Pope Leo XIII

Why the papal name Leo has been inspirational

A photograph of Pope Leo XIII
taken at the time of his election

Pope Leo XIII, who was the fourth longest serving pope in history, died on this day in 1903 in Rome at the age of 93. His reputation for supporting the rights of industrial workers inspired the current pope, Leo XIV, to choose Leo as his papal name after he was elected in May 2025.

Leo XIII served as pope for 25 years, despite fears after his election in 1878 that he was in delicate health. Only three popes have served for longer. They were the first pope, Saint Peter the Apostle, Pope Pius IX, and Pope John Paul II.

He was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci in Carpineto Romano in Lazio in 1810. His family were both noble and religious and he was educated at the Jesuit College of Viterbo. He enjoyed Latin and was writing his own poems in Latin by the age of 11.

After his mother died, his father, Count Domenico Pecci, wanted his children to be near him, so he moved to Rome, where he attended the Jesuit Collegium Romanum.

As a young man, Pecci studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where he won awards for academic excellence. He was appointed as a prelate by Pope Gregory XVI before he was even ordained as a priest and he was later appointed as papal legate to Benevento.

He faced a decaying local economy badly affected by Mafia and Camorra organisations linked to the local aristocracy. Pecci arrested the most powerful aristocrat in Benevento and had others either killed or imprisoned.  He reformed the tax system to stimulate trade.

He was then sent to Perugia where his fight against corruption continued. When it was claimed a baker was selling bread below the legal weight, he personally went to the bakery and had all the bread weighed. The bread found to be below the weight was confiscated and distributed to poor people.

A book illustration showing
Pecci as Nuncio to Belgium

At the age of 33, Pecci was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium and he was then consecrated as an archbishop. 

From 1846 to 1877 he was a popular Archbishop of Perugia. He formed homeless shelters for boys, girls, and women, opened a bank, Monte di Pietà, which provided low-interest loans to poor people, and he created soup kitchens. 

After being appointed Cardinal Bishop of Crisogno in 1853, Pecci began to address the role of the church in modern society, defining it as ‘the mother of material civilisation’ because it upheld the dignity of working people and their right to a fair wage and to go on strike.

He was appointed to an office in the papal household in 1877 by Pope Pius IX, which required him to move back to Rome. After Pius IX died in 1878, Cardinal Pecci was elected as the new pope on the third ballot and he chose the papal name Leo XIII. He said he had always venerated Pope Leo XII because he admired his conciliatory attitude to foreign governments and his interest in education.

It was thought at the time that the more conservative cardinals voted for Pecci because they believed his age and health meant that his papacy would be brief, and they were trying to thwart other candidates they did not want to see elected.

However, during the next 25 years, Leo XIII worked to improve understanding between the church and the modern industrial world. He tried to reverse the trend towards an increasingly impoverished working class with socialist sympathies and anticlerical views, and he improved relations with Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. He also made the Catholic Church become more open to scientific progress.

An 1878 magazine illustration of
the Pecci house in Carpineto Romano

His 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed social inequality and social justice issues using papal authority, arguing that both capitalism and communism were flawed. 

He elevated the English Catholic theologian John Henry Newman to be a cardinal, along with creating the first cardinals from Australia, Canada, Slovenia, and Armenia.

After becoming ill in June 1903, Leo XIII died in the Apostolic Palace of pneumonia on July 20.

He was the first pope to have been born in the 19th century and the first to die in the 20th century. He had run the Catholic Church with efficiency and helped to gain more respect for the papacy at home and abroad. 

Leo XIII was entombed in Saint Peter’s Basilica briefly, but was later moved to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, a church in which he had been particularly interested.

When the American cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected as pope in 2025, he said one of the main reasons he chose Leo as his papal name was because of the social justice encyclical Rerum Novarum that had been written by Pope Leo XIII.

