7 December

Giovanni Battista Falda - engraver

Printmaker who found market among Grand Tourists

The engraver and printmaker Giovanni Battista Falda, who turned his artistic talent into commercial success as 17th century Rome welcomed the first waves of Europe’s Grand Tourists, was born on this day in 1643 in Valduggia in Piedmont.  Falda created engravings depicting the great buildings, gardens and fountains of Rome, as well as maps and representations of ceremonial events, which soon became popular with visitors keen to take back pictorial souvenirs of their stay, to remind them of what they had seen and to show their friends.  He took commissions to make illustrations of favourite views and of specific buildings and squares, and because the early Grand Tourists were mainly young men from wealthy families in Britain and other parts of Europe he was able to charge premium prices.  Falda showed artistic talent at an early age.  Read more…

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Marcus Tullius Cicero – statesman, scholar and writer

The brutal beheading of a great Roman politician and orator

Cicero, the last defender of the Roman Republic, was assassinated on this day in 43BC in Formia in southern Italy.  Marcus Tullius Cicero had been a lawyer, philosopher and orator who had written extensively during the turbulent political times that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire.  In the months following Julius Caesar's assassination in 44BC, Cicero had delivered several speeches urging the Roman Senate to support Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son, in his struggle against Mark Antony.  Cicero attacked Antony in a series of powerful addresses and urged the Roman senate to name Antony as an enemy of the state. Antony responded by issuing an order for Cicero to be hunted down and killed.  He was the most doggedly pursued of all the enemies of Antony whose deaths had been ordered. Cicero was finally caught on 7 December 43BC. Read more…

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini – sculptor and architect

Italy's last universal genius

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was considered the greatest sculptor of the 17th century, was born on this day in 1598 in Naples.  Bernini developed the Baroque style, leading the way for many other artists that came after him. He was also an outstanding architect and was responsible for much of the important work on St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  Bernini began his career working for his father, Pietro Bernini, a Florentine who moved to live and work in Rome.  The young Bernini earned praise from the painter Annibale Carracci and patronage from Pope Paul V and soon established himself as an independent sculptor.  His early works in marble show his amazing ability to depict realistic facial expressions.  Pope Urban VIII became his patron and urged Bernini to paint and also to practise architecture. His first major commission was to remodel the Church of Santa Bibiana in Rome.  Read more…

Azzone Visconti - ruler of Milan

Nobleman who used family power to bring prosperity to the city

Azzone Visconti, a nobleman sometimes described as the founder of the state of Milan and who brought prosperity to the city in the 14th century, was born on this day in 1302 in Ferrara.  The Visconti family ruled Lombardy and Milan from 1277 to 1457 before the family line ended and, after a brief period as a republic, the Sforza family took control.  Azzone was the son of Galeazzo I Visconti and Beatrice d’Este, the daughter of the Marquis of Ferrara.  Galeazzo was descendant from Ottone Visconti, who had first taken control of Milan for the family in 1277, when he was made Archbishop of Milan by Pope Urban IV but found himself opposed by the Della Torre family, who had expected Martino della Torre to be given the title.  Ottone was barred from entering the city until he defeated Napoleone della Torre in a battle.  Read more…

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Feast of St Ambrose in Milan

Celebrating the life of a clever and fearless Bishop

The feast day of Milan’s patron saint, St Ambrose (Sant’Ambrogio), is celebrated in the city on this day every year.  A service is held in the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio to mark the saint's day on December 7.  The day is an official public holiday in Milan. Banks, government offices and schools are closed along with some shops. Public transport may also be restricted.  A service is held in the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, the church built by Ambrose himself. The date also marks the opening of the traditional 'Oh Bej! Oh Bej!' street market, with stalls selling local food, wine and crafts.  Aurelius Ambrosius was born in the year 340. He trained as a lawyer and was a great orator before becoming Bishop of Milan in response to popular demand.  After his ordination he wrote about religion, composed hymns and music and was generous to the poor.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Venice & the Grand Tour, by Bruce Redford

For well over a century, the Grand Tour of France and Italy - which included a stay in Venice - served as the ultimate in finishing schools for the young male elite of Great Britain. Venice & the Grand Tour explores Venice's hold on the imagination of the Grand Tourist and connects the ideology of the Tour to the mythology of Venice. According to Bruce Redford, the Tour offered a combination of aesthetic, social political and sexual experience, and it provided its alumni with a life-long source of cultural and political authority. Yet from the beginning the Tour was also viewed with deep suspicion: it was feared that the very experiences that completed the British gentleman might well undo him. The aspiration and ambivalence that characterise the Tour attached themselves most powerfully to the time spent in Venice. Drawing on a wide range of materials - from guide-books to portraits, satirical poems to garden pavilions - Redford investigates Venice's power of attraction for the English and shows that it was a source of many echoes and metaphors of England's own cultural, political, and geo-graphical situation.

