19 October

Umberto Boccioni - painter

Artist who died tragically young was key figure in Futurism

The painter Umberto Boccioni, who became arguably the leading artist of Italian Futurism before the First World War, was born on this day in 1882 in Reggio Calabria.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past. The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention. Their work attempted to capture the dynamism of life in a modern city, creating images that convey a sense of the power and energy of industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change.  Boccioni became part of the movement after meeting Marinetti in Milan early in 1910, after which he joined Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo in signing Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters.  In the same year, Boccioni completed one of his finest works, entitled La città che sale, which is translated as The City Rises and which many consider to be the first truly Futurist painting.  Read more…

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Carlo Urbani – microbiologist

Infectious disease expert who identified SARS

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.  It was as a result of Urbani’s actions that the epidemic was largely contained.  Read more…

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Fiorenzo Magni - cycling champion

Rider from Tuscany won Giro d'Italia three times

Italy lost one of its finest professional riders and its last link with the so-called golden age of Italian cycle racing when Fiorenzo Magni died on this day in 2012.  Tuscan-born Magni was a multiple champion, winning the Giro d'Italia three times, as well as three Italian Road Race Championships.  He had seven stage wins in the Tour de France, in which he wore the yellow jersey as race leader for a total of nine days.  His other major victories were in the demanding Tour of Flanders, in which he became only the second non-Belgian winner in 1949 and went on to win three times in a row, a feat yet to be matched.  Magni might have been even more successful had his career not coincided with those of two greats of Italian cycling, the five-times Giro champion Fausto Coppi, who was twice winner of the Tour de France, and Gino Bartali, who won three Giros and one Tour de France.  His reputation for toughness, however, was unrivalled.  He relished racing in harsh, wintry weather, as often prevailed in the Tour de Flanders, and refused to give in to injuries if he happened to have a fall.  The classic example of this came in the 1956 Giro d'Italia, his final ride in Italy's foremost event, when an accident left him with a broken left collarbone only halfway through the race. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Futurism, by Sylvia Martin

With motion and machines as its most treasured tropes, Futurism was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini. With affiliate painters, sculptors, designers, architects, and writers, the group sought to subsume the dusty establishment into a new age of sleek, strong, purified modernity.  Futurism’s place in art history is as ambivalent as it is important. The movement pioneered revolutionary methods to convey movement, light, and speed, but sparks controversy in its glorification of war and fascist politics. Their frenzied, almost furious, canvases are as remarkable for their macho aggression as they are for their radical experimentation with brushstrokes, texture, and color in the quest to record an object moving through space.  With key examples from the Futurists’ prolific output and leading practitioners, Sylvia Martin’s Futurism introduces the movement that spat vitriol at all -isms of the past and, in so doing, created an -ism of their own.

Sylvia Martin received her PhD in art history at the University of Cologne, trained at Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, and worked as curator and academic collaborator at Kunstmuseum as well as at Kunst Palast Museum in Dusseldorf. Later she became a freelance curator in Munich.

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18 October

Ludovico Scarfiotti - racing driver

Last Italian to win ‘home’ Grand Prix

The racing driver Ludovico Scarfiotti, whose victory in the 1966 Italian Grand Prix at Monza is the last by an Italian, was born on this day in 1933 in Turin.  His success at Monza, where he came home first in a Ferrari one-two with the British driver Mike Parkes, was the first by a home driver for 14 years since Alberto Ascari won the last of his three Italian Grand Prix in 1952.  It was Scarfiotti’s sole victory - indeed, his only top-three finish - in 10 Formula One starts. His competitive career spanned 15 years, ending in tragic circumstances with a fatal crash in 1968, little more than a month after he had come home fourth in the Monaco Grand Prix in a Cooper-BRM.  Scarfiotti in some respects was born to race. His father, Luigi, a deputy in the Italian parliament who made his fortune from cement, had raced for Ferrari as an amateur.  His uncle was Gianni Agnelli, the powerful president of Fiat.  He first raced in 1953 and he won his class in the 1956 Mille Miglia. He joined Ferrari in 1960 and finished fourth on the Targa Florio. Although he subsequently drove for OSCA and Scuderia Serenissima, he returned to Ferrari in 1962.  Read more…

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Cristoforo Benigno Crespi - entrepreneur

Textile boss created industrial village of Crespi d’Adda

The entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, who became famous for creating a company-owned village around his textile factory in Lombardy, was born on this day in 1833 in Busto Arsizio, about 34km (21 miles) northwest of Milan.  A textile manufacturer, in 1869 Crespi bought an area of land close to where the Brembo and Adda rivers converge, about 40km (25 miles) northeast of Milan, with the intention of building a cotton mill on the banks of the Adda.  The factory he built was substantial, with room for 10,000 spindles, but as well the capacity to produce textiles on a large scale, Crespi recognised that it was essential to his plans to have a contented workforce. Consequently, following the lead of other manufacturers in the textile industry outside Italy, he set about providing on site everything to meet the daily needs of his employees.  In addition to the factory premises, he built homes for his workers, a school, a wash-house, a hospital, a church and a grocery store.  Houses were built in English-style parallel rows, with gardens and vegetable plots, and the streets were the first in Italy to have modern electric lighting.  Read more…

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Theft of Caravaggio masterpiece

Fate of Nativity taken from Palermo church remains a mystery

One of the most notorious art crimes in history was discovered on this day in 1969 when a housekeeper at the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo arrived for work to find that the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted by the Renaissance master Caravaggio in 1609, had been stolen. The painting sat above the altar in the Oratory, which is situated in Via Immacolata in the centre of the Sicilian capital, adjacent to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, but when the housekeeper, Maria Gelfo, opened up with her sister on the morning of 18 October, they were confronted with an empty frame.  Worth an estimated £20 million (€23.73 million; $27.52 million), the painting has never been found, leaving half a century’s worth of theories about its fate to remain unproven.  Most of the theories link the theft to the Sicilian Mafia.  It is assumed that the painting was taken during the night of the 17-18 October, although the weather was reportedly awful, with a lightning storm raging for much of the night and Palermo suffering a deluge of rain, hardly ideal conditions for carrying a valuable work of art from a church to a waiting vehicle.  Read more…

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Luca Giordano – artist

Talented Neapolitan was renowned for being a fast worker

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.  Read more…

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Luke the Evangelist

Scientists believe Saint is buried in Padua

The feast day of St Luke the Evangelist - la festa di San Luca - is celebrated in Padua and throughout Italy on this day every year.  Luke the Evangelist is believed to be one of the four authors of the Gospels in the New Testament. Both the Gospel according to St Luke and the book of Acts of the Apostles have been ascribed to him.  Luke is believed to have been a doctor who was also a disciple of St Paul. It has been claimed he was martyred by being hung from an olive tree, although other sources say he worked as a doctor until his death at the age of 84.  He is regarded as the patron saint of artists, physicians, surgeons, students and butchers and it is strongly believed that his body lies in the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Prato della Valle in Padua.  It is thought that Luke was a Greek physician who lived and worked in the city of Antioch in ancient Syria.  He is mentioned in some of St Paul’s Epistles and he is believed to have been with Paul in Rome near the end of his life.  After Luke’s death it is believed he was buried in Thebes but his remains were later transferred to Constantinople.  They are thought to have been bought by a Serb who later sold them on to the Venetian Republic.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, by Brock Yates

Ferrari means red. It means racing. Excellence, luxury, and performance.  Less well-known is the man behind the brand.  For nearly seventy years, Enzo Ferrari dominated a motor-sports empire that defined the world of high-performance cars.  Next to the Pope, Ferrari was the most revered man in Italy. But was he the benign padrone portrayed by an adoring world press at the time, or was he a ruthless despot, who drove his staff to the edge of madness, and his racing drivers even further?  Brock Yates's definitive biography, Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, penetrated Ferrari's elaborately constructed veneer and uncovered the truth behind Ferrari's bizarre relationships, his work with Mussolini's fascists, and his fanatical obsession with speed.

Brock Yates, who died in 2016, was an American print and TV journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was longtime executive editor of Car and Driver, an American automotive magazine, and a pundit and commentator for motor racing on, amongst others, Fox Sports. A year after his death, Yates was appointed to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.

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17 October

NEW - Cristofano Allori – artist 

Mannerist painter’s masterpiece was inspired by his mistress 

The artist Cristofano Allori, who is particularly remembered for his 1613 painting of Judith with the Head of Holofernes, which is now in the British Royal Collection, was born on this day in 1577 in Florence. Allori was a painter of the late Florentine Mannerist school who specialised in portraits and religious subjects. He is well regarded by experts because of the delicacy and technical perfection of his work. His skill was demonstrated by some copies he made of Correggio’s works, which for a time were thought to be duplicates that had been painted by Correggio himself. The artist was extremely fastidious about his work, which limited the number of paintings he executed, but there are still fine examples of his art to be seen in Florence. He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Alessandro Allori, who had many distinguished pupils, including the painter known as Cigoli, whose real name was Lodovico Cardi. Cristofano became dissatisfied with the anatomical drawing and use of colour that distinguished the work of his father and went into the studio of Gregorio Pagani, who was one of the leading artists of the late Florentine school. Read more…

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Bartolommeo Bandinelli - Renaissance sculptor

Career scarred by petty jealousies

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.  Read more…

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The founding of Atalanta football club

Bergamo institution started by students of local high school

The football club now known as Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio - generally referred to as Atalanta - was founded on this day in 1907 in the Lombardy city of Bergamo.  The club was the idea of a group of students from the Liceo Classico Paolo Sarpi, one of the city’s oldest and most prestigious high schools.  They gave it the rather long-winded name of the Società Bergamasca di Ginnastica e Sports Atletici - the Bergamasca Society of Gymnastics and Athletic Sports - to which they attached the name Atalanta after the Greek mythological heroine famed for her running prowess.  For the first seven years of its life, the new club had no home and played friendly matches on whatever open space was available, but in 1914 found a home ground in Via Maglio del Lotto, adjoining the railway line just outside Bergamo station.  The ground had a small grandstand housing 1,000 spectators. It is said that the drivers of trains approaching the station on match days would slow down in order to enjoy a few moments of the action.  Read more…

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The end of the Venetian Republic

Peace treaty saw Venice given away to Austria

A peace settlement signed in a small town in north-east Italy on this day in 1797 heralded a dark day for Venice as the Most Serene Republic officially lost its independence after 1,100 years.  The Treaty of Campo Formio, drawn up after the Austrians had sought an armistice when faced with Napoleon Bonaparte's advance on Vienna, included an exchange of territory that saw Napoleon hand Venice to Austria.  It marked the end of the First Coalition of countries allied against the French, although it was a short-lived peace.  A Second Coalition was formed the following year.  The Venetian Republic, still a playground for the rich but in decline for several centuries in terms of real power, had proclaimed itself neutral during the Napoleonic Wars, wary that it could not afford to sustain any kind of conflict.  But Napoleon wanted to acquire the city nonetheless, seeing it as a potential bargaining chip in his empire-building plans and had his eye on its vast art treasures.  In May 1797 he provoked the Venetians into attacking a French ship and used this as an excuse to declare war.  The reaction of the Venetian Grand Council and the last of its Doges, Ludovico Manin, was to vote the Republic out of existence.  Read more…

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Giovanni Matteo Mario - operatic tenor

Disgraced nobleman became the toast of London and Paris

The operatic tenor Giovanni Matteo Mario, a Sardinian nobleman who deserted from the army and began singing only to earn a living after fleeing to Paris, was born on this day in 1810 in Cagliari.  He was baptised Giovanni Matteo de Candia, born into an aristocratic family belonging to Savoyard-Sardinian nobility. Some of his relatives were members of the Royal Court of Turin. His father, Don Stefano de Candia of Alghero, held the rank of general in the Royal Sardinian Army and was aide-de-camp to the Savoy king Charles Felix of Sardinia.  He became Giovanni Mario or Mario de Candia only after he had begun his stage career at the age of 28. He was entitled to call himself Cavaliere (Knight), Nobile (Nobleman) and Don (Sir) in accordance with his inherited titles, yet on his first professional contract, he signed himself simply ‘Mario’ out of respect for his father, who considered singing a lowly career.  Although he was one of the most celebrated tenors of the 18th century, Italy never heard Mario sing. Instead, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London and the Théâtre Italien in Paris witnessed most of his triumphs.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Oxford History of the Renaissance, edited by Gordon Campbell

The Renaissance is one of the most celebrated periods in European history. But when did it begin? When did it end? And what did it include? Traditionally regarded as a revival of classical art and learning, centred upon 15th-century Italy, views of the Renaissance have changed considerably in recent decades. The glories of Florence and the art of Raphael and Michelangelo remain an important element of the Renaissance story, but they are now only a part of a much wider story which looks beyond an exclusive focus on high culture, beyond the Italian peninsula, and beyond the 15th century.  The Oxford History of the Renaissance tells the cultural history of this broader and longer Renaissance: from seminal figures such as Dante and Giotto in 13th-century Italy, to the waning of Spain's 'golden age' in the 1630s, and the closure of the English theatres in 1642, the date generally taken to mark the end of the English literary Renaissance.  Thematically, under Gordon Campbell's expert editorial guidance, the volume covers the whole gamut of Renaissance civilization, with chapters on humanism and the classical tradition; war and the state; religion; art and architecture; the performing arts; literature; craft and technology; science and medicine; and travel and cultural exchange.

Gordon Campbell is Fellow in Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. In January 2012 he was presented with the Longman History Today Trustees Award. He has authored and edited many other books for Oxford University Press, including Renaissance Art and Architecture (2004); John Milton: Life, Work and Thought (2008; co-author); Bible: the Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011 (2010); and The Hermit in the Garden: from Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome (2013).

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Cristofano Allori – artist

Mannerist painter’s masterpiece was inspired by his mistress

A self-portrait of Allori from about
1606, which is in the Uffizi Gallery

The artist Cristofano Allori, who is particularly remembered for his 1613 painting of Judith with the Head of Holofernes, which is now in the British Royal Collection, was born on this day in 1577 in Florence.

Allori was a painter of the late Florentine Mannerist school who specialised in portraits and religious subjects. He is well regarded by experts because of the delicacy and technical perfection of his work. His skill was demonstrated by some copies he made of Correggio’s works, which for a time were thought to be duplicates that had been painted by Correggio himself.

The artist was extremely fastidious about his work, which limited the number of paintings he executed, but there are still fine examples of his art to be seen in Florence.

He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Alessandro Allori, who had many distinguished pupils, including the painter known as Cigoli, whose real name was Lodovico Cardi.

Cristofano became dissatisfied with the anatomical drawing and use of colour that distinguished the work of his father and went into the studio of Gregorio Pagani, who was one of the leading artists of the late Florentine school. Pagani aimed to combine the Florentine attention to drawing with the use of rich colours, which was the style of the Venetian painters of the period.

It is thought Cristofano Allori may have also worked under the guidance of his father’s former pupil, Cigoli, for a time.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes
is striking for its vivid colours

As a young man, Cristofano became a court portrait painter for the Medici family, although many of his early commissions were to produce replicas of portraits that had been painted by his predecessor, Bronzino.

His most famous painting, both in his own lifetime and still today, is his Judith with the Head of Holofernes. According to a biography of the artist by Filippo Baldinucci, written in the late 17th century, the model for Judith was Cristofano’s mistress, Maria de Giovanni Mazzafirra, a beautiful woman known as La Mazzafirra, who is also represented in his painting, Magdalene.

The head of Holofernes that Judith is carrying is thought to be a self portrait by the artist, and the maid shown in the picture as behind Judith is believed to be the mother of La Mazzafirra. Baldinucci claims Allori painted this work partly as an autobiographical account of his love affair with La Mazzafirra, which ended badly.

The account of Judith beheading Holofernes is an apocryphal story from the Book of Judith, which existed in the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures that formed the basis of the Old Testament.

The story was that the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar sent his general Holofernes to besiege the Jewish city of Bethulia. Judith, who was a beautiful young widow, decided to save her people by slaying Holofernes herself and she put on her finest clothes and set out to seduce him. After Holofernes had drunk enough wine to become intoxicated, she decapitated him with her own sword, winning a decisive victory for the Israelites.

Allori's Annunciation
in Pistoia Cathedral

There are at least two versions of the painting by Cristofano Allori. The prime version is thought to be the 1613 work in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace, which was acquired by King Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga Collection in Mantua.

The best-known version, painted in 1620, is in Palazzo Pitti in Florence. There are also copies of the painting by other artists working in the same studio, including one in the Vatican Pinacoteca and one in a gallery in Berlin.

Other notable paintings by Allori include a portrait of two of the Medici children, Francesco, and Caterina, painted in 1598, and a painting of the Annunciation, which is in Pistoia Cathedral.

He died in 1621 at the age of 43.

The Palazzo Pitti, as seen from the Boboli
Gardens, has been the home of several families

Travel tip:

Palazzo Pitti in Florence, was originally built for the banker Luca Pitti in 1457 in the centre of Florence, to try to outshine the Medici family. Cosimo I de' Medici later bought it from Pitti’s bankrupt heirs and made it the main Medici residence in 1550. Today visitors can look round the richly decorated rooms and see treasures from the Medici collections. A version of Judith with the Head of Holofernes painted by Cristofano Allori is in Pitti Palace’s Palatine Gallery collection.  After the decline of the Medici, the palace housed the courts of two other great European dynasties: the House of Habsburg-Lorraine from 1737 and the House of Savoy, from 1865. 

The Romanesque-style facade of the Cattedrale
di San Zeno, the Duomo of Pistoia

Travel tip:

Pistoia is a medieval walled city in Tuscany to the north west of Florence. The Cathedral of Saint Zeno, or the Duomo of Pistoia, is in the Piazza del Duomo in the centre of the city. Originally built in the 10th century, the cathedral has a façade in Romanesque style. As well as his Annuciation, the cathedral has a Resurrection by Cristofano Allori, which can be found in the apse of the Presbytery. Also set around the Piazza del Duomo are the octagonal Battistero di San Giovanni in Corte, and the Palazzo dei Vescovi, an 11th-century palace that was bought and restored by the Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia, a regional bank, in the late 20th century and how houses a museum complex. 

Also on this day:

1473: The birth of Renaissance sculptor Bartolommeo Bandinelli

1797: The Treaty of Campio Formio hands Venice to Austria

1810: The birth of tenor Giovanni Matteo Mario

1907: The founding of Atalanta Bergamasco Calcio

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16 October

Dino Buzzati - author

Novelist likened to Camus whose short stories remain popular

The multi-talented author Dino Buzzati, whose output included five novels, several theatre and radio plays, a children’s novel, five opera libretti, some poetry, a comic book in which he also drew the illustrations, and several books of short stories, was born on this day in 1906 in Belluno.  Buzzati’s most famous novel, Il deserto dei Tartari (1940), titled The Tartar Steppe in the English translation, saw Buzzati compared to Albert Camus and Franz Kafka as a work of existentialist style, but it is for his short stories that he still wins acclaim.  A new collection entitled Catastrophe and Other Stories, which showcases Buzzati’s talent for weaving nightmarish fantasy into ordinary situations, was published earlier this year.  Buzzati, who worked as a journalist for the whole of his adult life and also painted prolifically, was the second of four children born to Giulio Cesare Buzzati, a distinguished professor of international law, and Alba Mantovani, a veterinarian born in Venice.  The family’s main home was in Milan but they had a summer villa in San Pellegrino, a village just outside Belluno in the foothills of the Dolomites, which was where Dino was born.  Read more…

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Election of Pope John Paul II

How Karol Wojtyla became first non-Italian pope for 455 years

Pope John Paul II, who was to have a political and social influence unmatched by any pontiff since the Middle Ages, was elected to be the new leader of the Catholic Church on this day in 1978.  The result of the second Papal conclave in what became known as the Year of the Three Popes was announced after eight ballots. The new pontiff succeeded Pope John Paul I, who had died on September 28 after only 33 days in office, who had himself followed Pope Paul VI, who had passed away in August after reigning for 15 years.  The new man chosen was 58-year-old Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, then Archbishop of Kraków, the first non-Italian to hold office for 455 years since the Dutch Pope Adam VI, who served from 1522-23.  Wojtyla's stand against Poland's Communist regime had brought him respect but he was not seen as a Vatican favourite and his elevation to the highest office stunned the Catholic world.  Yet he would go on to become one of the most familiar faces in the world, remaining in post for almost 27 years, which made him the second longest-serving pope in modern history after Pope Pius IX.  Read more…

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Dorando Pietri - marathon runner

Athlete who made his fortune from famous disqualification

The athlete Dorando Pietri, who found fame and fortune after being disqualified in the 1908 Olympic marathon, was born on this day in 1885 in Mandrio, a hamlet near Carpi, in Emilia-Romagna.  In an extraordinary finish to the 1908 race in London, staged on an exceptionally warm July day, Pietri entered the White City Stadium in first place, urged on by a crowd of more than 75,000 who were there to witness the finish, only for his legs to buckle beneath him.  He was helped to his feet by two officials only to fall down four more times before he crossed the finish line.  Each time, officials hauled him to his feet and walked alongside him, urging him on and ready to catch him if he fell.  The final 350 yards (320m) of the event accounted for 10 minutes of the two hours, 54 minutes and 46 seconds recorded as his official time.  Eventually, a second athlete entered the stadium, the American Johnny Hayes, but Pietri had staggered over the line before he could complete the final lap.  The American team was already unpopular with the British crowd, partly because of a row about a flag at the opening ceremony. They lost even more support after they lodged an objection to the result.   Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati

Idealistic young officer Giovanni Drogo is full of determination to serve his country well. But when he arrives at a bleak border station in the Tartar desert, where he is to take a short assignment at Fort Bastiani, he finds the castle manned by veteran soldiers who have grown old without seeing a trace of the enemy. As his length of service stretches from months into years, he continues to wait patiently for the enemy to advance across the desert, for one great and glorious battle.  Written in 1938 as the world waited for war, and internationally acclaimed since its publication, The Tartar Steppe is a provocative and frightening tale of hope, longing and the terrible sorcery of dreams and desires.  This edition is introduced by the English writer Tim Parks and translated by the late Stuart Hood.

Dino Buzzati was an Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, and novelist, internationally known for his fiction and plays.  The Tartar Steppe is generally considered to be his finest novel.

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15 October

Gibbon's moment of inspiration

Walk around the Forum sparked idea for epic work 

The English writer and historian Edward Gibbon claimed that the inspiration to write the book that - unbeknown to him - would grant him literary immortality came to him while exploring the ruins of the Forum in Rome on this day in 1764.  Gibbon, who had enjoyed modest success with his first book, entitled Essay on the Study of Literature, was in Rome after deciding to embark on the Grand Tour, taking in the Italian cities of Florence, Naples and Venice as well as the capital.  Later, in his memoirs, Gibbon wrote that:  "It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind."  In the event, the book expanded to cover rather more than the city of Rome.  The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ran to six volumes and as many as 5,000 pages in the original version and saw Gibbon, whose second work - Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne - had been dismissed as having little merit by fellow writers and historians, eventually recognised as in the forefront of historians in Europe.  Read more…

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Angelo Schiavio - footballer

Scored goal that won Italy's first World Cup

Angelo Schiavio, the hero of the Italian football team’s first World Cup victory in 1934, was born on this day in 1905 in Bologna.  The centre forward, a prolific goalscorer for his home-town club in Serie A, scored the winning goal in the final against Czechoslovakia to hand victory to the Azzurri in the 16-team tournament, of which the Italians were hosts.  In the final at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome, the Azzurri had gone behind to a goal by the Czech winger Antonin Puc with 19 minutes remaining, but equalised 10 minutes later through Raimundo Orsi, the Argentina-born forward from Juventus, taking the match into extra time.  Schiavio struck the decisive goal, driven home with his right foot from a pass by Enrique Guaita, another Argentine – one of 12 to represent Italy and Argentina in the days before playing for more than one nation was outlawed.  It was his fourth goal of the tournament, sparking massive celebrations in Rome and across Italy, albeit in a mood of triumph hijacked by Benito Mussolini and his Fascist regime.  Rumours circulated, almost inevitably, that match officials had been bribed to make decisions favouring the Italians.  Read more…

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Virgil – Roman poet

Writer’s epic poem commemorates achievements and ideals of Rome

Regarded as the greatest of the Roman poets, Virgil, or Publius Vergilius Maro as he was originally named, was born on this day in 70 BC in the village of Andes near Mantua, in what is now Lombardy.  Virgil is famous for his work, the Aeneid, which told the story of Rome’s founder and the Roman mission to civilise the world under divine guidance. It is widely considered one of the most important poems in the history of Western literature.  Experts have high regard for Virgil’s poetry, not only for the music and diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an intricate work on a grand scale, but also because of what it reveals about Roman life and behaviour.  Virgil was born of peasant stock and his love of the Italian countryside and the people who worked in it is well reflected in his poetry.  He was educated in Cremona, Milan and Rome and acquired a thorough knowledge of Greek and Roman authors and was trained in rhetoric and philosophy.  When Virgil was 20, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and began the series of civil wars that did not end until Augustus’s victory at Actium in 31 BC.  Hatred and fear of civil war is powerfully expressed by Virgil in his poetry.  Read more…

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Giovanni Migliara – painter

19th century artist captured many beautiful views for posterity

Giovanni Migliara, who rose from working as a theatre set designer to becoming court painter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, was born on this day in 1785 in Alessandria in Piedmont.  He was first apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, but then went on to study at the Brera Academy.in Milan with Giocondo Albertolli.  He began working as a set designer with Teatro Carcano in Milan in 1804 and then moved to La Scala in 1805, where he served under the direction of Alessandro Sanquirico until 1809. His theatre work enabled him to acquire skills as a landscape artist and a creator of perspective.  Migliara had to stop working while he was suffering from a serious lung problem but from about 1810 he started painting miniatures and then moved on to watercolours and then oils on canvas, silk and ivory, drawing inspiration from Venetian painters.  In 1812 he exhibited four views of Milan at the Brera Academy, officially signalling his return to the world of art.  Migliara specialised in painting views and romantic, historical subjects. Because of the high quality of his work he became a favourite of the aristocracy living in Milan at the time.  Read more…

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Roberto Vittori – astronaut

High-flying Colonel contributed to space research

Roberto Vittori, the last non-American to fly on board the US Space Shuttle, was born on this day in 1964 in Viterbo.  An Italian air force officer, Vittori was selected by the European Space Agency to be part of their Astronaut Corps and has participated in three space flights.  In 2011 Vittori was on board the Space Shuttle that travelled to the International Space Station to install the AMS-02 cosmic ray detector to examine dark matter and the origin of the Universe.  Vittori had to grapple the six-tonne AMS-02 with the Space Shuttle’s robotic arm and move it to the station for installation. This was to be the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour.  He is one of five Italians to have visited the International Space Station. The others are Umberto Guidoni, who was the first European to set foot on board when he flew on Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2001, Paolo Nespoli, who visited as recently as 2017 and at 61 is the European Space Agency’s oldest active astronaut, Luca Parmitano and Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space.  Nespoli, who has participated in three International Space Station missions, was coming to the end of a 159-day stay when Vittori visited.  Read more…

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Book of the Day:  The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (Abridged Edition, edited by David Womersley)

Easily the most celebrated historical work in English, Gibbon's account of the Roman empire was in its time a landmark in classical and historical scholarship and remains a remarkably fresh and powerful contribution to the interpretation of Roman history more than 200 years after its first appearance. Its fame, however, rests more on the exceptional clarity, scope and force of its argument, and the brilliance of its style, which is still a delight to read. Furthermore, both argument and style embody the Enlightenment values of rationality, lucidity and order to which Gibbon so passionately subscribed and to which his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is such a magnificent monument.  David Womersley's masterly selection and bridging commentary enables the reader to acquire a general sense of the progress and argument of the whole work and displays the full variety of Gibbon's achievement.

Edward Gibbon was an English essayist, historian, and politician. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was easily his most important work.

David Womersley is Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. His other specialist interests include the works of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe. 

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14 October

Alesso Baldovinetti - painter

One of first to paint realistic landscapes

The early Renaissance painter Alesso Baldovinetti, whose great fresco of the Annunciation in the cloister of the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence is still intact, was born on this day in 1425 in Florence.  Baldovinetti was among a group described as scientific realists and naturalists in art which included Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano. Influenced by Uccello’s use of visual perspective, he had a particular eye for detail and his views of the Arno river in his Nativity and Madonna are regarded as among Europe’s earliest paintings of accurately reproduced landscapes.  Veneziano’s influence is reflected in the pervasive light of his earliest surviving works, and he was also greatly influenced by Fra' Angelico. Historians believe that in the 1460s Baldovinetti was the finest painter in Florence, although some argue that he did not fulfil all his initial promise.  Born into the family of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Baldovinetti rejected the chance to follow his father’s trade in favour of art.  In 1448, he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. It is thought that he assisted with decorations in the church of Sant’ Egidio in Trastevere.  Read more…

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Alessandro Safina – singer

Tenor who has blended opera and rock

Alessandro Safina, a singer trained in opera who has expanded the so-called ‘crossover’ pop-opera genre to include rock influences, was born on this day in 1963 in Siena.  A household name in Italy, the tenor is less well known outside his own country but has recorded duets with international stars such as Sarah Brightman, South Korean soprano Sumi Jo, Rod Stewart, former Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde, Scottish actor and singer Ewan McGregor and the superstar Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.  Safina’s biggest album to date is Insieme a Te, which has sold more than 700,000 copies.  It was written in collaboration with the Italian pianist and composer Romano Musumarra, who helped realise Safina’s ambition of creating soulful rock-inspired music for the tenor voice.  He first performed songs from the album at the Olympia theatre in Paris in 1999.  Safina was born into an opera-loving family and earned money to pay for singing lessons by working in his father’s stationery business.  Set on becoming a professional singer from the age of nine, he began attending a music academy at 12 and was accepted for a place at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence at 17.  Read more…

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Palma Giovane - painter

Mannerist took the mantle of Tintoretto 

The Venetian artist Jacopo Negretti, best known as Jacopo Palma il Giovane - Palma the Younger - or simply Palma Giovane, died in Venice on this day in 1628.  Essentially a painter of the Italian Mannerist school, Palma Giovane's style evolved over time and after the death of Tintoretto in 1594 he became the most revered artist in Venice.  He became in demand beyond Venice, too, particularly in Bergamo, the city in Lombardy that was a dominion of Venice, and in central Europe.  He received many commissions in Bergamo and was often employed in Prague by the Habsburg Emperor, Rudolph II, who was a noted art connoisseur.  Palma had been born into a family of painters. His great uncle, also called Jacopo, was the painter Palma Vecchio - Palma the Elder - while his father, Antonio Negretti, was a pupil of the elder Palma’s workshop manager, Bonifacio Veronese, whose shop and clientele he inherited after the latter’s death.  The younger Palma is said to have developed his skills making copies in the style of Titian, although the claim in some biographies that he worked in Titian's workshop in Venice is now thought to be incorrect.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Lives of the Artists, by Giorgio Vasari

Packed with facts, attributions, and entertaining anecdotes about his contemporaries, 16th century painter and architect Giorgio Vasari's collection of biographical accounts also presents a highly influential theory of the development of Renaissance art.   Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto, who represent the infancy of art, in The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, to give the book its full, original title, Vasari considers the period of youthful vigour, shaped by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Masaccio, before discussing the mature period of perfection, dominated by the titanic figures of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.  This specially commissioned translation - by Peter Bondanella and Julia Conaway Bondanella - contains thirty-six of the most important lives as well as an introduction and explanatory notes.

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian Renaissance painter in the Mannerist style and architect and sculptor of renown, whose works included the design for Tomb of Michelangelo in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, the loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi and the so-called Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the Arno river.

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