Piazza Regina Margherita has a fountain
dedicated to Pope Leo XIII

Travel tip:

Carpineto Romano, where Pope Leo XIII was born, is a small town in Lazio, about 37 miles (60km) southeast of Rome. There are still Roman ruins and medieval buildings to be seen, but it was made more splendid in the 16th century by the wealthy Aldobrandini family. It was a duchy under Donna Olimpia Aldobrandini, who played a significant role in its development. The town centre still has narrow cobblestone streets and some elegant palazzi with limestone doorways bearing Italian and Latin inscriptions. The Church of Saint John was significantly reworked while Leo XIII was Pope. It has a portal with bronze panels by the sculptor Tommaso Ambrosetti, who was from nearby Anagni. There is a fountain commemorating Leo XIII in Piazza Regina Margherita.  Carpineto Romano is situated in the Lepini mountains, offering views of the plains of Latina and the Sacco river valley.  The town attracts many visitors to the annual Pallio della Carriera festival, which re-enacts the splendour of the Aldobrandini era and includes a historical procession and a horse race, as well as stalls and exhibits highlighting the town's traditional cuisine.

The Basilica di San Domenico in Perugia has a
 bell tower that rises to almost 200ft (60m)

Travel tip:

Perugia, the capital of Umbria, where Pope Leo XIII spent more than 30 years as an archbishop, is a vibrant city that combines strong echoes of a significant history with an effervescent modern culture.  Standing atop a hill in the Tiber valley, in Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period and its strategic position has made it a target for invading armies ever since. The city of today evolved around a fortified medieval village, at the heart of which is Piazza IV Novembre, which has a fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.  The city’s imposing Basilica di San Domenico, built in the early 14th century also to designs by Giovanni Pisano, is the largest church in Umbria, with a distinctive 60m (197ft) bell tower and a 17th-century interior, designed by Carlo Maderno. It contains the tomb of Pope Benedict XI, who died in 1304. Nowadays, Perugia is term-time home to some 34,000 students at the University of Perugia and hosts the world-renowned Umbria Jazz Festival each July. Perugia is the home of the Perugina chocolate company, famous for Baci, which it celebrates with a chocolate festival each summer. 

Also on this day: 

1890: The birth of painter Giorgio Morandi

1937: The death of electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi

1959: The birth of racing driver Giovanna Amati

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19 July

Jacopo Tiepolo - Doge of Venice

Ruler laid down the law and granted land for beautiful churches

Jacopo Tiepolo, the Doge who granted the land for the building of the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, died on this day in 1249 in Venice.  His election as Doge in 1229 had sparked a feud between the Tiepolo and Dandolo families, which led to the rules being changed for future elections. He also produced five books of statutes setting out Venetian law which was to change life in Venice significantly, bringing a raft of civil and economic regulations to which Venetians were obliged to adhere.  Tiepolo, who was also known as Giacomo Tiepolo, had previously served as the first Venetian Duke of Crete and had two terms as podestà – chief administrator - in Constantinople.  He acted as the de facto ruler of the Latin Empire, negotiating treaties with the Egyptians and the Turks.  Read more…

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The Great Fire of Rome

City devastated by nine-day blaze

Almost two thirds of the ancient city of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which took hold on this day in 64 AD.  Accounts vary as to whether the blaze began on July 19 or on the evening of July 18. What seems not to be in doubt is that the fire spread uncontrollably for six days, seemed to burn itself out, then reignited and continued for another three days.  Of Rome’s 14 districts at the time, only four were unaffected. In three, nothing remained but ashes and the other seven fared only marginally better, with just a few scorched ruins still standing.  Among the more important buildings in the city, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals, and the emperor Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria were damaged or destroyed, along with the part of the Forum where senators lived and worked.  Read more…

Cesare Cremonini - philosopher

Great thinker famous for Galileo ‘denial’