Bruce Redford is Professor Emeritus in Baroque & 18th Century Art at Boston University.  His other publications include The Converse of the Pen (1986), The Letters of Samuel Johnson (1992-94),  Designing the Life of Johnson (2002), and Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England (2008).

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6 December

NEW - Il sorpasso - commedia all’italiana classic

Film regarded as director Dino Risi’s masterpiece

Il sorpasso, which has come to be seen as one of the most influential Italian films of the 20th century and a defining example of the commedia all’italiana genre, was released for Italian cinema audiences on this day in 1963.  Directed by Dino Risi, produced by Mario Cecchi Gori and with Vittorio Gassman outstanding as one of the film’s male lead characters, made its debut in the United States in December of the following year under the title The Easy Life, it was also a pioneer for the so-called “road movie” in Italy. It has been judged as such a significant contribution to Italian culture that in 2008, Il sorpasso was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."  Read more…

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Luigi Lablache – opera star

19th century giant was Queen Victoria’s singing coach

The singer Luigi Lablache, whose powerful but agile bass-baritone voice and wide-ranging acting skills made him a superstar of 19th century opera, was born in Naples on this day in 1794.  Lablache was considered one of the greatest singers of his generation; for his interpretation of characters such as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Geronimo in Domenico Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto, Gottardo the Podestà in Gioachino Rossini’s La gazza ladra, Henry VIII in Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Oroveso in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma he had few peers.  Donizetti created the role of Don Pasquale in his comic opera of the same name specifically for Lablache.  Lablache performed in all of Italy’s major opera houses and was a star too in Vienna, London, St Petersburg and Paris, which he adopted as his home in later life. Read more…

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Baldassare Castiglione – courtier and diplomat

Writer left a definitive account of life at court in Renaissance Italy

Baldassare Castiglione, the author of the Italian classic, The Book of the Courtier, was born on this day in 1478 near Mantua in Lombardy.  His book about etiquette at court and the ideal of the Renaissance gentleman has been widely read over the years and was even a source of material for Shakespeare after it was translated into English.  Castiglione was born into a noble household and was related on his mother’s side to the powerful Gonzaga family of Mantua. After studying in Milan he succeeded his father as head of the family and was soon representing the Gonzaga family diplomatically.  As a result he met Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and later took up residence in his court, which was regarded as the most refined and elegant in Italy at the time and received many distinguished guests.  Read more…

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Piero Piccioni – film music composer and lawyer

Politician’s son gave up legal practice to write movie scores

Pianist, conductor and prolific composer Piero Piccioni was born on this day in 1921 in Turin in the northern region of Piedmont.  A self-taught musician, Piccioni became  a composer of film soundtracks, writing more than 300 scores, themes and songs for top directors such as Francesco Rosi, Luchino Visconti, Bernardo Bertolucci, Roberto Rossellini and Vittoria De Sica.  Piccioni had come into contact with the film industry during the 1950s while practising as a lawyer in Rome and working to secure movie rights for Italian distributors such as Titanus and  De Laurentiis.  His interest in music had started as a result of being taken to concerts by his father, Attillio Piccioni, who was a prominent Christian Democrat politician.  Although Piccioni never studied music formally, he became a talented musician by teaching himself. Read more…

Niccolò Zucchi – astronomer

Jesuit's invention gave him a clear view of the planets

Niccolò Zucchi, who designed one of the earliest reflecting telescopes, was born on this day in 1586 in Parma.  His invention enabled him to be the first to discover the belts on the planet Jupiter and to examine the spots on the planet Mars. This was before the telescopes designed by James Gregory and Sir Isaac Newton, which, it has been claimed, were inspired by Zucchi’s book, Optica philosophia.  Zucchi studied rhetoric in Piacenza and philosophy and theology in Parma before entering the Jesuit order in Padua at the age of 16.  He taught mathematics, rhetoric and theology at the Collegio Romano in Rome and was then appointed rector of a new Jesuit college in Ravenna. He then served as apostolic preacher (the preacher to the Papal household) for about seven years.  Zucchi published several books about mechanics, magnetism, barometers and astronomy. Read more…

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Saint Nicholas of Bari

The secret gift maker who has become known as Santa Claus

The feast of Saint Nicholas is held throughout the world every year on this day and is marked particularly in the city of Bari on the Adriatic Sea in the region of Puglia.  Saint Nicholas, who is believed to have died on this day in 343, is always remembered in Bari, because some of his remains are held in the Basilica of San Nicola, which has become an important pilgrimage site.  An early Christian bishop of Greek descent, Nicholas was born in Patara in Anatolia, which was then part of the Roman Empire, in about 270.  Because of the many miracles attributed to him, Nicholas is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. He has become the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, toymakers, brewers, and pawnbrokers.  His legendary habit of secretly making gifts also gave rise to the folklore about the character of Santa Claus.  Read more...

