Ludovico Ariosto – poet

Writer led the way with spirituality and humanity

This painting by Titian, circa 1512, is accepted
as likely to portray Ludovico Ariosto

The man who coined the term humanism - umanesimo - Ludovico Ariosto, was born on this day in 1474 in Reggio Emilia.

He became famous after his epic poem, Orlando furioso, was published in 1516.  It is now regarded by critics as the finest expression of the literary tendencies and spiritual attitudes of the Italian Renaissance.

Ariosto chose to focus on the strengths and potential of humanity, rather than upon its role as subordinate to God, which led to the Renaissance humanism movement.

His family moved to live in Ferrara when he was just ten years old and the poet has said he always felt ferrarese.

His father insisted he studied law but afterwards Ariosto followed his natural instincts to write poetry.

When his father died in 1500, Ariosto had to provide for his four brothers and five sisters and took the post of commander of the Citadel of Canossa at the invitation of Ercole I d'Este.

Then, in 1503, he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, son of Ercole I. He was obliged to follow the Cardinal on diplomatic, and sometimes dangerous, missions and expeditions.

From about 1505 onwards, Ariosto was working on Orlando furioso and he continued to revise and refine it for his entire life.

The text of Orlando furioso is kept at the
Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea in Ferrara

The first edition was published in Venice in 1516 and the second in Ferrara in 1521. Both were written in the ottavo rima form, eight line stanzas, in the tradition of Boccacio.

The poem follows the fortune of its hero, Orlando, who goes mad out of unrequited love against the backdrop of war between Christians and Saracens. Ariosto’s own refined spirituality is said to come through in his characters.

Orlando furioso instantly became popular and profoundly influenced the literature of the Renaissance.

Ariosto went on to compose seven satires and five comedies, while he was having to serve as governor of the Garfagnana, a wild province in the Apennines, out of financial necessity.

But by 1525 he had saved enough money to return to Ferrara, where he secretly married his mistress, Alessandra Benucci, and bought a house with a garden to settle down in.

He produced a third edition of Orlando furioso, which was published a few months before his death in 1533, and he wrote an appendix to it that was published posthumously.

The statue of Ludovico Ariosto in the
city of Reggio Emilia

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia is an ancient walled city in the region of Emilia-Romagna. There is a statue of Ariosto and you can see the villa he was born in, near the municipal building in the centre. You can also see a villa outside the town, Il Mauriziano, where he spent  time while he was governing the city on behalf of the Dukes of Ferrara.

Travel tip:

Ferrara, where Ariosto lived for most of his life, is a city in Emilia-Romagna, about 50 kilometres to the north east of Bologna, which has many palaces dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, when it hosted the court of the House of Este. Dominating the centre is the magnificent Castello Estense, where Lucrezia Borgia lived after her marriage to Alfonso I d’Este. The moated, brick-built castle 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.

More reading:

Petrarch - the poet whose work is said by some to have launched the Renaissance

Titian - the giant of Renaissance art

The precocious genius of Raphael

Books:

Ariosto's Orlando furioso

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Genoa Cricket and Football Club

Italy's historic first football club

The Genoa team that won Italy's first national
football championship in 1898

Italy's oldest surviving football club was founded on this day in 1893 in Genoa.

Originally named Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club, it was established by British Consular officials and for a number of years football was a minor activity.  Initially, Italians could not be members.

Football became more its focus after an English maritime doctor, James Spensley, arrived in Genoa in 1897 and organised a match against Football Club Torinese, which had been formed in Turin in 1894. Spensley insisted the club's rules be altered to allow Italians to play.

The match took place in January 1898 and although the attendance was only around 200 spectators, it was deemed a success by those who took part, particularly the Turin side, who won.  After a return match, plans were drawn up to form an Italian Football Federation and to organise a first Italian Championship.

Genoa were the inaugural champions, although only four teams took part and the competition was completed in the course of one day, in May, at the Velodromo Umberto I in Turin.   Spensley's team beat Internazionale of Milan in the final.

Genoa Cricket and Football Club has played at the
Stadio Luigi Ferraris since 1911

Nonetheless, in the statistical record books the 1898 title carries no less weight than the 2016 version, which involved 20 teams playing 38 matches each over a period of nine months.

Genoa, who responded to winning the 1898 title by changing their name to Genoa Cricket and Football Club, dropping athletics from the title, and went on to win again four times in the next five years, usually with Spensley in goal.  They also took part in the first organised international match when they played a friendly against Nice in 1903.

In all they have been Italian champions nine times, although their last success was in 1923-24.

The club's English heritage is celebrated by supporters, who often display banners in English.  Although forced by the ruling Fascists to change the club name to an Italianised Genova 1893 Circolo del Calcio in 1928, they reverted to Genoa Cricket and Football Club in 1945 and still go under that name today.

Spensley's part in the heritage of the Ligurian port city is recognised with a plaque on the wall of the house where he lived.

Originally based in the Campasso district of Genoa, they have played since 1911 at the Stadio Luigi Ferraris, the oldest Italian football ground still staging professional football.  The stadium has been shared since 1946 with Genoa's much younger neighbours, Sampdoria.

Travel tip:

Genoa, wedged between the Ligurian Sea and the Apennine mountains, is a colourful port city. There is much to enjoy about the city's vibrant character as well as many outstanding buildings, such as the Romanesque Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its black-and-white-striped façade and frescoed interior.

The bronze fountain that forms the centrepiece of
the Piazza de Ferrari in Genoa

Travel tip:

Genoa's Piazza de Ferrari, as well as being renowned for its bronze fountain, is surrounded by the headquarters of a number of banks, reflecting the status the city enjoyed at the end of the 19th century as Italy's financial centre, alongside Milan.  The Teatro Carlo Felice opera house is another nearby attraction.