The philosopher Cesare Cremonini, the contemporary and friend of Galileo Galilei who famously refused to look at the Moon through Galileo’s telescope, died on this day in 1631 in Padua.  Cremonini was considered one of the great thinkers of his time, a passionate advocate of the doctrines of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He was paid a handsome salary by his patron, Alfonso II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, and kings and princes regularly sought his counsel.  He struck up a friendship with the poet, Torquato Tasso, while he was studying in Ferrara, and met Galileo in 1550 after he was appointed by the Venetian Republic to the chair of the University of Padua.  The two built a relationship of respect and friendship that endured for many years, despite many differences of opinion, yet in 1610 a divergence of views on one subject created an impasse.  Read more…

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Petrarch – Renaissance poet

Writer whose work inspired the modern Italian language

Renaissance scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca died on this day in 1374 at Arquà near Padua, now renamed Arquà Petrarca. Known in English as Petrarch, he is considered to be an important figure in the history of Italian literature.  He is often credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance, after his rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, and also with being the founder of Humanism.  In the 16th century, the Italian poet Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works.  Petrarch was born in Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304. His father was a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri, but he insisted that Petrarch studied law.  The poet was far more interested in writing and in reading Latin literature. Petrarch’s first major work, Africa, about the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, turned him into a celebrity.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd

The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to that sensual and surprising city.  His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and its trading empire, the wars against Napoleon, and the tourist invasions of today. Everything is here: the merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the glassblowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of lepers; the artists - Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. And the ever-present undertone of Venice’s shadowy corners and dead ends, of prisons and punishment, wars and sieges, scandals and seductions.  Venice: Pure City is a study of Venice much in the vein of his lauded London: The Biography. History and context are provided in each chap­ter, but Ackroyd’s portrait of Venice is a particularly novelistic one, both beautiful and rapturous. 

Peter Ackroyd is the award-winning author of Thames; London: The Biography; Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination; Shakespeare; acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More; several successful novels; and the series Ackroyd’s Brief Lives. 

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18 July

William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan. Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.  Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time.  His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round. Read more...

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Gino Bartali - cycling star and secret war hero

Tour de France champion was clandestine courier

Gino Bartali, one of three Italian cyclists to have won the Tour de France twice and a three-times winner of the Giro d’Italia, was born on this day in 1914 in the town of Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence.  Bartali’s career straddled the Second World War, his two Tour successes coming in 1938 and 1948, but it is as much for what he did during the years of conflict that he is remembered today.  With the knowledge of only a few people, Bartali repeatedly risked his life smuggling false documents around Italy to help Italian Jews escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps.  He hid the rolled up documents inside the hollow handlebars and frame of his bicycle and explained his frequent long-distance excursions as part of the training schedule he needed to maintain in order to keep himself in peak physical fitness.  Read more…

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Angelo Morbelli - painter

Artist known for socially conscious themes

Angelo Morbelli, a painter who won acclaim for his socially conscious genre scenes, was born on this day in 1853 in the Piedmont city of Alessandria.  Initially a painter of landscapes and historical scenes, he switched quite early in his career to contemporary subjects, many of which reflected his own social concerns. He had a particular interest in the lives of the elderly and the fate of the women who laboured in the region’s rice fields.  He was a proponent of the Divisionist style of painting that was founded in the 1880s by the French post-Impressionist Georges Seurat. In Divisionism, rather than physically blending paints to produce variations in colour, the painter constructed a picture from separate dots of paint that by their proximity would produce an optical interaction. Divisionists believed this technique achieved greater luminosity of colour.  Read more…

Mysterious death of Caravaggio

Experts divided over how brilliant artist met his end

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

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Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed

The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.  An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.  He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni. Read more… 

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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

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

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Book of the Day: The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D Coe and Michael D Coe

Chocolate – ‘the food of the Gods’ – has had a long and eventful history. Its story is expertly told here by the doyen of Maya studies, Michael Coe, and his late wife, Sophie. The True History of Chocolate begins 3,000 years ago in the Mexican jungles and goes on to draw on aspects of archaeology, botany and socio-economics. Used as currency and traded by the Aztecs, chocolate arrived in Europe via the conquistadors, and was soon a favourite drink with aristocrats. By the 19th century and industrialization, chocolate became a food for the masses – until its revival in our own time as a luxury item. More recently, chocolate has been giving up some of its secrets to modern neuroscientists, who have been investigating how flavour perception is mediated by the human brain. 

