The Bonfire of the Vanities

Preacher Savonarola's war on Renaissance 'excesses'

The statue of Girolamo Savonarola in
Piazza Savonarola in Florence

The most famous 'bonfire of the vanities' encouraged by the outspoken Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola took place in Florence on this day in 1497.

Savonarola campaigned against what he considered to be the artistic and social excesses of the Renaissance, preaching with fanatical passion against any material possession that might tempt the owner towards sin.

He became notorious for organising large communal bonfires in the tradition of San Bernardino of Siena, urging Florentines to come forward with items of luxury or vanity or even simply entertainment that might draw them away from their faith.

Savonarola arrived in Florence from his home town of Ferrara in 1482, entering the convent of St Mark. With Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power, Savonarola became disturbed by what he perceived as the moral collapse of the Catholic church.

For a number of years he confined himself to speaking about repentance to congregations of believers in the parishes around Florence but on returning to the city in 1490 he began to campaign with more vigour about what he saw as the need for a return to piety.

He issued dire warnings about what would happen to Florence and its citizens if they did not renounce their sins, prophesising that a powerful leader would arrive from the north to punish Italy and reform the church.

Paintings by Botticelli were considered
indecent under's Savonarola's moral code

Savonarola's condemnation of what he considered the vice and corruption infecting the Catholic bishops and cardinals, and his attacks on the wealthy for ignoring the plight of the poor and sick, struck a chord with the common people and he became an increasingly powerful figure.

When Emperor Charles VIII of France invaded Italy from the north in 1494, many people saw this as confirmation of Savonarola’s prediction.  They rose up against the Medici family, the major sponsors of Renaissance art and literature, and drove them from the city, after which Savonarola became the effective leader of a new Florentine republic.

Savonarola began to host his bonfires in 1495, at around the time that used to be taken up with Carnival celebrations, which he cancelled.

At first, it was items of vanity such as mirrors, cosmetics, jewellery and fine clothes that were thrown on to the flames, along with playing cards, musical instruments and such pagan fripperies as books of magic and astrology. Savonarola employed street urchins to knock on doors, demanding luxurious and suspect items were handed over.

But the scope of what was deemed to be sinful grew. Soon, he was demanding that books he saw as immoral, such as works by Boccaccio, were burned, as well as paintings and sculptures, manuscripts and tapestries. Priceless works by Dante and the Roman poets Ovid and Propertius were said to have been consigned to the flames.

A painting by an unknown Florentine artist depicts the bonfire
built in Piazza della Signoria in which Savonarola was burned

At the same time, Savonarola spread fear among the people with ever more horrific visions of what fate would befall them if they did not live according to his strict moral code. Higher church officials viewed all this with increasing unease and for Pope Alexander VI, it seems, the huge bonfire of 1497 - in which the Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli is said to have burned several of his own paintings - was the last straw.

Already in defiance of a ban on his preaching imposed when he failed to support Pope Alexander's military response to the French invasion, Savonarola was excommunicated in May 1497. The following year, having confessed that his visions and prophecies were invented, he was condemned as a heretic and, with two other friars, hung from a cross in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, to be consumed by a bonfire built beneath him.

A statue of Savonarola, completed in 1875 by the sculptor Enrico Pazzi, from Ravenna, can be found in Piazza Savonarola, about 2km north-east of Florence's centre,

Travel tip:

Florence's Piazza della Signoria has been the focal point of the city since the 14th century. Overlooked by the imposing Palazzo Vecchio, it was the scene of the triumphant return of the Medici family in 1530, three and a half decades after they had been driven from the city by the supporters of the fanatical Savonarola. The controversial priest's bonfires of the vanities were built in the middle of the square, where his own body was burned at the stake in 1498 after he was denounced as a heretic. A marble circle inscription on the piazza shows the spot where he was burned.

