Francesco Foscari – Doge of Venice

Ignominious ending to a long and glorious reign

Lazzaro Bastiani's profile portrait of the
65th Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari

After 34 years as Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari was abruptly forced to leave office on this day in 1457.

Stripped of his honours, he insisted on descending the same staircase from the Doge’s Palace that he had climbed up in triumph more than a third of a century before, rather than leave through a rear entrance. Eight days later the former Doge was dead.

The story behind the downfall of Foscari and his son, Jacopo, fascinated the poet Lord Byron so much during his visit to Venice in 1816 that he later wrote a five-act play about it.

This play, The Two Foscari: An Historical Tragedy, formed the basis of Verdi’s opera, I Due Foscari, and ensured that the sad story of the father and son was never forgotten.

Francesco Foscari, who was born in 1373, was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice. He had previously served the Republic in many roles, including as a member of the Council of Forty and the Council of Ten, Venice’s ruling bodies, and as Procurator of St Mark’s. He was elected Doge in 1423, after defeating the other candidate, Pietro Loredan.

As Doge he led Venice in a long series of wars against Milan, which was then governed by the Visconti, who were attempting to dominate northern Italy.

An 1872 representation of the two Foscaris - Francesco and
Jacopo - by the Spanish painter Ricardo Maria Navarette Fos

The war was extremely costly for Venice, whose real source of wealth and power was at sea. Under Foscari’s leadership, Venice was eventually overcome by the forces of Milan under the leadership of Francesco Sforza, but meanwhile some of Venice’s eastern territories had been lost to the Turks.

In 1445, Foscari’s only surviving son, Jacopo, was tried by the Council of Ten on charges of bribery and corruption and exiled from the city. After two further trials, in 1450 and 1456, Jacopo was imprisoned on Crete, where he died.

After receiving the news of Jacopo’s death, Foscari withdrew from his Government duties. His enemies conspired to depose him and the Doge was forced to abdicate by the Council of Ten on October 23, 1457.

Foscari’s death, just over a week later at the age of 84, provoked such a public outcry that the former Doge was given a state funeral in Venice.

As well as being the subject of Byron’s play, Foscari’s life features as an episode in Italy, a long poem written by Samuel Rogers.

Byron’s play was the basis for the libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera I Due Foscari, which premiered on November 3, 1844 in Rome. Mary Mitford also wrote a play about Foscari’s life, which opened in 1826 at Covent Garden, with the celebrated actor, Charles Kemble, playing the lead role.

The Doge's Palace has been the seat of the Venetian
government since the early days of the republic

Travel tip:

The Doge’s Palace, where Francesco Foscari lived for 34 years, was the seat of the Government of Venice and the home of the Doge from the early days of the republic. For centuries this was the only building in Venice entitled to the name palazzo. The others were merely called Cà, short for Casa. The current palazzo was built in the 12th century in Venetian Gothic style, one side looking out over the lagoon, the other side looking out over the piazzetta that links St Mark’s Square with the waterfront. It opened as a museum in 1923 and is now run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

The church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

Travel tip:

Francesco Foscari’s tomb is in the chancel of the magnificent church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. This huge, plain Gothic church in Campo dei Frari in San Polo is known simply to Venetians as the Frari. The church also houses the tombs of Monteverdi, Rossini, Titian and Doge Nicolo Tron. It has works of art by Titian, Bellini, Sansovino and Donatello. The church is open daily from 9.00 to 5.30 pm and on Sundays from 1.00 to 5.30 pm.

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Valeria Golino - actress

Neapolitan starred with Hoffman and Cruise in Rain Man

Valeria Golino has won multiple awards
for films made for the Italian market

The actress Valeria Golino, who found international fame when she played opposite Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in the hugely successful movie Rain Man, was born on this day in 1965 in Naples.

Golino was cast as the girlfriend of Tom Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbitt, in Barry Levinson’s comedy, in which Babbitt’s estranged father dies and leaves most of his multi-million dollar estate to another son, an autistic savant named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) whose existence Charlie knew nothing about.

The 1988 movie won four Oscars and grossed more than $350 dollars. Although Golino was not nominated for her performance in Rain Man, she has won a string of other awards over a career so far spanning almost 35 years.