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University, Michael D Coe is a specialist in the comparative study of ancient, tropical forest civilisations, especially the Maya civilisation, which thrived in Mexico and other parts of Central America. Sophie D Coe was an anthropologist and food historian.

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17 July

Lady Blessington’s Neapolitan Journals

Irish aristocrat fell in love with Naples

Marguerite, Lady Blessington, an Irish-born writer who married into the British aristocracy, arrived in Naples on this day in 1823 and began writing her Neapolitan Journals.  She was to stay in the city for nearly three years and her detailed account of what she saw and who she met has left a unique insight into life in Naples nearly 200 years ago.  Lady Blessington made herself at home in Naples and thoroughly embraced the culture, attending local events, making what at the time were adventurous excursions, and entertaining Neapolitan aristocrats and intellectuals at the former royal palace that became her home.  Those who know Naples today will recognise in her vivid descriptions many places that have remained unchanged for the last two centuries.  She also provides a valuable insight into what life was like at the time for ordinary people as well as for the rich and privileged.  Read more… 

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Michele Casadei Massari - chef and restaurateur

American dream from small beginnings

The chef and businessman Michele Casadei Massari, owner and founder of the Piccolo Cafe and the Lucciola restaurant in New York City, was born on this day in 1975 in Riccione, on the Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna.  Massari had planned to become a doctor but abandoned his studies in order to pursue his dream of cooking in his own restaurant.  After working as general manager and executive chef of a restaurant at a holiday resort in Sardinia, Massari and an old school friend decided to go it alone and chose to start a business in New York.  They began by selling coffee from a kiosk on Union Square in Manhattan before graduating to a cafe selling traditional Italian food as well as salads, panini and egg dishes.  Massari and his partner opened their first Piccolo Cafe in Third Avenue, a couple of blocks from Union Square in 2010.  Read more… 

Gino D'Acampo - celebrity chef

Neapolitan inherited talent from grandfather

The celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo was born on this day in 1976 in Torre del Greco, a conurbation of around 90,000 inhabitants within the Metropolitan City of Naples.  Based in England since 1995, D’Acampo is scarcely known in his native country yet his social media pages have more than two and a half million followers.  The author of numerous books on cooking, his many television appearances include several series of his own show, Gino’s Italian Escapes.  He has owned a number of restaurants and pasta bars and has been the co-owner of a company selling Italian ingredients.  His success is all the more remarkable given that he had to rebuild his life after being convicted in 1998 of burglary, an episode that took place while he was working as a waiter. He described the incident as a mistake he vowed never to repeat. Born Gennaro D’Acampo, he grew up around food. Read more… 

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Maria Salviati - noblewoman

Florentine whose line included kings of France and England

The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on this day in 1499 in Florence.  Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and a powerful figure in the mid-16th century.  Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, and Charles II and James II of England.  Married for nine years to Lodovico de’ Medici, who was more widely known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Salviati herself had Medici blood. One of a family of 10 children, her mother was Lucrezia de Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had married the politician Iacopo Salviati, who was from another major banking family in Florence.  Maria’s maternal grandfather was Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler who famously sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Marguerite, Countess of Blessington: The Turbulent Life of a Salonniere and Author, by Susan Matoff

Marguerite, Countess of Blessington is the first biography of Lady Blessington in more than 80 years, illuminating the private and public life of this important but neglected salonnière and author. This study enriches our knowledge of the social, political, and literary history of the post-Romantic and early Victorian era. It examines Lady Blessington's close friendships with politicians and writers, especially Edward Bulwer Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli. Statesmen, diplomats, writers, and artists were her constant visitors, as they found her friendship and conversation invaluable to their professional and social lives. The circumstances of a life lived in luxury and indulgence changed upon the death of Lady Blessington's husband, forcing her to support herself and several dependents with her writing. This book reveals the humanity of a woman whom contemporary gossip considered scandalous because of her alleged relationship with her stepdaughter's estranged husband, Count D'Orsay. Lady Blessington's struggle in the face of many challenges is an inspiring story of individual strength. 