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Andrea Agnelli - businessman

Fourth member of famous dynasty to run Juventus

The businessman Andrea Agnelli, who from 2010 until 2022 was chairman and president of Italy’s leading football club, Juventus, was born on this day in 1975 in Turin.  He was the fourth Agnelli to take the helm of the famous club since 1923, when his grandfather, Edoardo, took over as president and presided over the club’s run of five consecutive Serie A titles in the 1930s.  Andrea’s father, Umberto, and his uncle, the flamboyant entrepreneur Gianni Agnelli, also had spells running the club, which has been controlled by the Agnelli family for 88 years, with the exception of a four-year period between 1943 and 1947. The family still owns 64 per cent of the club.  As well as being chief operating officer of Fiat, which was founded by Andrea’s great-grandfather, Giovanni, Umberto was a Senator of the Italian Republic.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Comedy Italian Style: The Golden Age of Italian Film Comedies, by Remi Fournier Lanzoni

Comedy Italian Style is an essential guide to the glorious works and filmmakers of commedia all'italiana, which entertained and amused Italian cinema audiences with its wittily satirical outlook on Italy’s economic postwar boom years.  For a period, the genre became the principal economic engine of the Italian-film industry. The landmark comedies are those of the 1960s and 1970s, when the political soil helped germinate a new society. But this tradition is not contained within two decades: it started in the days before Neorealism and has continued well into the 21st century.  The book covers the work of Dino Risi, Mario Monicelli and Pietro Germi as well as filmmakers as disparate as Federico Fellini, Ettore Scola, Lina Wertmueller, Roberto Benigni and many others. 

Remi Fournier Lanzoni, author of French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present, is associate professor of French and Italian at Elon University, North Carolina.

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Il sorpasso - commedia all’italiana classic

Film regarded as director Dino Risi’s masterpiece

Jean-Louis Trintignant (left) and Vittorio Gassman
driving along Via Aurelia in Il sorpasso

Il sorpasso, which has come to be seen as one of the most influential Italian films of the 20th century and a defining example of the commedia all’italiana genre, was released for Italian cinema audiences on this day in 1962.

Directed by Dino Risi, produced by Mario Cecchi Gori and with Vittorio Gassman outstanding as one of the film’s male lead characters, made its debut in the United States in December of the following year under the title The Easy Life. It was also a pioneer for the so-called “road movie” in Italy.

It has been judged as such a significant contribution to Italian culture that in 2008, Il sorpasso - 'Overtaking' in Italian - was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."

Its inclusion put it in the company of Bicycle Thieves, La strada, La dolce vita, Divorce Italian Style, Rocco and his Brothers and The Leopard among those movies to have made a lasting mark on the minds of Italian audiences.

Il sorpasso tells the story of two strangers - 36-year-old Bruno, a brash, carefree extrovert played by Gassman, and Roberto, a shy law student - who meet in Rome during a holiday and set off in a flashy Lancia Aurelia sports car on a spontaneous road trip through the city and the countryside of Lazio and Tuscany. 

Bruno’s reckless charm and devil-may-care approach to life draws Roberto into a whirlwind of fast cars, flirtations and impulsive adventures, sharply at odds with his own cautious nature. 

A publicity poster for Dino Risi's
Il sorpasso, released in 1962

In time, Roberto wishes he were more like Bruno, yet learns that his new friend has a broken marriage, a daughter whom he never sees and is running out of money, despised by his estranged wife for the shallowness of his character.

As they travel, the film highlights Italy’s booming consumer culture and generational tensions. What begins as a comic journey gradually darkens, culminating in a sudden, tragic accident as Bruno, addicted to il sorpasso - overtaking - inevitably attempts one risky manoeuvre too many.

Dino Risi directed more than 50 films over the course of a career spanning half a century but Il sorpasso is considered to be his greatest work and a cornerstone of commedia all’italiana, a genre that blended traditional comedy with biting satire on the contradictions of contemporary Italian society.

Risi, who collaborated with Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari on the screenplay, made Il sorpasso as a critique of Italy’s postwar so-called "economic miracle".

Releasing the movie during a period of rapid modernisation and consumerism, Risi’s aim with its themes was to highlight the emptiness behind material prosperity and the reckless pursuit of pleasure.

The two main characters - the impulsive Bruno and the reserved Roberto, played by the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant - embody the clashing values of postwar Italy: exuberant modern life versus cautious tradition. 

The road trip is seen as a metaphor for self-discovery and societal change, with the title itself chosen to reflect what Risi saw as Italy’s rapid, sometimes reckless overtaking of tradition in pursuit of modernity, its tragic conclusion designed to symbolise the fragility of life and the risks of seeking change with too little pause for reflection.

Dino Risi directed more than 50 movies
in a career spanning half a century

Italy’s "economic miracle” was the period of unprecedented growth it experienced between about 1958 and 1963, a time of industrial expansion and rising wages, when mass consumer goods such as cars and televisions became symbols of prosperity.

Bruno’s Lancia Aurelia convertible was not just a car but a metaphor for speed, freedom, and the allure of modern Italy. It represented both the excitement of progress and the dangers of reckless living.

Il sorpasso was at first largely ignored by Italian film critics, yet became a hit with cinemagoers, who made it one of the two highest-grossing Italian-made films in Italy for the year ended June 30, 1963.

Those critics warmed to it in time, however. The country’s National Union of Film Journalists handed Gassman their coveted Nastro d’Argento award for Best Actor and the film is now generally considered an undisputed classic, mentioned in the same breath as the work of directors as revered as Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti. 

It came to be seen as particularly significant among social commentators who see the years of the “economic miracle” in a rather less positive light. While it was a period that saw prosperity and living standards rise after the bleak aftermath of World War Two, it can also be interpreted as the start of Italy’s transformation from a traditionally agricultural and family-centred society into a shallower, individualistic one driven by consumerism.

Il sorpasso influenced many later directors in their work, among them Martin Scorsese, the brilliant American director of Sicilian descent, who cited Il sorpasso as "the model" for his 1986 hit The Color of Money, which starred Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. 

Parioli is known for its
elegant tree-lined streets

Travel tip:

Though born in Milan, Dino Risi lived in Rome, including the last 30 years of his life in an apartment in the Aldrovandi Residence in the Parioli district, one of the Italian capital’s most elegant residential areas, renowned for its leafy boulevards, refined atmosphere and cultural landmarks. Nestled between the Villa Borghese gardens and the curve of the Tiber, Parioli developed in the early 20th century as a haven for Rome’s elite. Its name derives from the Monti Parioli hills, once dotted with pear orchards, now home to stately villas, Art Nouveau palazzi, and spacious apartments. The neighbourhood, favoured by diplomats, professionals and artists, is dotted with chic cafés, gourmet restaurants and tranquil parks such as Villa Ada, one of Rome’s largest green spaces and once the Rome residence of the Italian Royal family. Parioli is also the home of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, which hosts major concerts and events. As well as a number of elegant hotels, Parioli has many luxury apartments to rent, which make it popular with well-heeled visitors to the capital.

Parioli, Rome hotels from Hotels.com

The modern Strada Statale I follows the coastal
route of the ancient Via Aurelia

Travel tip:

In Il sorpasso, the road trip embarked upon by Bruno and Roberto largely follows the course of the ancient Via Aurelia, which was originally built in 241BC by consul Gaius Aurelius Cotta, with the aim of connecting Rome with the colonies along the Tyrrhenian coast, ending in Pisa but linking with the Via Aemilia Scaura, which led from Pisa to Genoa. Combined with the Via Appia, which led from Rome to Apulia, it meant the Romans had use of a continuous route from the Ligurian coast in the northwest to the port city of Brindisi in the southeast. The Roman road stretched over 1,000km, with about 700km of the Via Aurelia’s route still in use as a paved road, incorporated into the Strada Statale 1, also known as SS1 Aurelia, which runs from Rome to the French border near Ventimiglia. The adaptation of the ancient road for modern use was helped by the way it was built. The Via Aurelia, like other Roman roads at the time, was paved at a width of approximately 4.6 metres (15 feet), to allow standard size chariots to pass each other comfortably.  The Romans, ever inventive, could be said to have been the pioneers of modern service areas in that every 15 miles or so along Via Aurelia, a ‘statio’ would be constructed to provide travellers with food, shelter, stables and a means to buy horses or other travel equipment for their journey.

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More reading:

How Dino Risi saw the potential in future stars such as Sophia Loren and Alberto Sordi

Otto e mezzo - the Fellini masterpiece hailed as ‘better’ than La dolce vita

Michelangelo Antonioni - the last great of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era

Also on this day:

343: The death of Saint Nicholas of Bari

1478: The birth of courtier and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione

1586: The birth of astronomer Niccolò Zucchi

1794: The birth of opera star and Royal voice coach Luigi Lablache

1921: The birth of lawyer and composer Piero Piccione

1975: The birth of businessman Andrea Agnelli

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5 December

Armando Diaz - First World War general

Neapolitan commander led decisive victory over Austria

Armando Diaz, the general who masterminded Italy's victory over Austrian forces at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, was born on this day in 1861 in Naples.  The battle, which ended the First World War on the Italian front, also precipitated the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending more than 200 years of Austrian control of substantial parts of Italy.  The general's announcement of the total defeat of the Austrian Army at Vittorio Veneto sparked one of the greatest moments of celebration in the history of Italy, with some Italians seeing it as the final culmination of the Risorgimento movement and the unification of Italy.  Diaz was born to a Neapolitan father of Spanish heritage and an Italian mother. He decided to pursue his ambitions of a military career despite the preference for soldiers of Piedmontese background in the newly-formed Royal Italian Army.  Read more…

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Pope Julius II

Patron of the arts who commissioned Michelangelo's greatest works

Giuliano della Rovere, who was to become Pope Julius II, was born on this day in 1443 at Albisola near Genoa.  He is remembered for granting a dispensation to Henry VIII of England to allow him to marry Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his older brother, Arthur, and for commissioning Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.  Giuliano was born into an ecclesiastical family. His uncle, Francesco della Rovere, later became Pope Sixtus IV and it was the future pope Francesco who arranged for his nephew to be educated at a Franciscan friary. Giuliano became a bishop in 1471 and then a cardinal before being himself elected Pope in 1503.  Giuliano was Pope for nine years until he died in 1513. When Henry VIII later asked for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, he claimed that Pope Julius II should never have issued the dispensation to allow him to marry his sister in law. Read more…

Francesco Gemianini - composer and violinist

Tuscan played alongside Handel in court of George I

The violinist, composer and music theorist Francesco Saverio Geminiani, who worked alongside George Frideric Handel in the English royal court in the early 18th century and became closely associated with the music of the Italian Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli, was baptised on this day in 1687 in Lucca, Tuscany.  Although he composed many works and at his peak was renowned as a virtuoso violinist, he is regarded as a significant figure in the history of music more for his writings, in particular his 1751 treatise Art of Playing on the Violin, which explained the 18th-century Italian method of violin playing and is still acknowledged as an invaluable source for the study of performance practice in the late Baroque period.  Geminiani himself was taught to play the violin by his father, and after showing considerable talent at an early age he went to study the violin under Carlo Ambrogio Lonati in Milan. Read more…

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Maria De Filippi - television presenter

One of the most popular faces on Italian TV

The television presenter Maria De Filippi, who has hosted numerous talk and talent shows in a career spanning almost 30 years, was born on this day in 1961 in Milan.  De Filippi is best known as the presenter of the long-running talent show Amici de Maria De Filippi, which launched in 2001.  The show’s predecessor, called simply Amici, was hosted by De Filippi from 1993 onwards.  One of the most popular faces on Italian television, De Filippi was married in 1995 to the talk show host and journalist Maurizio Costanzo, who died in February, 2023.  The daughter of a drugs company representative and a Greek teacher, De Filippi was born in Milan before moving at age 10 to Mornico Losana, a village in the province of Pavia, where her parents owned a vineyard.  A graduate in law, she had ambitions of a career as a magistrate. Read more…

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Book of the Day: The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, by Mark Thompson

The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet a million and half men died in North East Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders, waves of Italian conscripts were sent charging up the limestone hills north of Trieste to be massacred by troops fighting to save their homelands. This is a great, tragic military history of a war that gave birth to fascism. Mussolini fought in these trenches, but so did many of the greatest modernist writers in Italian and German - Ungaretti, Gadda, Musil, Hemingway. It is through these accounts in The White War that Mark Thompson, with great skill and empathy, brings to life this forgotten conflict.

Mark Thompson lives in Oxford. He is the author of A Paper House, a much-praised account of the fall of Yugoslavia. He worked for the UN in the Balkans for much of the 1990s.

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4 December

Gae Aulenti – architect

Designer who made mark in Italy and abroad

The architect Gae Aulenti, who blazed a trail for women in the design world in post-War Italy and went on to enjoy a career lasting more than half a century, was born on this day in 1927 in Palazzolo dello Stella, a small town midway between Venice and Trieste.  In a broad and varied career, among a long list of clients Aulenti designed showrooms for Fiat and Olivetti, furniture for Zanotta, department stores for La Rinascente, a railway station in Milan, stage sets for theatre and opera director Luca Ronconi and villas for wealthy private clients.  She lectured at the Venice and Milan Schools of Architecture and was on the editorial staff of the design magazine, Casabella.  Yet she is best remembered for her part in transforming redundant buildings facing possible demolition into museums and galleries. Read more…

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Costantino Rocca - golfer

Italian whose success inspired Open champion

Costantino Rocca, who until recently was the most successful Italian in the history of international golf, was born on this day in 1956 in Almenno San Bartolomeo, near Bergamo in northern Italy.  Rocca, who turned professional at the age of 24 in 1981, enjoyed his best years in the mid-1990s, peaking with second place in the Open Championship at St Andrews in 1995.  He was beaten by the American John Daly in a four-hole play-off but was perhaps as popular a runner-up as there has been after the incredible putt he sank on the final green to deny Daly victory inside the regulation 72 holes.  Needing a birdie to be level after the American finished six under par, Rocca appeared to have blown his chance when his poorly executed second shot - a chipped approach that was meant to leave him in easy putting distance of the hole - did not even make it safely on to the green. Read more…

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Luigi Galvani - physicist and biologist

Scientist who seemed to give dead frog new life

Luigi Galvani, the first scientist to discover bioelectricity, died on this day in 1798 in Bologna.  Galvani discovered that the muscles in the leg of a dead frog twitched when struck by an electrical spark. This was the beginning of bioelectricity, the study of the electrical patterns and signals of the nervous system.  The word ‘galvanise’, to stimulate by electricity, or rouse by shock and excitement, comes from the surname of the scientist.  Galvani studied medicine at Bologna University and, after graduating in 1759, became an honorary lecturer of surgery and then subsequently of theoretical anatomy.  He became the first scientist to appreciate the relationship between electricity and animation when he was dissecting a frog one day. His assistant touched an exposed nerve in the leg of the frog with a metal scalpel that had picked up an electrical charge. Read more…

Pope Adrian IV

The warlike conduct of England’s one and only pontiff

The only Englishman to have ever sat on the papal throne, Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope on this day in 1154 in Rome.  Breakspear, who was from Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, had previously been created Cardinal Bishop of Albano by Pope Eugene III.  After his election as Pope, Breakspear took the name of Adrian IV (also known as Hadrian IV) and immediately set about dealing with the anti-papal faction in Rome.  After Frederick Barbarossa, Duke of Swabia, caught and hanged the leader of the faction, a man known as Arnold of Brescia, Adrian crowned Frederick as Holy Roman Emperor in 1155 to reward him.  He then formed an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, against the Normans in Sicily.  Adrian raised troops in Campania to fight alongside the Byzantine forces and the alliance was immediately successful. Read more…

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Saint Giovanni Calabria

Priest offered himself to God to save a Pope

Giovanni Calabria, who dedicated his life to helping the poor and the sick, died on this day in 1954 in Verona.  Roman Catholics throughout the world will celebrate his feast day today as a result of his canonisation by Pope John Paul II in 1999.  When Pope Pius XII became ill in 1954, Calabria offered himself to God to die in the place of the Pope. Pius XII began to get better and went on to live for another four years, but Calabria died the next day. After the Pope recovered he sent a telegram of condolence to Calabria’s congregation.  Giovanni Calabria was born in 1873 in Verona. He was the youngest of the seven sons of Luigi Calabria, a cobbler, and Angela Foschio, a maid servant.  Calabria was only a young child when his father died but he had to drop out of school to become an apprentice.  However, a rector at his local church saw his potential. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Gae Aulenti, by Margherita Petranzan

The complete works of one of the most interesting and eclectic contemporary Italian architects, in a new volume from the Skira architecture series. Gae Aulenti is one of the world's most celebrated architects. Her internationally renowned works encompass industrial design, urban planning, graphic, set design and architecture. This well-documented publication illustrates Aulenti's complete oeuvre and includes world-famous projects such as the Musee d'Orsay and the National Museum of Modern Art of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the remodeling of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and the New Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as well as lesser known but equally interesting works such as set designs for the theatre, exhibition designs, private houses. The book also dedicates a section to Aulenti's furniture design and includes her notable lamps produced by Artemide and chairs produced by Zanotta and Kartell. Fifty years of ideas and projects are examined in this richly illustrated monograph.

Margherita Petranzan is an Italian architect whose projects include the renovation of La Fenice theatre in Venice. She is the founder of the architectural magazine Anfione Zeto.

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3 December

Matilde Malenchini – painter

The tempestuous life of a talented Tuscan artist

The painter Matilde Malenchini was born on this day in 1779 in Livorno in Tuscany. She was well-known for her paintings of church interiors but turned to portrait painting later in life to make money to help her survive after her long relationship with Belgian writer Louis de Potter ended. Matilde was born into the Meoni family and married the painter and musician Vincenzo Francesco Malenchini at the age of 16. Although they soon separated, she kept his name for the rest of her life.  In 1807 she went to study at the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence under the guidance of Pietro Benvenuti. To earn money and practise her art, she copied the works of old Italian and Dutch masters in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  After being given a four-year annual stipend by Elisa Bonaparte, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in 1811, Matilde went to Rome to study at the Pontificia Accademia romana delle belle arti di San Luca.  Read more…

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Nino Martoglio - writer and film director

Journalist and playwright whose films inspired post-war neorealism 

The journalist, playwright and theatre and film director Nino Martoglio was born in Belpasso, a town in the foothills of volcanic Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, on this day in 1870.  Martoglio is widely considered to be Sicily’s finest dialect playwright and by some to be the founder of Sicilian theatre.  He was also an acclaimed poet, basing a good deal of his verse on the everyday conversations of working class Sicilians, written to amuse. His collection, Centona, is still sold today.  Later in a career that was ended abruptly by his death in an accident, Martoglio directed a number of silent films, the style of some of which prompted critics to describe them as forerunners of the post-war neorealism movement.  The son of a journalist and a school teacher, Martoglio studied sailing as a young man and obtained a captain’s licence.  Read more…

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Carlo Oriani - cyclist and soldier

Giro winner died in World War One

The champion cyclist Carlo Oriani, winner of the 1913 Giro d’Italia, died on this day in 1917 in the aftermath of the Battle of Caporetto in the First World War.  The battle was a disastrous one for the Italian forces under the command of General Luigi Cadorna, with 13,000 soldiers killed, 30,000 wounded and 250,000 captured by the victorious army of Austria-Hungary. Countless other Italian troops fled as it became clear that defeat was inevitable.  Oriani, who had previously served his country in the Italo-Turkish War in 1912, was a member of the Bersaglieri, the highly mobile elite force used by the Italian army as a rapid response unit. He had joined in part because of his skill on a bicycle, which had replaced horses as one of the means by which the Bersaglieri were able to be mobile.  The Battle of Caporetto took place from October 24 to November 19, near the town of Kobarid on the Austro-Italian front. Read more…

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Nino Rota – composer

Musician and teacher composed soundtrack for The Godfather 

Giovanni ‘Nino’ Rota, composer, conductor and pianist, was born on this day in 1911 in Milan.  Part of a musical family, he started composing with an oratorio based on a religious subject at the age of 11, but he was to go on to produce some of the best-known and iconic music for the cinema of the 20th century.  Rota studied at the Milan Conservatory and then in Rome before he was encouraged by the conductor, Arturo Toscanini, to move to America, where he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.  When he returned to Milan he took a degree in Literature and then began a teaching career. He became a director of the Liceo Musicale in Bari in 1950 and kept this post until his death. Orchestra conductor Riccardo Muti was one of his students.  Rota wrote film scores from the 1940s onwards for all the noted directors of the time, including Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti. Read more…

Nicolò Amati - violin maker

Grandson of Andrea Amati produced some of world's finest instruments

Nicolò Amati, who is acknowledged as the greatest in the line of Amati violin makers in the 16th and 17th centuries, was born on this day in 1596 in Cremona.  The grandson of Andrea Amati, who is credited by most experts with being the inventor of the violin in its four-stringed form, Nicolò followed his father, Girolamo, and uncle, Antonio, into the family business.  Girolamo and Antonio went their separate ways in around 1590, Antonio setting up a different workshop, which was thought to specialize in lutes.  Initially, Nicolò made instruments that were very similar to those created by Girolamo but later began to add refinements of his own, the most significant of which came between 1630 and 1640 when he created the Grand Amati design.  This model, slightly wider and longer than the violins his father had produced, yielded greater power of tone. Read more…

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Angela Luce – actress

Film star and singer was born in Spaccanapoli

Neapolitan actress and singer Angela Luce was born Angela Savino on this day in 1937 in Naples.  She has worked for the theatre, cinema and television, is well-known for singing Neapolitan songs, and has written poetry and song lyrics.  At 14 years old, Angela took her first steps towards stardom when she took part in the annual music festival held at Piedigrotta in the Chiaia district of Naples, singing the Neapolitan song, Zi Carmeli.  Her cinema career began in 1956, when she was only 19, when she appeared in Ricordati di Napoli, directed by Pino Mercanti. Since then she has appeared in more than 80 films and has worked for directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Amendola, Luigi Zampa and Pupi Avati.  Angela won a David Donatello award for L’amore molesto directed by Mario Martone. Read more…

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Mario Borghezio – controversial politician

Lega Nord MEP renowned for extremist views

Mario Borghezio, one of Italy’s most controversial political figures whose extreme right-wing views have repeatedly landed him in trouble, was born on this day in 1947 in Turin.  Borghezio was a member of Lega Nord, the party led by Umberto Bossi that was set up originally to campaign for Italy to be broken up so that the wealthy north of the country would sever its political and economic ties with the poorer south.  He has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1999 and has served on several committees, including Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the Committee on Petitions.  He was even undersecretary to the Ministry of Justice from 1994-95.  Yet he had regularly espoused extremist and racist views, to the extent that even the right-wing British party UKIP, with whom he developed strong links, moved to distance themselves from him. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Ottocento: Romanticism and Revolution in 19th Century Italian Painting, by Roberta J M Olson

The Ottocento (literally "eight hundred"), or the 19th century, witnessed the creation of a united Italy. This century, which was the age of nationalism throughout Europe, gave birth to modern Italy as a definable political entity after a long period of regional fragmentation and foreign domination. The political struggle for unification was known as the Risorgimento, meaning to rise up again (evoking similar powerful alliterative like renaissance and resurrection). The term was chosen because Italians hoped that their land might overcome internal political divisions and regionalism to regain the prominent place in Western Civilization it had enjoyed during the Roman and Renaissance times. The Ottocento was an epoch of major upheavals and drastic changes, or revolutions, in the fabric of Italian thought and society, not least in the area of the arts, especially painting. Ottocento:  Romanticism and Revolution in 19th Century Italian Painting, originally published to accompany an exhibition of the same name, is a landmark study covering Italian painting from 1797 to 1900, which places Italian art within the broader European context and highlights lesser‑known Italian masters.

Roberta Olson is an American historian of art. She is the author of many books on art history and is known for her work on Italian art. She taught at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts for 25 years; after retiring as professor emerita, she became curator of drawings at the New-York Historical Society.

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2 December

Roberto Capucci - fashion designer

'Sculptor in cloth' who rejected ready-to-wear

The fashion designer Roberto Capucci, whose clothes were famous for their strikingly voluminous, geometric shapes and use of unusual materials, was born on this day in 1930 in Rome.  Precociously talented, Capucci opened his first studio in Rome at the age of 19 and by his mid-20s was regarded as the best designer in Italy, particularly admired by Christian Dior, the rising star of French haute-couture.  It was during this period, towards the end of the 1950s, that Capucci revolutionised fashion by inventing the Linea a Scatola – the box-line or box look – in which he created angular shapes for dresses and introduced the concept of volume and architectural elements of design into clothing, so that his dresses, which often featured enormous quantities of material, were almost like sculpted pieces of modern art, to be not so much worn as occupied by the wearer.  Read more…

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Paolo Tosti - composer

How a poor boy from Abruzzo became an English knight

Paolo Tosti, the composer of the popular Neapolitan song, Marechiare, died on this day in 1916 in Rome.  Many of the light, sentimental songs he composed were performed by the top opera singers of the time and are still regularly recorded by the stars of today.  At the height of his career, Tosti was singing professor to Princess Margherita of Savoy, who later became the Queen of Italy. He then went to live in England, where his popularity grew even more.  He was appointed singing master to the British Royal Family and was eventually knighted by King Edward VII, who had become one of his personal friends.  Born Francesco Paolo Tosti in Ortona in the Abruzzo region, the composer received an early musical education in his home town and then moved on to study at the Naples Conservatory.  His teachers there were so impressed with him that they appointed him a student teacher, which earned him a small salary.  Read more…

Gianni Versace – designer

Meteoric rise of the talented son of a dressmaker

Gianni Versace, the founder of the international fashion house Versace, was born on this day in 1946 in Reggio di Calabria in the south of Italy. He went on to start a highly successful clothing label and also designed costumes for the theatre and films. He was a personal friend of the late Princess Diana and numerous celebrities, including Elton John and Madonna.  Christened Giovanni Maria Versace, the designer literally learnt his trade at his mother’s knee as she was herself a dressmaker and employed him as an apprentice in her business from an early age.  He moved north to Milan to work in the fashion industry for other designers and, after presenting his own first signature collection in the city, opened a boutique in Via della Spiga in 1978. His career immediately took off and his exclusive designs were highly sought after.  Read more…

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Maria Bricca - war hero

Humble cook whose actions helped end siege of Turin in 1706

The unlikely war hero Maria Bricca, whose actions would precipitate a major victory for the Duchy of Savoy in the War of the Spanish Succession, was born on this day in 1684 in Pianezza, then a village about 12km (7 miles) northwest of the city of Turin.  Maria became an important figure in the ending of the four-month siege of Turin by the French in 1706.  She hated the French, who had sacked Pianezza in 1693 when she was just eight years old, killing villagers and looting property before her eyes. In 1706, when they took control of the castle at Pianezza- where she had worked as a cook - it brought back memories of the scenes she had witnessed as a child.  When Maria heard that Prince Eugene of Savoy had dispatched a force of 9,000 Prussian soldiers led by his ally, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, to try to take control of the castle, she knew she had information that could help them. Read more…

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Ferdinando Galiani - economist and philosopher

Leading figure in the Neapolitan Enlightenment

The economist and philosopher Ferdinando Galiani, whose theories on market economics are considered to be years ahead of his time, was born on this day in 1728 in Chieti, now in Abruzzo but then part of the Kingdom of Naples.  Galiani spent much of his life in the service of the Naples government, spending 10 years as secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris before returning to Naples in the role of councillor of the tribunal of commerce, being appointed administrator of the royal domains in 1777.  A fine writer and wit as well as a talented economist, Galiani wrote a number of humorous works as well as two significant treatises, the first of which, Della Moneta, was written while he was still a student, at the age of 22.  Initially published anonymously, Della Moneta (On Money) - was ostensibly a work about the history of money and the monetary system. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Robert Capucci, by Roberto Capucci with Antonio Marras and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden

Fashion designer Antonio Marras, in his introduction to Roberto Capucci, says: "In the Olympus of fashion designers, Roberto Capucci is Zeus. But even that is not enough, because Roberto Capucci cannot fit into just one category. To call him a fashion designer is insufficient. Might the term créateur, to use a French word, be better suited to him? There is no definition for what is exceptional." Capucci's clothes are immediately recognizable: architectural structures where color is the protagonist and almost seems to sculpt the material into creations. Some 32 years ago, in 1993, the fabric creations were given to publisher Franco Maria Ricci for a volume in the series Luxe, calme et volupté. This anniversary was the catalyst for organizing the exhibition and breathing new life into the texts of the volume, which is enriched by an updated text by Sylvia Ferino, which offers a glimpse into the Maestro's most recent works, together with Marras' introduction.  The text is in English and Italian.

Sylvia Ferino-Pagden is an Austrian art historian and curator, born in 1949, best known for her work on Renaissance painting and her leadership at major European museums.

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