She is one of only three stars to win Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival on two occasions, for the 1986 drama Storia d’amore (“A Tale of Love”), directed by Francesco Maselli, and for Giuseppe M Gaudino’s 2015 drama Per amor vostro (“For Your Love”).

Golino was close to being selected to star opposite Richard Gere in another massive US hit, Pretty Woman, making it to the final audition stage for the 1990 romantic comedy but eventually losing out to Julia Roberts.

In the same year, Roberts also pipped her to the lead female role in the science-fiction horror film Flatliners.

Golina has been acting for the big screen
since making her debut in 1983

Golino did have other success in America, again in the comedy field, with Big Top Pee-Wee, Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux.

Back home in Italy, she was cast in meatier, dramatic roles, bringing her great respect. The winner of several Nastro d’Argento awards from Italian film journalists, she landed her first David di Donatello for Best Actress for La guerra di Mario (“Mario’s War”), Antonio Capuano’s film about the relationship between a mother, played by Golino, and her rebellious adopted son, a boy taken away from an abusive real mother.

Mario’s War also won her an Italian Golden Globe.  Her second David di Donatello was for Best Supporting Actress in Paolo Virzi’s 2013 film Il capitale umano (“Human Capital”).

Golino has revealed a talent for directing, too. Her first short film, Armandino e il Madre, for which she also wrote the script, received a favourable reaction and her first feature film as director, Miele (“Honey”), was screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and won a commendation.

Miele, the story of a woman who works with an Italian hospital doctor in the illegal facilitating of assisted suicides, earned her a Nastro d’Argento as Best New Director as well as an Italian Golden Globe for Best First Feature.

Valeria Golino receives her award at the
2015 Venice Film Festival

Born in Naples into a middle-class background – her father was an academic specialising in German studies, her mother a Greek-born artist – her formative years were spent alternating between Athens and Sorrento after her parents split up.

Although her mother instilled in her a love of the cinema, she had no great ambition to act as she grew up.  In fact, after undergoing surgery to correct a curvature of the spine, she set her sights on the medical profession, dreaming of becoming a cardiologist.

For one reason or another, the opportunity to pursue a career in medicine never came about.  She took some modelling assignments, which she found unfulfilling.  Life changed for her at 17 years old when her uncle, the L’Espresso journalist Enzo Golino, recommended her to Lina Wertmüller, a film director whom he knew socially, for a part in her upcoming movie, Scherzo del destino (“A Joke of Destiny”), alongside the renowned Commedia all’italiana actor, Ugo Tognazzi.

Despite being hospitalised for five months after a car crash disturbed the metal rod implanted in her back to correct the weakness in her spine, her acting career took off at the age of 20 after she played a life-loving cleaning lady in Maselli’s Storia d’amore.

Although she tries to keep her private life out of the public eye, Golino has been a regular in Italian gossip magazines following a series of relationships with other well-known figures in the movie business, the most recent with Riccardo Scamarcio, an actor and director 14 years her junior whom she was with for 10 years.  Nowadays, she largely lives in Rome.

Beautiful views abound in Sorrento

Travel tip:

From the age of five years, Golino’s Italian home was in Sorrento, the popular resort town that occupies a cliff-top position overlooking the Bay of Naples, about 48km (30 miles) along the coast from the city of Naples, heading south.  The journey takes about an hour using the Circumvesuviana railway or hydrofoil across the bay, but considerably longer by road because of the almost constant traffic.  Sorrento, which has Greek origins but was developed by the Romans, is a lively place to stay but with much charm and stunning views from numerous vantage points.

Pictures of Piazza del Plebiscito accompanied the
opening credits for Marriage, Italian Style

Travel tips:

Naples has a connection with the film industry going back to the early years of the 20^th century, when movie makers had already seen its potential for offering a spectacular or atmospheric backdrop.  In later years, Roberto Rossellini, Eduardo de Filippo, Vittorio de Sica and Francesco Rosi set many of their great films in the city.  The actress Sophia Loren, whose Neapolitan movies included Marriage, Italian Style and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, in both of which she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni, was born in Rome but grew up in Naples and nearby Pozzuoli and regards herself as a Neapolitan.

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Domenichino - Baroque master

Artist whose talents rivalled Raphael

Domenichino's picture St John the Evangelist
sold for £9.2 million in 2009

The painter Domenico Zampieri, in his era spoken of in the same breath as Raphael, was born on this day in 1581 in Bologna.