Susan Matoff is an independent scholar with an MA in English Literature from the University of London, who subsequently studied social history and wrote research papers for the Bushey Museum in the United Kingdom.  She is also the author of William Jerdan, 1782-1849: London Editor, Author and Critic. 

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16 July

Andrea del Sarto – painter

The brief career of an artist ‘senza errori’

Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore on July 16, 1486 in Florence.  He had a brilliant career but died at the age of 43 during an outbreak of plague and afterwards his achievements were eclipsed by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.  Andrea’s father, Agnolo, was a tailor and therefore the child became known as del Sarto, meaning son of the tailor.  As a young boy del Sarto was apprenticed to a goldsmith and then a woodcarver before being sent to learn to be an artist.  He decided to open a joint studio with an older friend, Franciabigio, and from 1509 onwards they were employed to paint a series of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Del Sarto also painted a Procession of the Magi, in which he included a self-portrait, and a Nativity of the Virgin for the entrance to the church.  Read more...

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The first Coppa Italia football tournament

Tiny club from Liguria emerged the winners

The first final of the Coppa Italia, which was to become Italian football’s equivalent of England’s celebrated FA Cup knock-out competition, took place on July 16, 1922.  It was won by Vado Foot-Ball Club, from Vado Ligure, a commercial and industrial port in the province of Savona in Liguria.  Vado, who defeated Udinese in the final to lift the trophy, have not won any major honours in 101 years since their famous triumph and currently play in Serie D, the fourth tier in the Italian football pyramid.  The circumstances of their victory would look quite bizarre in the context of modern-day football.  The competition itself existed only because of a major schism in the Italian championship that had taken place the year before, when 24 of the country’s major clubs broke away from the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to form their own championship after a demand for a reduction in the number of teams in the Prima Categoria - the forerunner of Serie A - was rejected.  Read more…

Vincenzo Gemito - sculptor

Neapolitan who preserved figures from local street life

Vincenzo Gemito, one of the sculptors responsible for eight statues of former kings that adorn the western façade of the Royal Palace in Naples, was born on July 16, 1852.  The statues are in niches along the side of the palace that fronts on to the Piazza del Plebiscito, displayed in chronological order beginning with Roger the Norman, also known as Roger II of Sicily, who ruled in the 12th century, and ends with Vittorio Emanuele II, who was on the throne when his kingdom became part of the united Italy in 1861.  Gemito sculpted the fifth statue in the sequence, that of Charles V, who was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 and, by virtue of being king of Spain from 1516 to 1556, also the king of Naples. Gemito was known for the outstanding realism in his work, as can be seen in his sculpture Il giocatore di carte – The Card Player - which he created when he was only 16.  Read more…

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St Clare of Assisi

Birth of the founder of the Poor Clares

St Clare was born on July 16, 1194 in Assisi as Chiara Offreduccio, the beautiful daughter of a Count.  As a young girl Clare was extremely devout and at the age of 18 she was inspired by hearing Francis of Assisi preach and went to see him to ask for help to live her life according to the Gospel.  In 1212, Clare left her father’s home and went to the chapel of Porziuncola to meet Francis. Her hair was cut off and she was given a plain robe and veil in exchange for her rich gown.  Clare joined a convent of Benedictine nuns and when her father tracked her down refused to leave it to return home.  Francis sent her to another monastery, where she was later joined by her sister. Over the years other women came to be with them who also wanted to serve Jesus and live with no money. They became known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano because of the austere lifestyle they lived.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Earthly Delights: A History of the Renaissance, by Jonathan Jones