Florence hotels from Hotels.com

The Piazza della Signoria is Florence's main square

Travel tip:

The Piazza della Signoria contains several important sculptures and statues, including a copy of Michelangelo's David - the original is in the Galleria dell'Accademia - outside the Palazzo Vecchio, which is said to be a symbol of defiance against the tyranny of the Medici.  The family apparently installed or appropriated their own symbols of power in the shape of Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, just to the right of the David, and the Nettuno by Ammannati, which celebrates the Medici's maritime ambitions.  Giambologna's equestrian statue of Duke Cosimo I is a tribute to the man who brought all of Tuscany under Medici military rule.  Under the Loggia dei Lanzi, to the right of Palazzo Vecchio, the statue of Perseo holding Medusa's head, by Benvenuto Cellini, is a stark reminder of what happened to those who crossed the Medici. Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines can also be found in the Loggia dei Lanzi.

Hotels in Florence from Expedia

More reading:

The execution of Girolamo Savonarola

Sandro Botticelli - Renaissance master forgotten until the 19th century

How scheming Pope Alexander VI married off his children to secure power

Also on this day:

1622: The birth of Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany

1909: The birth of Amedeo Guillet, the army office who led the last cavalry charge against the British

1941: The birth in San Marino of pop singer Little Tony

(Picture credits: Savonarola statue by liviathana; Piazza della Signoria by Zolli; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Beatrice Cenci - Roman heroine

Aristocrat's daughter executed for murder of abusive father

Guido Reni's portrait of Beatrice, in prison
clothes, is thought to have been painted in 1662

Beatrice Cenci, the daughter of an aristocrat whose execution for the murder of her abusive father became a legendary story in Roman history, was born on this day in 1577 in the family's palace off the Via Arenula, not far from what is now the Ponte Garibaldi in the Regola district.

Cenci's short life ended with her beheading in front of Castel Sant'Angelo on 11 September 1599, with most of the onlookers convinced that an injustice had taken place.

Her father, Francesco Cenci, had a reputation for violent and immoral behaviour that was widely known and had often been found guilty of serious crimes in the papal court. Yet where ordinary citizens were routinely sentenced to death for similar or even lesser offences, he was invariably given only a short prison sentence and frequently bought his way out of jail.

Romans appalled at this two-tier system of justice turned Beatrice into a symbol of resistance against the arrogance of the aristocracy and her story has been preserved not only in local legend but in many works of literature.

In the early 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was living in Italy, was so moved by her story that he turned it into a drama in verse entitled The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

Subsequently, the story has been the subject of at least a dozen plays and short stories, including works by Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Antonin Arnaud, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Alberto Moravia. It has also inspired at least two full-length novels and five operas or musical dramas.

The Palazzo dei Cenci, off Via Arenula, was the Cenci
family's palatial home in the 16th century

The Mannerist painter Guido Reni painted a portrait of Cenci that is on display at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica  in Palazzo Barberini. A sculpture of her carved by the American sculptor Harriet Goodhue Hosmer in 1857 can be found at the University of Missouri-St Louis.  The Italian director, Lucio Fulci, made a film of her life in 1969.

According to the legend, Francesco Cenci, one of the wealthiest men in Rome, abused his first wife Ersilia Santacroce and his sons and repeatedly raped Beatrice while living in the Palazzo Cenci. He was jailed for incest among other crimes but always freed early.

Beatrice's elder sister, Antonina, escaped when she was granted permission by the papal authorities to marry without her father's consent. But Beatrice was sent away, along with Cenci's second wife, Lucrezia, to live in the family's country castle at La Petrella del Salto in the Abruzzi mountains, together with his son by his second marriage, Bernardo.

There the abuse continued, leading Beatrice to write to her brother, Giacomo, in desperation.  When he joined them at the castle, in 1598, they devised a plot to kill Francesco.

With the help of two servants - one of whom, Olimpio, was thought to have been Beatrice's lover - they drugged Francesco and then bludgeoned him to death with a hammer, before throwing him off a balcony in the hope it would look like an accident.

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer's sculpture of Beatrice Cenci
at the University of Missuori-St Louis

However, the papal police decided to investigate what had happened, found blood in Francesco's bed and placed the family and Olimpio, under house arrest, where they were subjected to interrogation and torture.

Olimpio died without revealing that Beatrice was the mastermind but the others confessed one by one. All were sentenced to death with the exception of Bernardo, who was told he would witness the executions, serve a prison sentence and then live his life as a galley slave, although in the event he was released from prison after a year.

