The birth of naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi

1871: The birth of adventurer Scipione Borghese

1920: The birth of partisan Manrico Ducceschi 

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