What was the 'Renaissance'? In the 19th century this flowering of creativity and thought was celebrated as the birth of the modern world. Today many historians are sceptical about its very existence. Earthly Delights rekindles the Renaissance as a seismic change in European mentalities, in a panoramic history that encompasses Florence and Bruges, London and Nuremberg. Artists from northern as well as southern Europe, including Leonardo, Bosch, Bruegel and Titian, star in a captivating and beautifully illustrated narrative. Earthly Delights tells the story of Renaissance artists as pioneers, adventurers and ‘geniuses’, a Renaissance concept. Albrecht Dürer gazes with wonder on Aztec art in Brussels in 1520, Leonardo da Vinci tries to perfect a flying machine, Hieronymus Bosch finds inspiration in West African ivory carvings imported by the Portuguese to Antwerp. A then unknown Netherlandish painter, Pieter Bruegel, arrives in 1550s Rome just as Michelangelo is striving in the same city to raise the new St Peter’s Basilica towards heaven. This was an age when people dared to experiment: to think and create new worlds.

Jonathan Jones is a British art critic who has written for The Guardian since 1999. He has appeared in the BBC television series Private Life of a Masterpiece and in 2009 was a judge for the Turner Prize.

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15 July

NEW - Nicola Abbagnano - philosopher

Thinker who championed ‘positive existentialism’ 

The philosopher Nicola Abbagnano, best known for his advancement of what he defined as positive existentialism, was born on July 15, 1901 in Salerno in Campania.  Abbagnano, who spent much of his adult life in Turin, Milan and the Ligurian resort town of Santa Margherita Ligure, developed a philosophy that emphasised human possibility and freedom, rejecting more traditional existentialist discussions that focussed on how the struggle to create purpose in an inherently meaningless world can engender feelings of anguish and despair.  Many years on from his death in 1990, Abbagnano’s legacy of intellectual optimism continues to inspire philosophers who seek a balanced, pragmatic approach to existential questions, while his emphasis on ethical responsibility resonates in contemporary debates on human behaviour.   Read more…

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Guido Crepax - cartoonist

Erotic character Valentina captured spirit of 1960s Italy

The cartoonist Guido Crepax, whose character Valentina became a heroine of the 1960s generation in Italy and beyond, was born on July 15, 1933 in Milan.  Valentina first appeared in May 1965 as a secondary character in another cartoon, the photographer girlfriend of an art critic and amateur sleuth.  But the sinuous, sensual female depicted by Crepax, her hair cut in a glossy bob, soon acquired fans both male and female.  In an era when Italian society was beginning to experience a sense of sexual liberation for the first time, Valentina’s eroticism naturally attracted a legion of male fans. But her assertive individuality struck a chord with many modern Italian women, too, even if her readiness to shed her clothes caused outrage among others.  Soon, Valentina left behind her fictional boyfriend and starred in a series of her own adventures.  Read more…

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Frances Xavier Cabrini – the first American saint

Missionary who was directed to the US by the Pope

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded a religious institute to provide support for impoverished Italian immigrants in the United States, was born on July 15, 1850 in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in Lombardy.  Frances did such good in her life she became the first naturalised citizen of the United States to be canonised in 1946.  She had been born into a family of cherry tree farmers, the youngest of 13 children. She was two months premature and remained in delicate health all her life.  After her parents died she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart but was told she was too frail for the life.  She became the headmistress of an orphanage in Codogno, about 30km (19 miles) from her hometown, where she drew in other women to live a religious life with her.  She took religious vows in 1877.  Read more… 

Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello – poet

Talented writer kept record of 1848 rebellions and produced verses in local dialect