A protest on the streets of Rome by people who knew the circumstances behind the murder gained a short postponement of the execution. Yet Pope Clement VIII, anxious not to legitimise familial murders, showed no mercy.

Following the executions, Beatrice was buried in the church of San Pietro in Montorio, on Gianicolo hill in Trastevere.  The legend has it that every year on the night before the anniversary of her death, she comes back to the bridge where she was executed, carrying her severed head.

The plaque commemorating Beatrice Cenci on
Via di Monserrato in Rome

Travel tip:

Evidence of how much the story of Beatrice Cenci means to Rome can be found on Via di Monserrato, along the route the Cenci family members took on the morning of their executions, from the Corte Savella prison to Castel Sant'Angelo, accompanied by members of the Brotherhood of St. John the Decapitated. On the 500th anniversary of her death, the city put up a plaque, bearing the inscription: "From here, where once stood the prison of Corte Savella, on September 11, 1599 Beatrice Cenci was taken to the gallows, an exemplary victim of unfair justice."


Travel tip:

Some of the relics of the day of the execution have made their way to the Museo Criminologico in Via del Gonfalone, off the Lungotevere dei Sangallo. These include the so-called “sword of justice” that killed Lucrezia and Beatrice, as well as clothes worn by the monks who accompanied them. There is also a replica of a stripped man being drawn and quartered, which was the fate of Giacomo.


More reading:

How a dramatic storm took the life of the poet Shelley

The tragic nun whose funeral brought Rome to a standstill

The work that turned Alberto Moravia into a major literary figure

Also on this day:

1778: The birth of the poet and revolutionary Ugo Foscolo

1908: The birth of six-times Italian prime minister Amintore Fanfani

(Picture credits: sculpture by Quartermaster; plaque by Lalupa; via Wikimedia Commons)


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Carolina Morace - footballer and coach

Prolific goalscorer first woman in Italian Football Hall of Fame

Carolina Morace won the Women's Serie A
title 12 times as a player

Footballer and coach Carolina Morace, the first woman to be inducted into the Italian Football Hall of Fame, was born on this day in 1964 in Venice.

Morace played for 20 years for 10 different clubs and was the leading goalscorer in the Women's Serie A on 12 occasions, including an incredible run of 11 consecutive seasons from 1987 to 1998.

She won the Italian championship 12 times with eight of her clubs and scored an extraordinary 550 goals at an average of three in every two games at her peak, with a further 105 goals in 153 appearances for the Italy national team.

Four of those came in one match when Italy Women played England in a curtain-raiser to the pre-season Charity Shield game at Wembley in 1990, which she described as one of her proudest moments. 

Morace, the daughter of a former officer in the Italian Navy, grew up a stone’s throw away from Venice's football ground at Sant' Elena. She joined her first club in Venice when she was 11 years old, her ability to score goals allowing her to be accepted quickly in boys' teams.

Her father soon realised she needed to play at a higher level and at 14 helped her move to a club at Belluno, 120 miles north of Venice in the mountainous Dolomites.  The same year she was called into the Italy national squad for a friendly against Yugoslavia in Naples in 1978, entering the game with 15 minutes left as substitute for Betti Vignotto, for many years the leading Italian striker and team captain.

Carolina Morace during her playing days as captain and
centre forward of the Italy women's team

When Vignotto retired from international football 11 years later, she passed the captain’s armband and the number nine shirt to Morace.

During her international career, Morace took part in six European Championships as well as the inaugural FIFA Women's World Cup in China in 1991, where she scored four goals, including the first hat-trick scored at a World Cup in Italy's 5–0 win against Chinese Taipei.

Her retirement from playing came at the age of 34 at the end of the 1997-98 season, after winning her 12th Serie A title, with Modena. 

By then, Morace had begun her preparations for life outside football by completing a law degree, but remained in the game as a coach, looking after the women's team at Serie A club Lazio, where she also spent time training the club's male reserve team.

She was offered a job coaching a men's team in 1999 with Serie C club Viterbese, although she resigned after just two matches in charge, accusing the club's owner of interfering in team matters.