Better known as Domenichino (“Little Domenico”), the nickname he picked up early in his career on account of his small stature, he painted in classical and later Baroque styles in Rome, Bologna and Naples.

Noted for the subtle, almost serene lighting and understated colours of his compositions, he painted portraits, landscapes, religious and mythological scenes and had a prolific output. Among his most notable works were significant frescoes commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese for the Badia (monastery) at Grottaferrata, outside Rome, and for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini at the Villa Belvedere (also known as the Villa Aldobrandini) in nearby Frascati, as well as Scenes from the Life of Saint Cecilia at the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, not far from Piazza Navona, in Rome itself.

Domenichino’s paintings can be seen in art galleries in many countries, with the largest single collection held by the Louvre in Paris.

One of his most celebrated paintings, the depiction of St John the Evangelist that he worked on between 1621 and 1629 and which has been described as a “masterpiece epitomising the grandeur and nobility of Roman Baroque", sold for £9.2 million at auction in London in December 2009 only to be the subject of an intervention by the British government to keep it from leaving the United Kingdom.

Domenichino's talent put him not far behind
Raphael among the Italian greats

The painting had been on a wall at the Glyndebourne Opera House in Sussex for more than 100 years, having been bought by the owners of the house for 70 guineas in 1899. Put up for sale at Christie’s it was bound for the United States before the culture minister, Margaret Hodge, imposed an export bar. It was sold eventually to a British buyer on condition that it was on public display for at least three months each year.

The son of a shoemaker, Domenichino studied in Bologna, first in a local studio and then joining Lodovico Carracci’s Accademia degli Incamminati.

He left Bologna for Rome in 1602 to work under Annibale Carracci and became one of the most talented apprentices to emerge from Carracci's supervision.

Following Annibale Carracci's death in 1609, his Bolognese pupils, the best of whom were Domenichino, Francesco Albani, Guido Reni and Giovanni Lanfranco, became the leading painters in Rome, upstaging even the followers of Caravaggio, who had left Rome in 1606.

Domenichino's masterpiece, his frescoes of Scenes of the Life of Saint Cecilia in the Polet Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, was commissioned in 1612 and completed in 1615.

At the same time he was painting his most celebrated altarpiece, The Last Communion of Saint Jerome, for the church of San Girolamo della Carità, noted for the accuracy of facial expressions, which would subsequently be compared with Raphael's great Transfiguration and was at one time hailed as "the best picture in the world".

Domenichino's River Landscape with Boatmen and Fishermen
demonstrates qualities that influenced many landscape painters 

He would later move away from the rigid classicism of his early work towards a broader, less conventional Baroque style, evident in the last works he produced in Rome and in his fresco cycle, Scenes from the Life of San Gennaro (1631–41), which he painted for the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, in the Duomo in Naples.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries Domenichino’s paintings were regarded as second only to those of Raphael.

His work fell from favour in the mid-19th century but his importance to the evolution of Baroque classicism was recognized again in the 20th century.

Domenichino also occupies an important place in the history of landscape painting, his work known to have had a deep influence on the classical landscapists Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.  In 1996 the first major exhibition of his work was held at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

He died in Naples in 1641 while still working at the Duomo. There were suspicions he had been poisoned by the Spanish painter Jusepe di Ribera, the leading member of a group of three artists known as the Naples Cabal, furious to have been passed over for the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro commission in favour of an outsider.

Part of the Domenichino fresco
cycle at San Luigi dei Francesi

Travel tip:

The Baroque church of San Luigi dei Francesi can be found in Via della Dogana Vecchia, a couple of blocks to the east of Piazza Navona in the heart of Rome’s historic centre. Built in the 16th century to serve the French community in Rome, it is notable not only for Domenichini’s fresco Scenes from the Life of Saint Cecilia but for the cycle of paintings by Caravaggio about the life of St. Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel.