Prolific writer Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello, who became famous after his death for the poetry he had written in his local dialect, was born on this day in 1797 in a hamlet near Zogno in Lombardy, a short distance from the city of Bergamo.  Ruggeri da Stabello wrote a valuable account of events that occurred in the north of Italy during revolts against the Austrian occupying army, which were later collected in a volume entitled Bergamo Revolution of the Year 1848.  He was the second son of a Bergamo couple, Santo Ruggeri, and Diana Stella Ceribelli, who had moved to the Brembana valley to escape the riots that followed the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797.  When Pietro Ruggeri became an adult, he added the words da Stabello to his name, to honour the small village where he had grown up, which is less than one kilometre from the municipality of Zogno in Val Brembana.  Read more… 

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Fire damages St Paul Outside-the-Walls

Beautiful Basilica was faithfully rebuilt and restored

A blaze nearly destroyed the ancient Papal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls (Basilica Papale San Paolo Fuori Le Mura) in Rome on July 15, 1823.  A workman repairing the lead in the church roof accidentally started a fire that burnt down the Basilica, which dated back to the third century and was unique in Rome, having retained its primitive style.  St Paul Outside-the-Walls is one of four major Papal Basilicas in Rome, along with St John in the Lateran (San Giovanni in Laterano), St Peter’s (San Pietro in Vaticano) and St Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore).  After the fire, Pope Leo XII appealed for donations to help rebuild the church in exactly the same style.  The Basilica was reopened in 1840 and reconsecrated in 1855 in the presence of Pope Pius IX.  The redecoration was helped by contributions from all over the world.  Read more… 

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Book of the Day: The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, edited by Steven Crowell

Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity. The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism is a volume of original essays, the first to be devoted exclusively to existentialism in over 40 years. A team of distinguished commentators discuss the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir and show how their focus on existence provides a perspective on contemporary issues in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, language and history.

Steven Crowell is Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  He is the author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning (2001) and the editor of The Prism of the Self: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson (1995).

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Nicola Abbagnano - philosopher

Thinker who championed ‘positive existentialism’ 

Nicola Abbagnano rejected the
negative tenets of existentialism

The philosopher Nicola Abbagnano, best known for his advancement of what he defined as positive existentialism, was born on this day in 1901 in Salerno in Campania.

Abbagnano, who spent much of his adult life in Turin, Milan and the Ligurian resort town of Santa Margherita Ligure, developed a philosophy that emphasised human possibility and freedom, rejecting more traditional existentialist discussions that focussed on how the struggle to create purpose in an inherently meaningless world can engender feelings of anguish and despair.

Many years on from his death in 1990, Abbagnano’s legacy of intellectual optimism continues to inspire philosophers who seek a balanced, pragmatic approach to existential questions, while his emphasis on ethical responsibility resonates in contemporary debates on human behaviour.

Abbagnano was born into a middle-class professional family in Salerno, where his father was a practising lawyer. He obtained a degree in philosophy in Naples, where his thesis became the subject of his first book Le sorgenti irrazionali del pensiero - The Irrational Sources of Thought, published in 1923. 

He subsequently taught philosophy and history at the Liceo Umberto I, in Naples, and from 1917 to 1936 he was the professor of philosophy and pedagogy in the Istituto di Magistero Suor Orsola Benincasa. 

From 1936 to 1976 he was based at the University of Turin, where he was appointed a full professor, first of the history of philosophy at the Faculty of Education, and from 1939 at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy.

The inner courtyard of the Palazzo dell'Università
in Turin, where Abbagnano was based for 40 years

As a scholar of philosophy, Abbagnano introduced into the national discourse his knowledge of the French and German existentialist trends, of which Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre were leading exponents.

His 1939 work, La struttura dell'esistenza - The Structure of Existence - is seen as a manifesto of the evolution of his thought, in which he proposed an alternative to the German existentialism of Heidegger and Jaspers.

He defined his philosophical vision as positive existentialism. In his work Possibilità e libertà - Possibility and Freedom - published in 1956, he clarified the meaning of his philosophy as neither pessimistic nor optimistic. He did not subscribe to the vision of man as being so hindered by uncertainty as to be prevented from achieving full potential, but accepted that fulfilment could never be certain. 

Abbagnano wrote extensively. In 1950, he was co-founder of the periodical Quaderni di sociologia - Sociology Notebooks - and in 1952 he was joint editor with the political philosopher Norberto Bobbio of the Rivista di filosofia - Philosophy Magazine. 

In 1964, he began writing for the Turin newspaper La Stampa, moving to Indro Montanelli’s Milan daily, Il Giornale, in 1972. 

Abbagnano's legacy of intellectual
optimism still inspires philosophers

Earlier, in the 1950s, he had organised a series of conventions under the banner of "New Enlightenment," bringing together academics who were interested in the main trends of the foreign philosophical thought. 

Many of his books, especially later in his career, became bestsellers, including his 1987 work La saggezza della filosofia - The Wisdom of Philosophy - and Dizionario di filosofia - Dictionary of Philosophy, published the same year.

His salary as a professor and his income from his writing enabled him to spend an increasing amount of time away from the oppressive heat of the cities on the coast of Liguria in Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure, where he acquired a home in 1959.

He delighted in the sunsets witnessed from Portofino, which for a few minutes, depending on weather conditions, bathed the village in a subtle, blue light. He also enjoyed swimming in the sea and chatting to fishermen on his walks along the waterfront.

It was in Santa Margherita Ligure, on the beach in front of the Hotel Continental, that he met Gigliola, with whom he spent the final 18 years of his life after they married in 1972. 

Abbagnano died in 1990 in Milan, aged 89. According to his wishes, he was buried in the cemetery of Santa Margherita Ligure.

The historic part of Salerno is made
up of quaint, narrow streets

Travel tip:

Salerno, situated some 55km (34 miles) south of Naples with a population of about 133,000, is a city with a reputation as an industrial port and is often overlooked by visitors to Campania, who tend to flock to Naples, Sorrento, the Amalfi coast and the Cilento. Yet it has an attractive waterfront and a quaint old town, at the heart of which is the Duomo, originally built in the 11th century, which houses in its crypt the tomb of one of the twelve apostles of Christ, Saint Matthew the Evangelist. It is also a good base for excursions both to the Amalfi coast, just a few kilometres to the north, and the Cilento, which can be found at the southern end of the Gulf of Salerno. Hotels are also cheaper than at the more fashionable resorts. The city has a Greek and Roman heritage and was an important Lombard principality in the middle ages, when the first medical school in the world was founded there. King Victor Emmanuel III moved there in 1943, making it a provisional seat of Government for six months and it was the scene of Allied landings during the invasion of Italy in World War II.  

The 16th century Castello di Santa
Margherita sits at the sea's edge
 

Travel tip:

Santa Margherita Ligure is a seaside town nestled between Rapallo and Portofino on the Riviera di Levante, noted for its pastel-coloured buildings, palm-lined promenades and lively marina.  Once a Roman settlement called Pescino, it has been a resort town since World War Two, with pebbly but picturesque beaches. Important buildings include the Basilica di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia, a beautiful baroque church, the 17th century Villa Durazzo, and the Castello di Santa Margherita, built in the 16th-century to defend against pirates.  The former fishing village of Portofino, which has become a resort famous for its picturesque harbour and historical association with celebrity visitors, is about 5km (three miles) from Santa Margherita Ligure along a road that hugs the coastline. It began to develop as a tourist destination in the late 19th century, when British and other Northern European aristocratic tourists were enticed by its charms, despite access then being mainly by boat, or horse and cart. 

Also on this day:

1979: The birth of writer and poet Pietro Ruggeri da Stabello

1823: Fire damages Rome Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls

1850: The birth of missionary and saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

1933: The birth of cartoonist Guido Crepax

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