(Photo of Piazza de Ferrari by Twice25/Rinina25 CC BY-SA 2.5)
(Photo of Stadio Luigi Ferraris by Gabriel Rinaldi CC BY-SA 4.0)

More reading:

Tough backdrop to Italy's first football championship

Meeting in a restaurant led to formation of Internazionale

Giuseppe Meazza - Italian football's first superstar

Books:

Calcio: A History of Italian Football, by John Foot

Forza: The Fall and Rise of Italian Football, by Paddy Agnew

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Andrea Camilleri – author

Creator of Inspector Montalbano

Andrea Camilleri, pictured in 1980

Writer and film producer Andrea Camilleri was born on this day in 1925 in Porto Empedocle in Sicily.

Famous for creating the fictional character Inspector Montalbano, Camilleri is a prolific, best-selling novelist who has generated worldwide interest in the culture and landscapes of Sicily.

Camilleri studied literature and although he never completed his course he began to write poems and short stories. He was taught stage and film direction and became a director and a screen writer. He worked on several television productions for RAI, including the Inspector Maigret series.

He wrote his first novel in 1978 but it was not until 1992 that one of his novels, La stagione della caccia - The Hunting Season - became a best seller.

In 1994 Camilleri published La forma dell’acqua - The Shape of Water - which was the first novel to feature the character of Inspector Montalbano, a detective serving the police in Vigàta, an imaginary Sicilian town.

The book was written in Italian but had a real Sicilian flavour, with local phrases and sayings and descriptions of the classic Sicilian dishes particularly favoured by Montalbano.

Luca Zingaretti, instantly recognisable
as Inspector Montalbano

When the series was adapted for Italian television, featuring Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano, the popularity of the books increased even more.

Camilleri’s home town, Porto Empedocle, on which Vigàta is modelled, has now changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigàta to encourage tourism still further.

In 2012, Camilleri’s novel The Potter’s Field, translated into English by Stephen Sartorelli, was announced as the winner of the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger.

At the time of writing, Camilleri lives in Rome where he works as a TV and theatre director.

He has now written 24 Inspector Montalbano novels, whch have sold millions of copies. The translated versions have also sold well in the UK, Australia and America and the Montalbano TV series has become popular in the UK.

Well-known in Italy as a heavy smoker, Camilleri celebrated his 91st birthday today.

Travel tip:

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and, along with its surrounding small islands, a region of Italy. It has the tallest active volcano in Europe, Mount Etna, which casts black ash over the island with its constant eruptions. The island of Lampedusa, part of the Sicilian province of Agrigento, is the southernmost part of Italy, just 113 kilometres away from Tunisia.

The centre of Porto Empedocle, birthplace of Camilleri
and fictional home town of Montalbano

Travel tip:

Porto Empedocle, the birthplace of Camilleri, is a port town on the coast of the Strait of Sicily in the province of Agrigento. One of the main sights is the Torre del Caricatore di Girgenti, which was commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, to protect the area’s grain reserves.

Books:

Blade of Light, the latest Inspector Montalbano mystery by Andrea Camilleri, is available now. Also available in paperback.



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Tommaso Campanella – poet and philosopher

Friar had utopian dream to banish poverty

Tommaso Campanella, as depicted by the
Italian painter Francesco Cozza

Writer Tommaso Campanella was born on this day in 1568 in Stilo in Reggio Calabria and was baptised Giovanni Domenico Campanella.

As a friar who was also a philosopher, Campanella tried to reconcile humanism with Roman Catholicism. He is best remembered for his work, La città del sole (The city of the sun), written in 1602 which was about a utopian commonwealth where every man’s work contributed to the good of the community and there was no poverty.

The son of a poor cobbler, Campanella was an infant prodigy who joined the Dominican order before he was 15, taking the name Fra Tommaso.

He was influenced by the work of philosopher Bernardino Telesio, who opposed Aristotle’s ideas, and he became interested in astrology, which constantly featured in his writing.

After Campanella published his own work, Philosophy Demonstrated by the Senses, which stressed the need for human experience as a basis for philosophy, he was arrested, tried and imprisoned briefly for heresy.

Campanella then became interested in pragmatism and the idea of political reform, moved deeply by the poverty of the people living in his native Stilo.

Campanella's house in Stilo in Calabria

He became involved in a plot to overthrow Spanish rule in Calabria but the plot was discovered and he was arrested and taken to Naples.

He confessed under torture and, after feigning madness to escape death, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

During his 27 years in prison he wrote poetry, which is now considered to be the most original of the period, and books about religion and philosophy.

One month after his release from prison he was arrested again for heresy in Rome but because of his reputation as an astrologer he was freed after the intervention of Pope Urban VIII.

When he was again accused of plotting against the Spanish he fled to France and the protection of King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu.

He spent the rest of his life in a convent in Paris and died in 1639 at the age of 70.

Travel tip:

Reggio di Calabria, often referred to simply as Reggio Calabria, or just Reggio, is the biggest city in the region of Calabria in southern Italy near the ‘toe’ of the Italian peninsula. Its seafront promenade facing Messina in Sicily across the Straits, has been described as ‘the most beautiful kilometre of Italy’.

The Cattolica di Stilo has survived from the ninth century

Travel tip:

Stilo, where Tommaso Campanella was born, is a town in the province of Reggio Calabria, where his house is marked with a plaque.  It still has a ninth century church, the Cattolica di Stilo, which was built in the Byzantine style. In 1940, the Italian navy fought the British navy in the Battle of Punta Stilo, just off the promontory of Cape Stilo, which is about six kilometres from the town.  It was known by the British navy as the Battle of Calabria.

(Photo of Campanella's house by Marcuscalabresus CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Cattolica di Stilo by Salli CC BY-SA 3.0)

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