Morace coached the Italy women's team for five years

Morace was not long out of the dugout, however. In 2000, she was appointed coach of the Italian women's national team, where she spent five years, qualifying twice for the European Championship finals, before taking charge of the Canada women's national team in 2009.

Under her tutelage, Canada won the 2010 CONCACAF, 2010 and 2011 Cyprus Cups and 2010 Four Nations Tournament, although there was disappointment at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup when the team's top scorer, Christine Sinclair, broke her nose in the opening group match and Canada failed to qualify for the second phase.

An exacting coach who expected her players to meet certain standards and insisted on appropriate support from the national federation, she resigned in July 2011 after a dispute over budgets.  Morace improved Canada's FIFA ranking from 11th to sixth during her period in charge.

Subsequently, Morace has conducted FIFA coaching courses around the world and launched her own football academy. She had a spell coaching Australian men's team Floreat Athena FC before being appointed Trinidad and Tobago women's national team coach in December 2016.

Morace left her position with the Trinidad and Tobago team in 2017 and in 2018 signed a two-year contract to become the first coach of AC Milan Women. In 2021 she was appointed head coach of Lazio Women, working alongside the former Australia international Nicola Williams.

The church of Sant'Elena with its tall belltower, seen
from the lagoon of Venice

Away from the training ground, Morace has a legal studio in Rome and has made regular appearances as a football pundit on Italian television, as well as writing a column in the football newspaper, La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Morace announced in 2020 that she and Williams, her partner for several years, were married.

Travel tip:

The island of Sant'Elena lies at the eastern tip of the group of islands that make up Venice and forms part the Castello sestiere (district).  Linked to the rest of the city by three bridges, the area has developed around the Church of Sant'Elena and its monastery, originally built in the 12th century.  Sant'Elena also includes the Parco delle Rimembranze, an attractive green space - rare in Venice - that was created to commemorate soldiers who died in the Second World War. Nearby there is a naval college, the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo football stadium, the Venice Bienniale buildings and a residential area.

Find a Venice hotel with tripadvisor

The pretty Piazza Doumo in Belluno

Travel tip:

Belluno, where the teenaged Morace had to travel to play at a standard that suited her ability, is a beautiful town in the Dolomites, surrounded by rocky slopes and dense woods that make for an outstanding scenic background. The architecture of the historic centre has echoes of the town's Roman and medieval past. Around the picturesque Piazza Duomo can be found several fine buildings, such as the Palazzo dei Rettori, the Cathedral of Belluno and Palazzo dei Giuristi, which contains the Civic Museum.

Belluno hotels from Hotels.com

More reading:

Antonio Cabrini, hero of 1982 now coaches Italy's women

Toto Schillaci - international novice who took Italia '90 by storm

How Lazio star Giorgio Chinaglia became a sensation in New York

Also on this day:

The Feast Day of Saint Agatha of Sicily

1578: Death of portrait painter Giovanni Battista Moroni


(Picture credits: Church of Sant'Elena by Didier Descouens; Piazza Duomo by Kufoleto; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Eugenio Corti - soldier and writer

Author drew on his experiences on the front line

Eugenio Corti

Eugenio Corti, the writer most famous for his epic 1983 novel The Red Horse, died on this day in 2014 at the age of 93.

He passed away at his home in Besana in Brianza in Lombardy, where he had been born in January 1921.

The Red Horse, which follows the life of the Riva family in northern Italy from Mussolini's declaration of war in the summer of 1940 through to the 1970s, covers the years of the Second World War and the evolution of Italy's new republic.

Its themes reflect Corti's own view of the world, his unease about the totalitarianism of fascism and communism, his faith in the Christian Democrats to tread a confident path through the conservative middle ground, and his regret at the decline in Christian values in Italy.

It has been likened to Alessandro Manzoni's novel I promessi sposi - The Betrothed - for its strong moral tone and for the way that Corti employs the technique favoured by Manzoni of setting fictional characters in the novel against a backcloth of actual history, with real people and events written into the plot.

Italian soldiers were exposed to horrendous conditions
and extreme weather on the Russian Front

The Red Horse, which took Corti more than a decade to write, became a literary phenomenon in Italy, selling so many copies it needed to be reprinted 25 times.   It was voted the best book of the 1980s in a survey in Italy and has been translated into six languages, including Japanese.  Corti was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature

Corti, who enjoyed success also with Few Returned and The Last Soldiers of the King, based much of his work on his experiences fighting in Mussolini's army on the Russian Front and later as a member of the Italian Freedom Fighters, fighting alongside the Allies against the Nazis.

His philosophy was shaped by his family background, which had deep Catholic roots.  His paternal grandmother, Josephine Ratti, was the cousin of Achille Ratti, who became Pope Pius XI.  The family had a strong belief in doing charitable Christian work. Among his nine brothers was a missionary in Uganda and a priest in Chad.  There was also a powerful work ethic, typified by his father, Mario, who left school at 13 yet built up a textile business that at one time employed 1,200 people in five factories.

It was while studying classics at the Collegio San Carlo in Milan that Eugenio decided he could best express his beliefs through writing but his life changed after he was called up for compulsory military service in 1941. Appointed a Lieutenant of Artillery, he was allowed to decide where he wanted to serve.  He chose the Russian Front because he wanted to "understand the communist world."

Within a few months of his arrival at the front in June 1942, Mussolini's army was in retreat.  In fact, Corti was one of only a handful to escape as a 30,000-strong Italian force was encircled, finding his way back to Italy despite harsh winter weather conditions. He survived a phase of the conflict in which 115,000 Italian soldiers died.

On his return to barracks in Bolzano he refused the offer of discharge on medical grounds and was posted to Nettuno, south of Rome.  When Mussolini was arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III and an armistice signed with the Allies, Corti joined the Italian Freedom Fighters to fight against the Nazis.

The experiences exposed him to the full horrors of war and shaped his writing. He produced his first two books - I più non ritornato (published in English as Few Returned) and I poveri cristi (The Poor Bastards) - which were essentially diaries of his own experiences, soon after the war was over.

At the same time he studied law at the Catholic Università del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he met his wife, Vanda, whom he married at Assisi in 1951.  For the next decade he worked in the family business, helping steer it through the post-War industrial crisis, returning to writing with a play, Trial and Death of Stalin, in 1962.

Eugenio Corti was interviewed for
a television documentary in 2010

He began to write full time in the early 1970s, his epic The Red Horse consuming him for a decade until publication in 1983.  His subsequent novel The Last Soldiers of the King was based on his experiences fighting against the Nazis for Victor Emmanuel III, who abdicated in 1946 shortly before the Italian people voted to scrap the monarchy.

Apart from his novels, Corti was noted for his essays on the Vatican, the Christian Democrat party and on the development of western civilization.  He continued to write well into his eighties.

Awarded a Silver Medal for Valour in recognition of his bravery and leadership on the battlefield, he was honoured by the Lombardy Region and the Province of Milan for his contributions to civilian life and industry and by the Italian state with a Gold Medal for Culture and Art before, in 1999, he was awarded the Knight Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by President Francesco Cossiga.

Travel tip:

The Brianza area of Lombardy, in which Eugenio Corti grew up, used to be covered with dense forests, much of which have disappeared with the industrialisation of northern Italy. One area that escaped extensive development, just to the east of Besana in Brianza, has been preserved as the Montevecchia Regional Park, a small gem near the city of Milan where visitors can enjoy verdant green spaces and wooded areas rich in flora. The crest of the hill of Montevecchia , where the forests of the Curone Valley and the Santa Croce Valley meet, represents the green heart of the park.

Nettuno beach, with the Sangallo Fortress in the foreground

Travel tip:

Nettuno and neighbouring Anzio tend to be best remembered as the point chosen by Allied forces as a landing point during the invasion of the Italian peninsula early in 1944, mainly due to the area's long stretches of beach. Many lives were lost in the battle that took place and both towns suffered heavy damage. Nonetheless, there is still much to see at Nettuno, including the ruins of a Roman port and the walled Sangallo Fortress built in 1503 by Antonio da Sangallo on behalf of Cesare Borgia, which sits next to the beach.  The Sanctuary of Nostra Signora delle Grazie e Santa Maria Goretti houses a wooden statue of Our Lady of Grace said to have been recovered in England in the 16th century after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of Catholic monasteries, when many religious statues were confiscated or desecrated.

More reading:

Mussolini's last stand

Victor Emmanuel III abdicates

How Russians liberated Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi

Also on this day:

1667: The birth of painter Alessandro Magnasco

1676: The birth of 'forgotten' composer Giacomo Facco

1875: The birth of patriot and irredentist Cesare Battisti

1892: The birth of playwright Ugo Betti


(Picture credits: Nettuno beach by Stefano.niccoluci via Wikimedia Commons)


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Giuseppe Moretti - sculptor

Sienese artist who became famous in the United States

Giuseppe Moretti

The sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, who became well known in the United States as a prolific creator of public monuments, was born on this day in 1857 in Siena.

Moretti's favourite medium was marble and he considered his Head of Christ, which he carved from a block of Alabama marble in 1903, to be his greatest work.

The creation which earned him most fame, however, was the 56-foot (17.07m) statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and metalworking, which he made for the 1904 World's Fair in St Louis, Missouri on behalf of the city of Birmingham, Alabama as a symbol of its heritage in the iron and steel industry.

Moretti made the statue in clay in New Jersey before overseeing its casting in iron in Birmingham.  Vulcan, the largest cast iron statue in the world, was relocated to Alabama State Fairgrounds after the St Louis Exposition before being moved again to the top of Red Mountain, the ridge overlooking Birmingham, which it shares with a number of radio and television transmission towers.

Moretti's enormous statue of Vulcan on
Red Mountain, overlooking Birmingham

Although he spent much of his life away from Italy, it was in his homeland that Moretti developed his love for art and sculpture.  The nephew of Vincenzo Cardinal Moretti, a patron of the arts, he began sculpting at the age of nine with Tito Serrochi, who had a studio Siena.

Aware that Florence was the cradle of Italian art, the young Moretti apparently set off on foot one day, following the road sign that pointed towards the Tuscan capital, unaware that it was more than 60km (37 miles) away.  He was taken home by a neighbour.  A few years later, he reached his intended destination by gaining a place at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

Always prepared to move in search of work, Moretti relocated to Carrara to work with marble before accepting an invitation to work in Croatia, where he might have stayed but for a devastating earthquake in Zagreb.  Instead, he moved on to Vienna and then Budapest before taking the bold decision in 1888 to emigrate to the United States.

He set up a studio in New York in partnership with the Austrian-American sculptor Karl Bitter, operating from a town house in Manhattan.  The architect Richard Morris Hunt hired him for commissions for wealthy clients in Newport, Rhode Island, including William K and Alva Vanderbilt.

The house in Manhattan's East Village that
Moretti shared with fellow sculptor Karl Bitter

A keen opera fan and an amateur singer himself, it was around this time that he joined the Liederkranz music club in New York, where he met and became friends with the great tenor, Enrico Caruso.

Work took him next to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, where he took regular commissions over a 28-year period, beginning with a series of works in the city's Schenley Park.

His popularity in Pittsburgh brought him wide attention and the commission to create Birmingham's Vulcan followed shortly afterwards.

While overseeing the casting, Moretti visited the marble quarries around Sylacauga and discovered that Alabama marble was of outstanding quality, good enough to rival the Carrara marble that was imported to the United States in large quantities each year. He hauled a block of the gleaming white stone back to his studio in Birmingham and carved The Head of Christ, a work that he carried with him to every place that he lived for the rest of his life. It is now on display at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Although he was a brilliant sculptor, Moretti was a poor businessman, in that most of his ventures ended badly and cost him money.

Giuseppe Moretti felt his Head of Christ in Alabama marble
was his finest piece of work

Ultimately, it became clear that the only way he would make money was from the fees he earned from individual commissions.  So he abandoned his ambitions to own marble quarries and focussed again on sculpting.

This explains why he was so prolific. In all, he completed 12 First World War memorials, 19 monumental works, six church sculptures, 24 memorial tablets, 14 cemetery memorials, 27 sculptures in marble, bronze, and aluminum, and 27 bronze statuettes.

There are at least 17 Moretti works in Pittsburgh's east end. