11 July

NEW - Antoninus Pius - Roman Emperor

Hadrian’s adopted son presided over 23 years of peace

Antoninus Pius, the fourth of the so-called Five Good Emperors who ruled the Roman Empire between 96 and 180 AD, assumed power on this day in 138 following the death of Hadrian at his villa outside Naples the previous day.  As well as being notable for peace and stability, his reign was one of well-run administration, support for education and public works projects including expanded free access to drinking water in all parts of the empire. He was seen as a wise and benevolent ruler who made the well-being of his subjects a priority, an example being the attention he gave to ensuring freed slaves were given the full rights of citizenship.  Antoninus instigated legal reforms, built temples and theatres, was an active promoter of the arts and sciences, and rewarded the teachers of rhetoric and philosophy in particular with honours and financial incentives.  Despite a number of major disturbances in different parts of the empire during his time, he was reluctant to commit to any aggressive military action. Revolts in Mauretania, Germany, Dacia and Egypt were successfully contained by his armies with no recourse to escalation.  Read more…

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Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo - noblewoman

The shocking fate of Medici wife

The beautiful wife of Don Pietro de' Medici, Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo, was strangled to death with a dog lead on this day in 1576 in a villa near Barberino di Mugello in Tuscany.  The murder was carried out by her husband, Pietro, but he was never brought to justice. His brother, Francesco, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, gave out as the official line that his sister-in-law had died as a result of an accident.  Eleonora, who was more often referred to as Leonora, was born in Florence in 1553, the daughter of Garcia Alvarez di Toledo and Vittoria d’Ascanio Colonna. Her father and mother were living in Florence at the time because Garcia was in charge of the castles of Valdichiana.  When her mother died a few months later, the baby, Leonora, was left in the care of her aunt, Eleonora, the Duchess of Florence, and her husband, the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, who raised her, preparing her for a life at the Medici court.  After the Duchess, Eleonora, died, her daughter, Isabella, took over the supervision of the young Leonora.  A marriage was arranged between Leonora and Cosimo’s son and Isabella’s brother, Pietro.  Read more…

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Giorgio Armani – designer

Former army medic forged brilliant career in fashion

Giorgio Armani,who is considered by many to be Italy's greatest fashion designer, was born on this day in 1934 in Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna.  Known for his menswear and the clean, tailored lines of his collections for women, Armani has become a multi-billionaire.  His original career plan was to become a doctor and he enrolled in the Department of Medicine at the University of Milan but after three years left to join the army. Due to his medical background he was assigned to the military hospital in Verona.  After he left the army, Armani decided to have a complete career change and got a job as a window dresser for La Rinascente, a Milan department store.  He progressed to become a sales assistant in the menswear department and then moved on to work for Nino Cerruti as a menswear designer.  In 1973 Armani opened a design office in Milan from where he worked as a freelance designer for fashion houses. He founded his own company, Giorgio Armani, in Milan in 1975.  He began producing designs specifically for the United States and his label soon became one of the leading names in international fashion.   Read more…

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Giuseppe Arcimboldo – painter

Portraits were considered unique in the history of art

The artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who created imaginative portrait heads made up entirely of objects such as fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish, died on this day in 1593 in Milan.  Unique at the time, Arcimboldo’s work was greatly admired in the 20th century by artists such as Salvador Dali and his fellow Surrealist painters.  Giuseppe’s father, Biagio Arcimboldo, was also an artist and Giuseppe followed in his footsteps designing stained glass and frescoes for churches.  Arcimboldo (sometimes also known as Arcimboldi) at first painted entirely in the style of the time. His beautiful fresco of the Tree of Jesse can still be seen in the Duomo of Monza.  But in 1562 he abruptly changed his style after moving to Prague to become court painter to the erudite King Rudolph II.  He began to create human heads, which could be considered as portraits, made up of pieces of fruit and vegetable and other objects, which were chosen for the meaning attributed to the image.  Arcimboldo also painted settings for the court theatre in Prague and he became an expert in illusionist trickery. His paintings contained allegorical meanings, puns and jokes that were appreciated by his contemporaries, but were lost upon later audiences.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius, AD 138–161, by John S McHugh

The reign of Antoninus Pius is widely seen as the apogee of the Roman Empire yet, due to gaps in the historical sources, his reign has been overlooked by modern historians. He is considered one of the Five Good Emperors of the Antonine dynasty under whom the pax Romana enabled the empire to prosper, trade to flourish and culture to thrive. His reign is considered a Golden Age but in The Reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius, McHugh argues that this was partly an image created by imperial propaganda. There were serious conflicts in North Africa and Dacia, as well as a major revolt in Britain. On his death the empire stood on the cusp of the catastrophic invasions and rebellions that marked the reign of his successor Marcus Aurelius. Antoninus Pius became emperor through the hand of fate, being adopted by Hadrian only after the death of his intended heir, Lucius Aelius Caesar. His rule was a balancing act between securing his own safety, securing the succession of his adopted heir and denying opportunities for conspiracy and rebellion. ‘Equanimity’ was the last password he issued to his guards as he lay on his death bed. In the face of the threats and challenges he remained calm and composed, providing 23 years of stability; a calm before the storms that gathered both within and beyond Rome’s borders.

John S McHugh, who has a BA and MA in Ancient History, is the author of a number of books on Roman history, including The Emperor Commodus: God and Gladiator; Emperor Alexander Severus: Rome's Age of Insurrection, AD 222-235; and Sejanus, Regent of Rome.

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Antoninus Pius - Roman Emperor

Hadrian’s adopted son presided over 23 years of peace

History has judged Antoninus
Pius to be a benevolent leader

Antoninus Pius, the fourth of the so-called Five Good Emperors who ruled the Roman Empire between 96 and 180AD, assumed power on this day in 138 following the death of Hadrian at his villa outside Naples the previous day.

As well as being notable for peace and stability, his reign was one of well-run administration, support for education and public works projects including expanded free access to drinking water in all parts of the empire.

He was seen as a wise and benevolent ruler who made the well-being of his subjects a priority, an example being the attention he gave to ensuring freed slaves were given the full rights of citizenship.

Antoninus instigated legal reforms, built temples and theatres, was an active promoter of the arts and sciences, and rewarded the teachers of rhetoric and philosophy in particular with honours and financial incentives.

Despite a number of disturbances in different parts of the empire during his time, he was reluctant to commit to any aggressive military action. Revolts in Mauretania, Germany, Dacia and Egypt were successfully contained by his armies with no recourse to escalation.

Only in response to an uprising of the Brigantes, who controlled large parts of northern Britain, did Antoninus take a more aggressive approach.

He appointed a new governor, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who had previously governed Germania Inferior. Antoninus ordered Lollius to invade southern Scotland, driving the Brigantes back and constructing a new wall, the Antonine Wall across the Scottish territory 100 miles (62km) north of Hadrian’s Wall, from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde. 

The map of the Roman Empire as it looked during
the 23-year reign of Antoninus Pius

Unlike Hadrian’s Wall, the Antonine Wall was not maintained and had been abandoned by the time Antoninus died in 161.

Antoninus Pius was born Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Antoninus near Lanuvium, on the site of modern-day Lanuvio, about 38km (24 miles) south of Rome. His father, Titus Aurelius Fulvus, was a consul, whose father had been a senator of the same name. 

Titus Aurelius Fulvus died when Antoninus was a child and he was raised instead by his maternal grandfather, Gnaeus Arrius Antoninus, who was a friend of Pliny the Younger and had a reputation as a man of integrity. 

Antoninus held a number of official roles during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, including consul and proconsul, impressing Hadrian with his performance in these roles in Etruria and Asia. He married Hadrian's niece, Faustina, and following the death of Hadrian's first adopted son, Lucius Aelius Caesar, was adopted as Hadrian’s son and successor.

His own adoption by Hadrian was conditional on adopting future emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own successors. 

On taking over from Hadrian, Antoninus persuaded the senate to convey divine honours on his predecessor. They in turn gave Antoninus the surname Pius.

A coin from the reign of Antoninus Pius. The head
on the reverse is that of his son, Marcus Aurelius 

When Faustina died in 141, Antoninus asked the senate to deify her as a goddess. He authorised the construction of a temple to be built in the Roman Forum in her name and in her memory founded the Puellae Faustinianae, a charitable institution for the daughters of the poor.

Much of Antoninus’s popularity stemmed from his skill as an administrator and his generosity.

Free access for Roman citizens to drinking water was expanded with the construction of aqueducts, not only in Rome but throughout the Empire. He also built bridges and roads, yet still managed to reach the end of his reign with a substantial treasury surplus. 

He suspended the collection of taxes from multiple cities affected by natural disasters such as the fires and floods and offered large financial grants for rebuilding and recovery of Greek cities after two serious earthquakes.

The health of Antoninus declined as he approached 70 years of age. He found it difficult to stand and often fell asleep during official meetings. Anticipating his death after contracting a fever at his ancestral estate at Lorium, about 19 km (12 miles) west of Rome, he summoned the imperial council and passed the state to Marcus Aurelius.

Antoninus's body was buried in Hadrian's mausoleum. Marcus and Lucius nominated their father for deification, a request granted readily by the senate.  A column dedicated to Antoninus on the Campus Martius and the temple he had built in the Forum in 141 to his deified wife Faustina was rededicated to Faustina and Antoninus.

The term Good Emperors was coined by the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who noted that while most emperors to succeed to the throne by birth were “bad” in his view, there was a run of five - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, all of whom succeeded by adoption - who enjoyed the reputation as benevolent dictators, governing by earning the good will of their subjects.

The Torre Medievale was built in the ninth century
to protect Lanuvio against Saracen attacks

Travel tip:

The ancient Lanuvium, over which the present day town of Lanuvio is built, was a prosperous town under the Roman Empire but was destroyed by the Barbarians. Rebuilt in the 11th century, it was enriched by noble families such as the Cesarini and the Colonna. Situated in the Castelli Romani area south of Rome, Lanuvio has among its main visitor attractions the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which has a rich history dating back to the 13th century and contains the Colonna family tombs. Lanuvio’s civic museum contains more than 2,000 artefacts from prehistoric, pre-Roman, Roman, and Mediaeval periods. Look out also for the Torre Medievale, a cylindrical tower in two graduated sections with an encircling walkway, thought to have been erected in the ninth century to protect against Saracen attacks. Today the tower is home to the Consortium Vini Colli Lanuvini, with a tasting room and information on the vintages.  Lanuvio is host to an annual Festa della Musica every June, and the Festa del Vino in September.

The Pantheon is the most notable survivor of the
buildings that covered the Campus Martius

Travel tip:

Campus Martius in Roman times was a floodplain of the Tiber river, covering the land to the east of the curve in the river that begins south of Piazza del Popolo and loops round to the Isola Tiberina. It was the site of the altar of Mars and the temple of Apollo in the 5th century BC, later being drained and used as a military exercise. From the first century BC, it became covered with large public buildings, including baths, an amphitheatre, theatres, a gymnasium, crematorium and many temples, of which The Pantheon is the most notable surviving structure. The district of Rome called Campo Marzio covers part of the area. Like many of the structures of ancient Rome, the Column of Antoninus Pius ultimately collapsed and became buried. The remains were discovered in 1703, when some buildings were demolished in the area of Montecitorio. The marble base was restored between 1706 and 1708 and erected in the centre of Piazza di Montecitorio in 1741, before being taken to the Vatican Museums in 1787. Today it occupies a space in the courtyard outside the entrance to the Vatican Pinacoteca.

Also on this day: 

1576: The murder of noblewoman Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo

1593: The death of artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1934: The birth of fashion designer Giorgio Armani

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10 July

Caterina Cornaro – Queen of Cyprus

Monarch lived out her last years in 'sweet idleness'

The last ruler of the Kingdom of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, died on this day in 1510 in Venice.  She had been living out her life in a castle in Asolo, a pretty town in the Veneto, after the Venetian Government persuaded her to abdicate as Queen of Cyprus.  Her court at the castle became a centre of literary and artistic excellence as she spent her days in what has been described as ‘sweet idleness,’ a translation of the verb asolare, invented by the poet Pietro Bembo to describe her daily life in the town.  Caterina was born in 1406 into the noble Cornaro family, which had produced four Doges, and she grew up in the family palace on the Grand Canal. The family had a long trading and business association with Cyprus.  Caterina was married by proxy to King James II of Cyprus in 1468, securing commercial rights and privileges for Venice in Cyprus. In 1472 she set sail for Cyprus and married James in person at Famagusta.  James died soon after the wedding and Caterina, who was by then pregnant, became regent of the kingdom, as was specified in his will. She was imprisoned briefly, after Cyprus was seized by the Archbishop of Nicosia, but restored to continue ruling after a military intervention by Venice.  Read more…

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The death of Hadrian

Legacy of emperor famous for wall across Britain

The Roman emperor Hadrian, famous for ordering the construction of a wall to keep barbarians from entering Roman Britain, died on this day in 138 AD.  Aged about 62, he is thought to have been suffering from heart failure and passed away at his villa at Baiae – now Baia – on the northern shore of the Bay of Naples.  Hadrian was regarded as the third of the five so-called "Good Emperors", a term coined by the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who noted that while most emperors to succeed to the throne by birth were “bad” in his view, there was a run of five - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius – who all succeeded by adoption, who enjoyed the reputation as benevolent dictators. They governed by earning the good will of their subjects.  It is accepted that Hadrian came from a family with its roots in Hispania. His birthplace is thought to have been the city of Italica Hispania – on the site of what is now Seville.  His predecessor, Trajan, a maternal cousin of Hadrian's father, did not designate an heir officially and it is thought that his wife, Plotina, signed the papers of succession, claiming that Trajan had named Hadrian emperor immediately before his death.  Read more…

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Ludovico Chigi – Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Roman with many titles had powerful ancestors

Ludovico Chigi Albani della Rovere was born on this day in 1866 in Ariccia, a town in the Alban Hills to the southeast of Rome.  Chigi was the son of Imperial Prince Mario Chigi della Rovere-Albani and his wife, Princess Antoinette zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn. His father’s family, the Chigi, was one of the most prominent noble Roman families and they were descended from wealthy Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi.  Another of their ancestors was Pope Alexander VII, who in the 17th century had conferred upon his nephew, Agostino Chigi, the hereditary princedoms of Farnese and Campagnano and the dukedoms of Ariccia and Formello. Chigi was a wealthy banker from Siena, who had gone to live in Rome, taking his money with him, and he had lent considerable sums of money to his uncle, the Pope.  For all the descendants of the Chigi male line, Pope Alexander VII had procured the title of Imperial Prince and Princess from the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I.  Agostino Chigi had also helped Pope Julius II financially and had been made treasury and notary of the Apostolic Camera. Julius II had authorised the Chigi family to augment their name and arms with his own, Della Rovere. Read more…

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Calogero Vizzini - Mafia chieftain

‘Man of Honour’ installed as Mayor by Allies

The Sicilian Mafia boss Calogero Vizzini, known as Don Calò, died on this day in 1954 in Villalba, a small town in the centre of the island about 100km (62 miles) southeast of the capital, Palermo.  He was 76 and had been in declining health. He was in an ambulance that was taking him home from a clinic in Palermo and was just entering the town when he passed away.  His funeral was attended by thousands of peasants dressed in black and a number of politicians as well as priests played active roles in the service. One of his pallbearers was Don Francesco Paolo Bontade, a powerful mafioso from Palermo.  Although he had a criminal past, Don Calò acquired the reputation as an old-fashioned ‘man of honour’, whose position became that of community leader, a man to whom people looked to settle disputes and to maintain order and peace through his power.  In rural Sicily, such figures commanded much greater respect than politicians or policemen, many of whom were corrupt.  In his own words, in a newspaper interview in 1949, his view of the world was that “in every society there has to be a category of people who straighten things out when situations get complicated.”  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance, by Holly S Hurlburt

Caterina Corner, a Venetian noblewoman and the last Queen of Cyprus, led a complex and remarkable life. In 1468, Corner married King Jacques II Lusignan of Cyprus at the behest of her family, whose ambitions matched those of the Venetian republic anxious to extend its empire. In the first year of her reign, pregnant and widowed, she became regent for the kingdom. This study considers for the first time the strategies of her reign, negotiating Venetian encroachment, family pressures, and the challenges of female rule. Using previously understudied sources, such as her correspondence with Venetian magistracies, the book shows how Corner marshalled her royal authority until and beyond her forced abdication in 1489. Daughter of Venice offers a unique perspective of Corner’s life that reveals new insights into Renaissance imperialism, politics, familial ambition, and conventions of ideal womanhood as revealed in the portraits, poetry, and orations dedicated to her. 

Holly S Hurlburt is Associate Dean, University College and Professor of History at North Carolina State University.

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9 July

Gianluca Vialli - footballer and coach

Striker who shone with Sampdoria and Juventus and managed Chelsea

The footballer Gianluca Vialli, who enjoyed success as a player in Italy and England and led Chelsea to five trophies as manager of the London club, was born on this day in 1964 in Cremona in Lombardy.  After beginning his professional career with his local team, Cremonese, Vialli spent eight seasons with Sampdoria of Genoa, helping a team that had seldom previously finished higher than mid-table in Serie A enjoy their most successful era, winning the Coppa Italia three times, the European Cup-Winners’ Cup and an historic first Serie A title in 1990-91.  He then spent four years with Juventus, winning another Scudetto in 1994-95 and becoming a Champions League winner the following season.  He signed for Chelsea in 1996 as one of the first in a wave of top Italian players arriving in the Premier League in the second half of that decade, becoming player-manager in 1998 after the man who signed him, Ruud Gullit, was sacked.  In the blue of Chelsea, Vialli won medals in the FA Cup as a player, the Football League Cup, the Cup-Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Super Cup as player-manager.  Read more…

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Adriano Panatta – tennis player

French Open champion was most at home on the clay

The only tennis player ever to defeat Bjorn Borg at Roland Garros in Paris, Adriano Panatta was born on this day in 1950 in Rome.  A successful singles player, Panatta reached the peak of his career in 1976 when he won the French Open, gaining his only Grand Slam title, defeating the American player, Harold Solomon, in the final 6-1, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6.  Panatta learnt to play tennis as a youngster on the clay courts of the Tennis Club Parioli in Rome, where his father was the caretaker.  He won top-level titles at Bournemouth in 1973, Florence in 1974 and at Kitzbuhel in Austria and Stockholm in 1975.  In the same year that he won the French Open, Panatta won the Italian Open in Rome, beating Guillermo Vilas in the final 2-6, 7-6, 6-2, 7-6. In the first round of the competition he had saved 11 match points in his match against the Australian Kim Warwick.  Panatta ended 1976 by helping Italy capture its only Davis Cup title, winning two singles and a doubles rubber in the final against Chile. He also reached his career-high singles ranking of World number four that year.  The only player to have defeated Bjorn Borg in the French Open, Panatta had the distinction of achieving this feat twice.  Read more…

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Paolo Di Canio - footballer

Sublime talent overshadowed by fiery temperament

The brilliant but controversial footballer Paolo Di Canio was born on this day in 1968 in the Quarticciolo neighbourhood of Rome.  Di Canio, an attacking player with a reputation for scoring spectacular goals, played for several of Italy’s top clubs but also forged a career in Britain, joining Glasgow Celtic in Scotland and representing Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham United and Charlton Athletic during a seven-year stay in England.  After finishing his playing career back in Italy, he returned to England to become manager of Swindon Town and then Sunderland, although it was a brief stay.  Di Canio scored almost 150 goals in his career but his fiery temper landed him in trouble on the field while his political views - he was openly a supporter of fascism - attracted negative headlines off it.  Despite growing up in a working-class area of Rome which was a stronghold of AS Roma fans, Di Canio supported their city rivals SS Lazio from an early age. As a child, he was overweight, but his love for football drove him to beat his addiction to junk food and high-calorie fizzy drinks and become supremely physically fit.  Read more…

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Ottorino Respighi – violinist and composer

Talented Bolognese brought a Russian flavour to Italian music

The musician Ottorino Respighi was born on this day in 1879 in an apartment inside Palazzo Fantuzzi in the centre of Bologna.  As a composer, Respighi is remembered for bringing Russian orchestral colour and some of Richard Strauss’s harmonic techniques into Italian music.  He is perhaps best known for his three orchestral tone poems Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals, but he also wrote several operas.  Respighi was born into a musical family and learnt to play the piano and violin at an early age.  He studied the violin and viola with Federico Sarti at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna and then went to St Petersburg to be the principal violinist in the orchestra of the Imperial Theatre. While he was there he studied with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and acquired an interest in orchestral composition.  One of Respighi’s piano concertos was performed at Bologna in 1902 and an orchestral piece by him was played at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York the same year.  His operas brought him more recognition and in 1913 he was appointed as professor of composition at the prestigious St Cecilia Academy in Rome.  Read more…

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Manlio Brosio - NATO secretary-general

Anti-Fascist politician became skilled diplomat

Manlio Brosio, the only Italian to be made a permanent secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was born on this day in 1897 in Turin.  Brosio, whose distinguished diplomatic career had seen him hold the office of Italian ambassador to the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France, was appointed to lead NATO in 1964 and remained in post until 1971, the second longest-serving of the 13 secretary-generals so far.  Known for his congenial personality, he insisted that others behaved courteously and with respect for etiquette, while conducting himself with self-restraint.  This enabled him to maintain a good relationship with all NATO ambassadors and helped him manage a number of difficult situations.  Some critics felt he was too cautious but his low-key approach is now credited with keeping NATO together during the crisis that developed in 1966 when General Charles de Gaulle, the French president, threatened the organisation's existence by insisting that NATO removed all its military installations from France within a year.  France was one of three nuclear powers among the 15 members of NATO.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Goals: Inspirational Stories to Help Tackle Life's Challenges, by Gianluca Vialli. Translated by Gabriele Marcotti

'I want to inspire people. I want someone to look at me and say: "Because of you I didn't give up".'  Goals is a very personal and deeply-moving collection of life-affirming and inspirational real-life stories from which the late Chelsea and Italy football legend Gianluca Vialli drew great strength and resolve whilst living with pancreatic cancer.  The stories and the individuals involved were selected by Vialli because they offered him comfort and inspiration at the time of his greatest challenge, and he felt that they can do the same for many of us, whatever it might be that we are facing.  The result is a beautifully-written and touching narrative which is by turns vital and poignant, spine-tingling and heart-rending.  The very last story in Goals is Vialli's own, bravely and movingly chronicling his battle with this cruel illness.

Gabriele Marcotti is an Italian sports journalist, sports author, and radio and television presenter. He previously collaborated with Gianluca Vialli to write The Italian Job: A Journey to the Heart of Two Great Footballing Cultures

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8 July

Artemisia Gentileschi – painter

Brilliant artist who survived torture by thumbscrews 

Artemisia Gentileschi, who followed in the footsteps of the Baroque painter Caravaggio by painting biblical scenes with dramatic realism, was born on this day in 1593 in Rome.  As a young woman she was raped by an artist friend of her father who had been entrusted with teaching her, and when he was brought to trial by her father she was forced to give evidence under torture.  This event shaped her life and she poured out her horrific experiences into brutal paintings, such as her two versions of Judith Slaying Holofernes.  Gentileschi was notable for pictures of strong and suffering women from myths, allegories, and the Bible. Some of her best known themes are Susanna and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes, the most famous of which, painted between 1614 and 1620, is in the Uffizi in Florence, and Judith and Her Maidservant.   She had an ability to produce convincing depictions of the female figure, anywhere between nude and fully clothed, that few male painters could match.  It was many years before Gentileschi’s genius was fully appreciated, but a newly discovered self portrait depicting herself as St Catherine of Siena was bought by the National Gallery in London for £3.6 million, a record amount for her work.  Read more…

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Death of the poet Shelley

Dramatic storm took the life of young literary talent

English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley died on this day in 1822 while travelling from Livorno in Tuscany to Lerici in Liguria in his sailing boat, the Don Juan.  Just a month before his 30th birthday, the brilliant poet of the Romantic era drowned during a sudden, dramatic storm in the Gulf of La Spezia that caused his boat to sink.  His body was later washed ashore and, in keeping with the quarantine regulations at the time, was cremated on the beach near Viareggio on the Tuscan coast.  Shelley had been living with his wife, the writer Mary Shelley, at a rented villa in Lerici and was returning to his home from Livorno, where he had been arranging the start-up of a new literary magazine to be called The Liberal.  He had set sail with two other people on board the Don Juan at about noon on Monday 8 July.  His companions were a retired naval officer, Edward Ellerker Williams, and a boatboy, Charles Vivien. Both also perished.  A friend had watched Shelley’s departure until he was about ten miles out of the harbour and then there had been a storm and he had lost sight of the boat.  Three days later one of Shelley’s friends was informed that a water keg and some bottles from the boat had been washed up on a beach near Viareggio.  Read more…

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Ernest Hemingway – American novelist

War wounds sustained in Italy inspire the great American novel

An 18-year-old American Red Cross driver named Ernest Hemingway was severely wounded by shrapnel from an Austrian mortar shell on this day in 1918 at Fossalta di Piave in the Veneto.  Hemingway was taken to a field hospital in Treviso, from where he was transferred by train to a hospital in Milan. While in the hospital and recovering after two operations, he fell in love with his nurse, 26-year-old Agnes von Kurowsky.  His experiences of being wounded in Italy and falling in love later inspired him to write the novel, A Farewell to Arms.  On leaving school Hemingway had worked briefly as a reporter for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian front in World War One to enlist as an ambulance driver.  While stationed at Fossalta di Piave he was bringing chocolates and cigarettes to the men on the front line when he was seriously injured by mortar fire. Despite his own wounds, Hemingway assisted some Italian soldiers to safety, for which he later received the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery.  After his release from hospital, he returned to the United States in January 1919. He and Agnes had agreed to get married in America, but two months later she wrote to say she had become engaged to an Italian army officer.  Read more…

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Gian Giorgio Trissino – dramatist and poet

Innovative playwright spotted the potential of Palladio

Literary theorist, philologist, dramatist and poet Gian Giorgio Trissino was born on this day in 1478 in Vicenza.  As well as his contribution to Italian culture, Trissino is remembered for educating and helping Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, a young mason he discovered working on his villa in Cricoli, just outside Vicenza.  He took the young man on two visits to Rome that profoundly influenced his development into a great architect and he gave him the name Palladio, after the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene.  Trissino had been born into a wealthy family and was able to travel widely, studying Greek in Milan and philosophy in Ferrara. He was part of Niccolò Machiavelli’s literary circle in Florence before he settled in Rome, where he associated with the humanist and poet, Pietro Bembo. He became a close friend of the dramatist, Giovanni Rucella, and served Popes Leo X and Clement VII.  Trissino’s most important dramatic work was the blank verse tragedy Sofonisba, published in 1524 and first performed in 1562.  The play was based on a story about the Carthaginian wars by the Roman historian Livy. It employed the dramatic techniques of Sophocles and Euripides.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Artemisia, by Alexandra Lapierre

Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the most fascinating artists in history. Apprenticed at an early age to her father, the 17th-century painter Orazio Gentileschi, she rapidly became more famous than he was, for her rich, dramatic canvases. But her fame was tarnished by scandal. At the age of 17, she was violently raped by Agostino Tassi, an artist friend of Orazio's. On discovering Tassi's betrayal, Orazio took the case to court and there followed, in 1612, eight months of humiliation for Artemisia as the inhabitants of Rome's colourful artist's quarter came to give evidence. Their testimony - frank, partial, often cruel - in this first rape trial ever to be fully documented, made Artemisia and her father notorious.

Alexandra Lapierre is a novelist and biographer. Her book, Fanny Stevenson, won the Grand Prix Littéraire des Lectrices de Elle. She lives in Rome.

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7 July

NEW - Michele Amari – politician, historian, and writer

Scholarly revolutionary became a leading translator of mediaeval Arabic

Patriotic Sicilian revolutionary Michele Amari was born on this day in 1806 in Palermo.  Amari published a history in 1842 of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, was a minister in the Sicilian revolutionary government in 1848, and was part of Garibaldi’s revolutionary cabinet in Sicily in 1860.  He embraced the cause of Italian unification and helped prepare Sicilians for the annexation of Sicily by the Kingdom of Sardinia. During his later years, he served as a Senator of the new Kingdom of Italy.  A grandson of the third Count Amari of Sant’Adriano, he grew up in an aristocratic household. The title had been acquired in 1772 by one of his ancestors, who had held the hereditary office of the administrator of the royal tobacco monopoly.  Michele Amari lived with his grandfather in the centre of Palermo after his father, Ferdinando, had financial problems caused by his gambling. Amari was educated in Palermo and one of his teachers was a leading Sicilian historian.  Amari’s father later introduced him to Francophile democratic circles in Palermo and secured him a position at the Ministry of the Interior in 1820.  Read more…

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Vittorio De Sica - film director

Oscar-winning maestro behind 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves

Vittorio De Sica, the director whose 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is regarded still as one of the greatest movies of all time, was born on this day in 1901 in Sora in Lazio.  Bicycle Thieves, a story set in the poverty of post-War Rome, was a masterpiece of Italian neorealism, the genre of which the major figures, in addition to De Sica, were Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Giuseppe de Santis and, to a smaller degree, Federico Fellini.  The movie was one of four that landed Academy Awards for De Sica. Another of his great neorealist movies, Shoeshine (1948), won an honorary Oscar, while Bicycle Thieves won a special award as an outstanding foreign language film in the days before the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced.  De Sica would later win Oscars in that section for Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) – a comedy starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni – and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970).  His Marriage Italian Style (1964), also starring Loren and Mastroianni, also earned a nomination as Best Foreign Language Film and for Loren as Best Actress. Loren did win Best Actress for her role in his 1961 movie La Ciociara, which was released outside Italy as Two Women.  Read more…

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Gian Carlo Menotti - composer and librettist

Founded Spoleto festival after finding fame in the United States

Gian Carlo Menotti, who wrote more than two dozen operas and founded the annual Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, was born on this day in 1911 in the village of Cadegliano-Viconago, on the Swiss-Italian border.  A prodigiously talented child who began to write music at the age of seven, Menotti was sent to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as a teenager and settled in the United States.  For many years he was the partner - professionally and in life - of the brilliant American composer, Samuel Barber.  Menotti wrote the libretto for Barber’s 1957 work Vanessa, which is regarded as one of the 20th century’s finest operas.  Two of Menotti’s own operas, The Consul (1950) and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1955), won Pulitzer Prizes.  He created the Festival dei Due Mondi in 1957 out of a desire to make his mark in the country of his birth but also because he was intrigued by the idea of creating an event in which he and his friends could showcase their own work and to which he could also invite some of the great names of music and the arts to perform before a less traditional audience.  Read more…

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Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola - architect

Legacy of beautiful Renaissance buildings throughout Italy

One of the great architects of the 16th century, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, died on this day in 1573 in Rome.  Often referred to simply as Vignola, the architect left the world with a wealth of beautiful buildings and two acknowledged masterpieces, the Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Church of the Gesù in Rome.  Along with Andrea Palladio and Sebastiano Serlio, Vignola was responsible for spreading the style of the Italian Renaissance throughout Europe.  He was born at Vignola near Modena in Emilia-Romagna in 1507. He began his career as an architect in Bologna and then went to Rome to make drawings of Roman temples. He was invited to Fontainebleau  to work for King Francois I, where it is believed he first met the Bolognese architect, Serlio.  Back in Italy he designed the Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna and then moved to Rome to work for Pope Julius III. He later worked alongside the artist Michelangelo, who greatly influenced his architectural style.  From 1564 onwards, Vignola worked on the new St Peter’s Basilica, following the plans Michelangelo had drawn up for the domes.  Read more…

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1990 World Cup - Italy’s consolation prize

Azzurri beat England for third place

Italy beat England 2-1 in Bari to claim third place in the World Cup finals, of which they were the host nation, on this day in 1990.  It was a small consolation for the team, managed by Azeglio Vicini, who had played some of the best football of all the competing nations to reach the semi-finals, only to be held to a 1-1 draw by Argentina in Naples and then lose the match on a penalty shoot-out.  Their heartbreak mirrored that suffered by England, who had also suffered a defeat on penalties in their semi-final against West Germany in Turin.  Many neutrals believed that Italy and England would have been more worthy finalists, particularly in retrospect after West Germany had beaten Argentina by a penalty five minutes from the end of 90 minutes in a match of cynical fouls and attritional football that is seen as the poorest World Cup final in the competition’s history.  The play-off for third place lacked the intensity of a final, reflecting the heavy weight of disappointment each set of players was carrying.  Yet it was important to the Azzurri to finish on a high note and a crowd of 51,426 inside the Stadio San Nicola - a new stadium built specially for Italia ‘90 - saw the game decided with three goals in the final quarter.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Vittorio De Sica. The Art of Stage and Screen, by Flavio De Bernardinis

While Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti came into being with neorealism, Vittorio De Sica matured through neorealism. As an already established artist, he put himself wholly on the line and played a gambit that revolutionized Italian and world cinema. From 1923, the year he made his debut in a minor role with Tatiana Pavlova’s theatre company, and over the following 20 years of his career in Italian theatre and cinema, he sowed the seeds of the neorealism that would lead to his 1943 film I bambini ci guardano (The Children are Watching Us). Vittorio De Sica. The Art of Stage and Screen tells his whole story, before, during and after neorealism. From the early days in theatre to his role behind the camera, De Sica runs the gauntlet of the history of the performing arts in Italy at a crucial point in time: the years straddling the decline of the theatre of the great stars of the 19th century tradition to the birth of the director’s theatre, the “talkies”, songs and gramophone records, up to the formidable season of “Sciuscià” (Ragazzi) (Shoeshine, 1946) and Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948). This is what makes De Sica unique. He was an actor, singer, and director. To tell De Sica’s story is also to narrate how the young Italy, a kingdom that had been united for only 50 years, aimed to represent itself in the theatre and on screen, showing how the Italian character was portrayed – in what light, with what colours and tones, and how the Italian middle classes attempted to assume the cultural hegemony of the country through comedy.  De Sica was a unique figure in this representation of the ethos of Italy, its customs and traditions, its strengths and weaknesses, its glories and its miseries.

Flavio De Bernardinis is a scholar of the history and aesthetics of cinema and entertainment. He is the author of a number of books and teaches Film History and the Analysis of Film Language at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. 

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Michele Amari – politician, historian, and writer

Scholarly revolutionary became a leading translator of mediaeval Arabic

Michele Amari embraced the 
cause of Italian unification

Patriotic Sicilian revolutionary Michele Amari was born on this day in 1806 in Palermo.

Amari published a history in 1842 of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, was a minister in the Sicilian revolutionary government in 1848, and was part of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s revolutionary cabinet in Sicily in 1860.

He embraced the cause of Italian unification and helped prepare Sicilians for the annexation of Sicily by the Kingdom of Sardinia. During his later years, he served as a Senator of the new Kingdom of Italy.

A grandson of the third Count Amari of Sant’Adriano, he grew up in an aristocratic household. The title had been acquired in 1772 by one of his ancestors, who had held the hereditary office of the administrator of the royal tobacco monopoly.

Michele Amari lived with his grandfather in the centre of Palermo after his father, Ferdinando, had financial problems caused by his gambling. Armari was educated in Palermo and one of his teachers was a leading Sicilian historian.

Amari’s father later introduced him to Francophile democratic circles in Palermo and secured him a position at the Ministry of the Interior in 1820.

After his grandfather died, Amari returned to live in his father’s house and he was involved, along with his father, in the uprising of the Carbonari in Palermo. The rebels were demanding Sicilian independence and a liberal constitution.

Amari served in the governments
of Sicily and the unified Italy

Ferdinando Amari was initially sentenced to death in 1822 for his participation in the rebellion, but he was kept in prison instead until he was released in 1834. During those years, Michele Amari read widely about politics and published translations of English authors, at one point receiving a letter of thanks from Sir Walter Scott for his work.

By 1837, Amari had prepared an outline for his book investigating the War of the Sicilian Vespers between 1282 and 1302. The work was interpreted by many people as being a call to overthrow the Bourbon rule in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Amari was involved in health administration during an outbreak of cholera in 1837 and he was transferred to Naples in 1838, but the book was eventually released in 1842.

The title was deliberately understated to bypass censorship, but it rapidly won an audience in Sicily and on the mainland in Italy. This caused concern to the Neapolitan Government and Amari had to go into exile in Paris, where he moved in French liberal elite circles.

During the 1848 Sicilian revolution, Amari returned to the island to take up the Chair of Law at the University in Palermo. He was elected as a deputy in the Sicilian parliament and became Minister of Finance in the revolutionary government.

After lobbying for the recognition of the Sicilian state in Paris and London, he accepted an academic position at the University of Pisa.

The Villa Amari in Via Traversa
was the family's home in Palermo

Amari returned to Sicily in 1860 after Garibaldi’s Expedition of The Thousand and campaigned among Sicilians for approval of the annexation of the island. Amari was appointed a senator of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1861, two months before the proclamation of the new Kingdom of Italy.

He served as Minister of Education in the Italian Government from 1862 until 1864 and lived at times in Florence, Rome, and Pisa. He died in Florence in 1889 and was later buried in Palermo, at the church of San Domenico.

Having mastered Arabic while living in Paris, Amari was a forerunner for Oriental studies in Italy and became recognised as one of the finest translators of mediaeval Arabic in Europe.