The Cattedrale di San Gennaro, as the Naples Duomo is
more frequently known

Travel tip:

The Duomo of Naples, known locally more often as the Cattedrale di San Gennaro, was completed in the 14^th century after being commissioned by King Charles I of Anjou, the youngest son of Louis VIII of France. Nowadays the seat of the Archbishop of Naples, it is most famous for housing a vial supposedly containing the dried blood of San Gennaro, the city’s patron saint.  The blood is put on public display twice a year, in May and September, when it usually is seen miraculously to liquefy. If the blood fails to liquefy on these days, legend has it that a disaster will befall Naples. Many have doubted the authenticity of the blood and the miracle.  A recent hypothesis is that it actually contains iron oxide (rust) in the form of a thixotropic gel that has the colour of old blood and would become less viscous if shaken or otherwise agitated, and therefore appear to liquefy.

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Mara Venier - television presenter

Former actress became famous as face of Sunday afternoon

Mara Venier found fame as host of the
Sunday afternoon TV show Domenica In

Mara Venier, a familiar face on Italian television for more than 35 years, was born on this day in 1950 in Venice.

The former actress, who made her big-screen debut in 1973, is best known for presenting the long-running Sunday afternoon variety show Domenica In, which has been a fixture on the public TV channel Rai Uno since 1976.

Venier, born Mara Povoleri, hosted the show for nine seasons in four stints between 1993 and 2014. Only Pippo Baudo, something of a legendary figure in Italian television, has presented more editions.

Fronting Domenica In, which was on air for an incredible six hours, was not only a test of stamina for the presenter but came with a huge sense of responsibility. In fact, holding the attention of the viewers was a patriotic duty, the show’s format having been conceived by the Italian government, faced with the global oil crisis in the 1970s, as something to tempt citizens to stay at home rather than use precious fuel for their cars.

Venier had been a movie actress, known largely to audiences in Italy, for two decades before she was invited to host Domenica In.  She enjoyed some success, having made her debut with a nude scene in Sergio Capogna’s Diario di un Italiano in 1973, and gained good reviews for Abbasso tutti, viva noi (1974), directed by Gino Mangini, and for Nanni Loy’s comedy Testa o croce (1982).

It was Loy, in fact, who introduced her to television audiences as the host of an Italian version of Candid Camera on the Mediaset commercial channel Italia 1 in 1987.

Venier hosted Domenica In for nine seasons
and has fronted many other hit shows 

She became the lead presenter for Domenica In after spending one season working alongside Luca Giurato and proving a hit with the viewers.  Venier quickly became a host in-demand, held in such high regard that she was chosen as one of the five hosts – one for each day of the week – for the hit nightly game show Luna Park, alongside Baudo, Fabrizio Frizzi, Milly Carlucci and Rosanna Lambertucci, all of whom were high-profile names.

The two shows, and a good deal of other TV work, kept Venier very busy, although her career stalled in 1998 when she, Baudo and Lambertucci became embroiled in a scandal over payments made to promote particular products while on air.

After two years away from Rai, during which she made a number of programmes for Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels, she returned to the public broadcaster in 2000.

She had two more spells fronting Domenica In between 2001 and 2006, although the programme was less successful than it had been in its early years and Venier left the role in 2006 after failing to control an argument between two guests that descended into such foul-mouthed language that the programme was temporarily dropped from the schedule.

Venier’s presence on the small screen was almost constant, however, as the host of many concerts, special broadcasts, talk shows and prime-time regulars such as La vita in diretta – “Life live” and Telethon. 

Mara Venier in her movie acting days

She hosted Domenica In for the last time in the 2013-14 series, at the end of which she announced she was leaving Rai and rejoining Mediaset on a contract that included the hit Canale 5 shows L’Isola dei famosi – similar to the UK hit I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – and Striscia la notizie, as well as a co-host role in the New Year’s Eve show Capodanno con Gigi D’Alessio.

Nowadays, she is often affectionately referred to as Zia Mara or “la zia d’Italia” – Italy’s aunt.

Born in Venice, the daughter of a railway worker, Venier moved to Mestre with her family and became a mother at the age of just 17 when her daughter, Elisabetta was born.  She married Francesco Ferracini, Elisabetta’s father, and moved to Rome, where he wanted to pursue an acting career.

The marriage did not last, however.  Venier had a son, Paolo, from a relationship with another actor, Pier Paolo Capponi, before making Jerry Calà, also an actor, her second husband in 1984.

They divorced in 1987 but since 2006 Venier has been happily married to the veteran film maker and publisher Nicola Carrara.

