Pietro Bembo – poet and scholar

Lucrezia’s lover helped with the development of modern Italian

Titian's portrait of Pietro Bembo, painted in
around 1540, when the poet was 70 years old

Pietro Bembo, a writer who was influential in the development of the Italian language, was born on this day in 1470 in Venice.

He is probably most remembered for having an affair with Lucrezia Borgia while she was married to the Duke of Ferrara and he was living at the Este Court with them. His love letters to her were described by the English poet, Lord Byron, centuries later, as ‘the prettiest love letters in the world.’

As a boy, Bembo visited Florence with his father where he acquired a love for the Tuscan form of Italian which he was later to use as his literary medium. He later learnt Greek and went to study at the University of Padua.

He spent two years at the Este Court in Ferrara where he wrote poetry that was reminiscent of Boccaccio and Petrarch.

It was when he returned to the court at Ferrara a few years later he had an affair with Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, who was at that time the wife of Alfonso I d’Este. The love letters between the pair to which Byron referred are now in the collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. 

Byron greatly admired them when he saw them there in 1816 and also claimed to have managed to steal part of a lock of Lucrezia’s hair that was on display with them.

Bembo went to live in Urbino where he wrote his most influential work, a prose treatise on writing poetry in Italian, Prose della vulgar lingua. His writing was later to revive interest in the works of Petrarch.

Bembo worked as a historian and librarian in Venice for a time before going to live in Rome, where he took Holy Orders. He was made a Cardinal by Pope Paul III in 1539.

He died in Rome in 1547 at the age of 76.

The Castello Estense in Ferrara, where Bembo was a guest
of Alfonso I d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia

Travel tip:

The Castello Estense in Ferrara, where Lucrezia Borgia lived after her marriage to Alfonso I d’Este and where Pietro Bembo was a guest, is a moated, brick built castle in the centre of the city. It is open to the public every day from 9.30 till 5.30 pm apart from certain times of the year when it is closed on Mondays. For more details and ticket prices visit www.castelloestense.it.

Travel tip:

The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Piazza Pio XI in Milan was established in 1618 to house paintings, drawing and statues that had been donated to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, the library founded in the same building a few years before. In addition to works of art, the museum keeps curiosities such as the gloves Napoleon wore at Waterloo and a lock of Lucrezia Borgia’s hair, in front of which famous poets such as Lord Byron and Gabriele D’Annunzio spent a lot of time drawing inspiration. Pietro Bembo’s letters to Lucrezia are also in the museum’s collection. Visit www.leonardo-ambrosiana.it for more information.

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Michele Placido – actor and director

Role of anti-Mafia police inspector turned actor into a TV star

Michele Placido pictured with his wife, Federica Vincenti

Actor and director Michele Placido is celebrating his 70th birthday, having been born on this day in 1946 in Ascoli Satriano in Puglia.

Placido is best known for his portrayal of the character, Corrado Cattani, in the Italian television series, La piovra.

Cattani, a police inspector investigating the Mafia, was the lead character in the first four series of La piovra (meaning The Octopus, a name that referred to the Mafia). It was popular on television in the 1980s and the first three series were shown in the UK on Channel Four.

Placido’s family were originally from Rionero in Vulture in Basilicata and he is a descendant of the folk hero, Carmine Crocco, sometimes also known as Donatello. Crocco had fought in the service of Garibaldi but, after Italian unification, he became disappointed with the new Government and formed his own army to fight on behalf of the deposed King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II.

Placido moved to Rome to study acting and then began working in films. His first success came with his portrayal of soldier Paolo Passeri in Marcia Trionfale in 1976, directed by Marco Bellocchio, a role for which Placido won an award.

Placido in a scene from his first movie hit, Marcia Trionfale

He became a popular television actor in 1983 after appearing in the first series of La piovra. He played the part of the police inspector for four series until his character was assassinated.

Afterwards he played the part of Giovanni Falcone, the anti-Mafia crusader, in the 1993 film of the same name directed by Giuseppe Ferrara.

Placido’s daughter from his first marriage, Violante Placido, is an actress. Placido is now married to the actress, Federica Vincenti.

Travel tip

Ascoli Satriano, the birthplace of Michele Placido, is a town in the province of Foggia in Apulia. It was the location of two famous battles in Roman times but came under Norman control in the 11th century. One of the main sights is its 12th century Romanesque Gothic Cathedral.

Travel tip:

Rionero in Vulture, where Placido’s family came from originally, is a town in the province of Potenza in Basilicata, situated on the slopes of Monte Vulture in the middle of lush, green countryside.

More reading:

Rudolph Valentino - a tale of fame and tragedy

Terence Hill - a Venetian raised in Germany who found fame under an English name

(Photo of Michele Placido and Federica Vincenti by Elena Torre CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Giovanni Falcone - anti-Mafia crusader

Sicilian lawyer made life's work of taking on Cosa Nostra 

Giovanni Falcone (left), pictured with his fellow anti-Mafia
magistrate Paolo Borsellino. Both were murdered in 1992

Giovanni Falcone, who would become known as an anti-Mafia crusader during his career as a judge and prosecuting magistrate, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo.

The son of a state clerk, he was raised in a poor district of the Sicilian city. Some of the boys with whom he played football in the street would go on to become Mafiosi but Falcone was determined from an early age that he would not be drawn into their world.

Educated at the local high school, he studied law at Palermo University. In 1966, at the age of 27, he was appointed a judge in Trapani, a crime-ridden port on the west coast of Sicily and began his lifelong quest to defeat the criminal organisation.

In time, Falcone became the Mafia's most feared enemy and by 1987, when he was the chief prosecutor at the so-called 'maxi-trial' in Palermo which convicted 342 members of the so-called Cosa Nostra, the likelihood he would be murdered meant he could not leave home without a heavily armed police escort.

He worked in a bomb-proof bunker underneath the city's law courts. His home was similarly protected and when he travelled between the two it was with a convoy of armoured police cars.

Yet he refused to be cowed, even when a wave of Mafia reprisals led to the deaths of many of his colleagues.  The first was Gaetano Costa, Palermo's chief magistrate, who was murdered shortly after signing 80 arrest warrants for Mafia bosses that Falcone's investigations had linked to mobsters in America.

The assassination of Boris Giuliano, the Head of Police in Palermo, soon followed, after which Falcone was assigned to a select pool of anti-Mafia judges and prosecutors.

In 1982 Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the carabinieri general who had smashed the Red Brigades, was despatched to Palermo to co-ordinate Rome's anti-Mafia policy. Only 100 days after taking office, he was machine-gunned to death in the street.

Falcone became effective head of the anti-Mafia drive after its co-ordinator, Judge Rocco Chinnici, was blown up by a car bomb in July 1983.

His work led to the dramatic 'maxi-trial' of 1986-87, in which 8,000 pages of evidence, much of it based on information passed on by pentiti - the Mafiosi turned informants - led to the conviction of 342 gang members.

They received sentences totalling 2,665 years in prison, including 19 life sentences, although the success of the operation was much undermined when all bar around 30 of those found guilty were later released on appeal, with doubts expressed over the validity of testimony from informants.

After the 'maxi-trial', Falcone had hoped to be appointed chief prosecutor in Palermo but was denied the opportunity.

Instead, he took a position in Rome with the Ministry of Justice, where he was successful in preparing a decree that overturned the judgment of the Supreme Court to quash so many of the 'maxi-trial' convictions and led to the re-arrest of many Mafia bosses.  In another judgment by the Supreme Court, in January 1992, the original convictions were upheld.

Falcone died four months later, on one of the visits to his home in Palermo he made every week. He was killed when a half-ton of explosives was detonated under a section of the coastal motorway he always used on his way from the airport. His wife, Francesca, died with him, along with three police officers.

The assassination had been ordered by the head of the Corleonesi faction of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore "Toto" Riina, who was arrested the following year and jailed for life.  Less than two months after Falcone's death, his friend and close associate in the anti-Mafia fight, the magistrate Paolo Borsellino, was killed by a car bomb in Palermo.

Gold mosaics line the ceilings of the Cappella Palatina,
one of Palermo's main tourist attractions 

Travel tip:

Despite its inevitable association with the criminal underworld, Palermo is an attractive tourist destination, a vibrant city with a wealth of history, culture, art, music and food. It has many outstanding restaurants as well as fine examples of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches, palaces and buildings.  Top attractions include the extraordinary Cappella Palatina, featuring Byzantine mosaics decorated with gold leaf and precious stones.

Travel tip:

Sicily's most famous coastal resort is the clifftop town of Taormina, overlooking the Ionian coast. Full of restaurants and shops, with beaches nearby, it is rich in history. The Greek amphitheatre, with its panoramic view of Mount Etna and the coast, is used for concerts and plays, and the town's old streets are enclosed within medieval walls.

(Photo from Cappella Palatinia by Woodguy CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Sandro Botticelli – painter

Renaissance master was forgotten until the 19th century

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, painted in 1485

Early Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli died on this day in 1510 in Florence.

Years before his death he had asked to be buried in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence at the feet of a woman for whom it is believed he suffered unrequited love. 

She was Simonetta Vespucci, a married noblewoman, who had died in 1476. She is thought to have been the model for Botticelli’s major work, The Birth of Venus, which was painted years later in 1485, and that she also appeared in many of his other paintings.

After his death, Botticelli was quickly forgotten and his paintings remained in the churches and villas for which they had been created until the late 19th century, when people started to appreciate his work again.

Botticelli was born Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi in 1445. He was active during the golden age of painting in Florence under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and was for a time apprenticed to both Fra Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio.

In 1481 Botticelli was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV to paint three frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Another of his major works, Primavera, was painted just after this in 1482.

In later life Botticelli was influenced by the religious preacher, Savonarola, and his art became deeply devout. The Mystical Nativity, painted in 1500, is an example of this change of style.

After his death he was largely forgotten until the beginning of the 19th century when an English collector bought The Mystical Nativity and took it back home with him. The painting later went on show in Manchester, where it was viewed by a million people, and sparked renewed interest in the artist.

Chiesa di San Salvatore di Ognissanti

Travel tip:

Botticelli’s wishes were carried out and his tomb is in the Chiesa di San Salvatore di Ognissanti, a Franciscan church in Borgo Ognissanti in the centre of Florence. Botticelli’s fresco of Saint Augustine, painted in 1480, can be seen on the south wall of the church.

Travel tip:

Many of Botticelli’s works are in the Uffizi gallery in Florence where they are now admired by millions of visitors from all over the world. Work began in 1560 to create a suite of offices (uffici) for the administration of Cosimo I. The architect, Vasari, created a wall of windows on the upper storey and from about 1580 the Medici began to use this well-lit space to display their art treasures. This was the start of one of the most famous art galleries in the world. The present day Uffizi Gallery, in Piazzale degli Uffizi, is open from 8.15 am to 6.50 pm from Tuesday to Sunday.

More reading:

Savonarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities

Why Simonetta Vespucci was hailed as the embodiment of human perfection

The patron of the arts who sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli


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