Pasta alla Norma, served in a sauce made from
tomatoes and aubergine, is a typical Sicilian dish

Travel tip:

With an area of 10,000 square miles (26,000 sq km), and 620 miles of coastline, Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, just off the toe of Italy’s boot. The ancient ruins, diverse architecture and wonderful cuisine enjoyed by visitors are all testament to the island’s colourful history. It's two biggest cities are Palermo and Catania, while the among the biggest draws for tourists are the cities of the southeast of the island, such as Siracusa (Syracuse), Noto and Ragusa, famous for their stunning Sicilian Baroque architecture, the upmarket resort of Taormina, and the Greek temples at Agrigento. Watching over the east of the island is Mount Etna, a volcano that is still active today. 

Palermo's magnificent cathedral relects the
diversity of architectural style on the island

Travel tip:

Sicily’s capital city, Palermo, where Michele Amari was born and is buried, has a wealth of beautiful architecture, plenty of shops and markets, and is home to the largest opera house in Italy, the Teatro Massimo. Amari’s family residence, the baroque Villa Amari, was built in 1720 by the first Count of Armari in Via Traversa in the Piano dei Colli in Palermo. Palermo's architectural styles bear testament to a history of northern European and Arabian influences.  The church of San Cataldo on Piazza Bellini is a good example of the fusion of Norman and Arabic architectural styles, having a bell tower typical of those common in northern France but with three spherical red domes on the roof, while the city’s majestic Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary includes Norman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and Neoclassical elements. 

Also on this day:

1573: The death of architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola

1903: The birth of film director Vittorio De Sica

1911: The death of composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti

1990: Italy finished third in Italia '90 World Cup

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6 July

Goffredo Mameli - writer

Young poet wrote the stirring words of Italian national anthem

Patriot and poet Goffredo Mameli died on this day in 1849 in Rome.  A follower of political revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini and a supporter of the Risorgimento movement, Mameli is the author of the words of the Italian national anthem, Fratelli d’Italia.  Mameli was the son of a Sardinian admiral and was born in Genoa in 1827 where his father was commanding the fleet of the Kingdom of Sardinia.  As he grew up he became interested in the theories of Mazzini and he joined a political movement that supported the idea of a united Italy.  Mameli was a 20-year-old student when he wrote the words that are still sung today by Italians as their national anthem.  They were sung to music for the first time in November 1847 to celebrate the visit of King Charles Albert of Sardinia to Genoa.  The anthem is known in Italian as L’inno di Mameli - Mameli’s hymn.  Mameli became involved in the movement to expel the Austrians from Italy and joined Garibaldi’s army. He also became director of a newspaper that launched a press campaign urging the people to rise up against Austria.  He died after being accidentally injured in the leg by the bayonet of one of his colleagues during a battle.  Read more…

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Cesare Mori - Mafia buster

'Iron Prefect' who 'eliminated' the Cosa Nostra

Cesare Mori, the prefect of police credited with crushing the Sicilian Mafia during the inter-War years, died on this day in 1942 at the age of 70.  At the time of his death he was living in retirement in Udine, in some respects a forgotten figure in a country in the grip of the Second World War.  Yet during his police career his reputation as a hard-line law enforcer was such that the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini personally appointed him as prefect of Palermo, charged with breaking the Mafia’s hold over Sicily and re-establishing the authority of the State by any means necessary.  Mori was born in Pavia in Lombardy, by then part of the new Kingdom of Italy, in 1871.  His upbringing was difficult.  His first years were spent living in an orphanage, although his parents were not dead and looked after him after he had turned seven.  He attended the Military Academy in Turin and was set on a career in the army but after marrying Angelina Salvi in 1897 he quit and joined the police, taking up a posting in Ravenna.  His first experience of Sicily came with a brief posting to Castelvetrano, near Trapani, where he captured a notorious bandit, Paolo Grisalfi.  Read more…

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Pietro Valpreda - the ‘bomber’ who never was

Jailed suspect acquitted after 16 years

Pietro Valpreda, who was arrested following the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in December 1969 and was held for 16 years awaiting trial as a terrorist before being acquitted, died on this day in 2002.  The Piazza Fontana bombing killed 17 people and injured 88 others after a device was detonated inside the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, which is just a few streets away from the Duomo in the centre of Milan.  Valpreda was an anarchist sympathiser but insisted he was at home on the afternoon of the incident, being cared for by an aunt, who swore under police questioning that her nephew, who was a dancer with a vaudeville company, was suffering from flu.  He was charged, however, on the evidence of a taxi driver, Cornelio Rolandi, who said he dropped a man fitting Valpreda’s description in the vicinity of the bank before the bomb went off and picked him up again afterwards, minus a briefcase he had been carrying when he dropped him.  Despite considering Rolandi’s evidence to be unreliable on the grounds of inconsistencies in his description of events, prosecuting magistrates held Valpreda.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Prophetic Times: Visions of Emancipation in the History of Italy, by Maurizio Viroli

Throughout Italy's history, prophetic voices - poets, painters, philosophers - have bolstered the struggle for social and political emancipation. These voices denounced the vices of compatriots and urged them toward redemption. They gave meaning to suffering, helping to prevent moral surrender; they provided support, with pathos and anger, which set into motion the moral imagination, culminating in redemption and freedom. While the Fascist regime attempted to enlist Mazzini and the prophets of the Risorgimento in support of its ideology, the most perceptive anti-Fascist intellectual and political leaders composed eloquent prophetic pages to sustain the resistance against the totalitarian regime. By the end of the 1960s, no prophet of social emancipation had been able to move the consciences of the Italians. Prophetic Times is an Italian story, but also the world's story, an inspiration for social and political emancipation everywhere.

Maurizio Viroli is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Princeton University and Professor of Government at University of Texas, Austin.

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