The Piazza Erminio Ferretto in Mestre, looking
towards the Torre Civica

Travel tip:

Mestre’s reputation as a grimly modern industrial centre is not undeserved and many travellers know little of it beyond the railway station, which offers trains not only across the lagoon into nearby Venice but to all places on the mainland.  As such, tourists arriving at Marco Polo airport – or Treviso, for that matter – pass through in large numbers. Some holidaymakers do use it, however, as a cheap alternative to staying in Venice and many workers in Venice commute daily from Mestre.  Its most appealing area for visitors is around the main square, the Piazza Erminio Ferretto, a large, rectangular open space lined with porticoes and pleasant cafes. Nearby is the 18^th-century church of San Lorenzo and the restored Torre Civica.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in the
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal

Travel tip:

Mara Povoleri is believed to have taken Venier as a stage name after the noble Venetian family of the 14^th to 16^th centuries, three of whom were Doges – Antonio (1382-1400), Francesco (1554-56) and Sebastiano (1577-78) – and several of whom were appointed podestà – city ruler – of Padua. The Fondamenta Sebastiano Venier forms part of the waterfront along the Canareggio Canal in Venice, while the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the city’s famous modern art gallery, is housed in the family’s former palace, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

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Carlo Urbani – microbiologist

Infectious disease expert who identified SARS

 Carlo Urbani was a World Health Organisation
specialist in infectious diseases

The doctor and microbiologist Carlo Urbani, whose decisive action after discovering the deadly SARS virus saved millions of lives, was born on this day in 1956 in Castelplanio, near Ancona.

Dr Urbani himself died after contracting the condition, which had been given the name severe acute respiratory syndrome.

He identified it in an American businessman who had been taken ill in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, with suspected influenza.

Recognising quickly that what he was dealing with was not a straightforward case of ‘flu, Urbani, who was working in Vietnam as an infectious diseases specialist for the World Health Organisation, immediately alerted WHO headquarters in Geneva.

He convinced them that what he had discovered posed a grave threat to life and thus sparked the most effective response to a major epidemic in the history of medicine.

At a local level, be persuaded the Vietnamese health authorities to introduce a raft of preventative measures, including large-scale screening and prompt, secure isolation of suspected victims, that slowed the spread of the disease.

At its peak, people in the areas affected by the SARS virus
were encouraged to wear surgical masks in public places

It was as a result of Urbani’s actions that the epidemic was largely contained, almost all deaths from the disease occurring in territories surrounding the South China Sea, namely southeast China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.

Some 775 people died in the epidemic, two thirds of them prior to Urbani’s intervention.

The only significant outbreak beyond this area was in Canada, where 44 people died following the import of the disease into the country by a tourist who had stayed at the same hotel in Hong Kong as Urbani’s patient, who probably contracted the disease from a Chinese doctor who was a guest at a wedding there. 

This doctor had been treating patients suffering from the disease in Guangdong Province, just across the border from Hong Kong, where the virus is thought to have originated.

Urbani, whose parents were a teacher at the Ancona Commercial Navy Institute and a primary school headmistress, gained a degree in medicine from the University of Ancona and a postgraduate degree in tropical parasitology from the University of Messina in Sicily.  He began voluntary work in Africa while he was still at university.

Urbani contracted the virus after treating a
sick businessman in Vietnam

After a period of academic research, he went to work at a hospital in Macerata, about 55km (34 miles) from his home town of Castelplanio in the Marche region.  In 1993 he began to accept temporary assignments from the WHO in places such as the Maldives, Mauritania and Guinea.

In 1997, on a recommendation from the WHO, he joined Médicins San Frontières to work in Cambodia and Vietnam. He was elected president of the Italian section of MSF in 1999 and travelled to Oslo in the same year to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organisation.

A year later he was recruited by the WHO to be their infectious diseases specialist in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, based in Hanoi. He achieved success in reducing the health impact of parasitic flatworms.

Urbani was summoned to Hanoi’s French Hospital following the admission on February 23, 2003 of a 47-year old Chinese-American businessman called Johnny Chen, resident in Shanghai, who had begun to feel unwell with 'flu-like symptoms soon after arriving on a flight from Hong Kong.

He became suspicious that Mr Chen had something different from normal influenza when several hospital workers who had been in contact with him quickly developed similar symptoms, some rapidly becoming seriously ill.

Sadly, the story has a tragic postscript.  After treating a number of sick patients, Urbani left Hanoi on March 11, bound for a conference in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was to give a talk on the subject of childhood parasites.

During the flight he became feverish. He realised straightaway what had happened and when he arrived at the airport in Bangkok told a colleague sent to meet him that he should call an ambulance immediately and inform the operator that he had almost certainly contracted the SARS virus.  While they awaited the ambulance, Urbani insisted his to his colleague that he was to allow no one within eight feet of him.

Urbani was in intensive care for 18 days but died on March 29, having ultimately suffered a heart attack.  He was only 46 and left behind a wife and three children.

The Arena Sferisterio in Macerata

Travel tip:

The walled city of Macerata in Marche, where Carlo Urbani worked in the local hospital, is a charming historic city of cobbled streets perched on a hill between the Potenza and Chienti rivers.  At the heart of the city, in the pretty Piazza della Libertà, is the Loggia dei Mercanti with its two-tier arcades, dating from the Renaissance. Macerata’s university is among the oldest it Italy, established in 1290.  Each July and August the city hosts the Sferisterio Opera Festival, which is held in the 2,500 seat open-air Arena Sferisterio, a huge neoclassical arena built in the 1820s.

The Arch of Trajan still stands guard over Ancona's harbour

Travel tip:

The coastal city of Ancona, where Urbani attended university, is a bustling port with a population of almost 102,000. Although the area around the port has an industrial feel, there are some notable beaches nearby and a good deal of history in the older part of the city, bearing witness to its Greek and Roman past. The 18m-high Arch of Trajan, built in honour of the emperor who built the city’s harbour, is regarded as one of the finest Roman monuments in the Marche region. Urbani may have been inspired to follow his chosen direction in life by the presence in Ancona’s harbour of the Lazzaretto, the pentagonal building constructed on an artificial island in the 18th century as a quarantine station designed to protect Ancona from diseases carried by infected travellers.

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Luca Giordano – artist

Talented Neapolitan was renowned for being a fast worker

Luca Giordano was influenced by Caravaggio

Luca Giordano, the most celebrated and prolific Neapolitan painter of the late 17th century, was born on this day in 1634 in Naples.

His nicknames were Luca Fa Presto - "Luca work faster" - said to derive from the way his father, the copyist Antonio Giordano, used to admonish him, Fulmine (the Thunderbolt) because of his speed, and Proteus, because he was reputed to be able to imitate the style of almost any other artist.

Giordano’s output both in oils and in frescoes was enormous and he is said to have once painted a large altarpiece in just one day.

He was influenced at the start of his career by Jose de Ribera, who he was apprenticed to, and he also assimilated Caravaggio’s style of dramatic intensity.

But after Giordano had travelled to Rome, Florence and Venice, his style underwent a profound change. The influence of Pietro da Cortona’s frescoes in the Pitti Palace in Florence can be detected in Giordano’s huge ceiling fresco in the ballroom of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, which he completed in 1683, and he became noted for his showy use of colour.

He went to Spain in 1692 as court painter to Charles II and stayed there till 1702. The frescoes in El Escorial are often claimed to be his best works, but there are nearly 50 paintings by him in the Prado in Madrid, which are evidence of his huge output.

Detail from Giordano's ceiling fresco at
the Palazzo Medici-Riccardo in Florence

After his return to Naples he continued to paint prolifically. His last great work there was the ceiling of the Cappella del Tesoro in San Martino, begun on his return to the city in 1702 and completed in 1704.

Many of Giordano’s other works in Naples were destroyed during the Second World War.

His St Benedict cycle, painted in 1677 in the abbey of Monte Cassino in Lazio, was entirely destroyed.

But his painting of Christ expelling the Traders from the Temple, painted in the monastery church of Girolamini (or Gerolamini) next to the Duomo in Naples, miraculously survived. It is full of expressive lazzaroni, Neapolitan beggars, who Giordano would have seen every day in the surrounding streets while he was working at the church.

Giordano died in Naples in 1705 and was buried in a tomb in the Church of Santa Brigida, where he had previously painted the cupola. He was to have a profound influence on many Italian artists who came after him.

The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

Travel tip:

Construction of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence was begun in 1444 to provide a home for the Medici family and the headquarters for their banking business. It was later sold to the wealthy Riccardi family. Part of the palace now open to the public includes the room where Giordano painted his frescoes between 1682 and 1685.

Travel tip:

The 17th century church of Santa Brigida in Naples had to have a dome that was no more than nine metres high, otherwise it would have obstructed artillery fire from Castel Nuovo. The fresco of a vivid sky executed by Giordano on the cupola cleverly creates a feeling of immense space. The artist’s tomb can be found in the left transept of the church.

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Bartolommeo Bandinelli - Renaissance sculptor

Career scarred by petty jealousies

Bartolommeo Bandinelli - a self-portrait

The sculptor Bartolommeo Bandinelli, a contemporary and rival of Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini in Renaissance Italy, was born on this day in 1473 in Florence.

He left his mark on Florence in the shape of the monumental statue of Hercules and Cacus in the Piazza della Signoria and his statues of Adam and Eve, originally created for the Duomo but today housed in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

Also known as Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Brandini, he was skilled in small sculptures but became known and disliked for his antagonistic manner with other artists and his particular hatred of Michelangelo, of whom he was bitterly jealous.

Giorgio Vasari, the artist and sculptor who was the first to compile a written history of art and artists, and who was a student in Bandinelli’s workshop, recalled an occasion when Bandinelli was so enraged by the excitement that ensued when a Michelangelo drawing was uncovered in the Palazzo Vecchio that, as soon as an opportunity arose, he tore it up.

Where Michelangelo was revered for everything he did, Bandinelli’s critics said he lacked the skills required to tackle large sculptures.

Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus

This only drove him to want to prove them wrong, and to this end it is thought that he persuaded the ruling Medici family to give him the commission for the statue of Hercules and Cacus – originally intended for Michelangelo, who was busy working on the Medici Chapel.

Yet when the work was unveiled in 1534 it attracted ridicule, in particular from Cellini.   Where Michelangelo, whose David already stood in the Piazza, had a gift for imbuing his creations with a sense of realism and drama, Bandinelli’s figures - in the eyes of his critics at least – lacked character and authenticity.

Much more favourably received were his bronze copy of the ancient Greek statue Laocoon and his Sons, his tombs of the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII in Rome and his Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the Medici condottiero (professional soldier).

Bandinelli was the son of a prominent Florentine goldsmith. As a boy, he was apprenticed under Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a sculptor friend of Leonardo da Vinci.

Later in his career, he was a leader in the group of Florentine Mannerists who were inspired by the revived interest in Donatello.

Some of his works in terracotta were hailed as masterpieces and some of his drawings have been difficult to establish as not being by Michelangelo.

Bandinelli's Pietà in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata

Yet he continued to attract scorn whenever he took on a large project, his Pietà in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata being another example.  Bandinelli began work on it only after he heard about Michelangelo’s similar commission in Rome.

It was completed in 1559 and again brought unfavourable comments from other artists, some of whom said that it lacked refinement, his figures appearing somewhat awkward and oddly positioned compared with the grace and beauty of Michelangelo’s work.

The other complaint against Bandinelli, voiced by Vasari, was that he accepted commissions too hastily and failed to complete many of them, although there are enough examples of his work in museums and galleries to refute that claim.

However, Vasari’s detailed Lives of the Artists also gives praise where it was due and acknowledges Bandinelli was a sculptor of merit, and in recent years his talent has been better appreciated, culminating in the first exhibition devoted to his work alone, in the Bargello museum in Florence.

Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Travel tip:

Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, situated right in the heart of the city, close to the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery, is an open-air museum of Renaissance art, featuring a series of important sculptures, the most famous of which are Giambologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Women and his Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I, Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa (next to The Rape of the Sabine Women in the Loggia dei Lanzi), Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, the Medici Lions by Fancelli and Vacca, The Fountain of Neptune by Bartolemeo Ammannati, copes of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes and Il Marzocco (the Lion), and the copy of Michelangelo’s David, at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.

The Bargello in Via del Proconsolo

Travel tip:

More Renaissance sculptures can be appreciated in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello - the Bargello National Museum - situated just a short distance from Piazza della Signoria in Via del Proconsolo, in a fortified 13^th century building that was once a prison. The museum houses masterpieces by Michelangelo, Donatello, Cellini, Giambologna, Vincenzo Gemito, Jacopo Sansovino, Gianlorenzo Bernini and many works by the Della Robbia family.

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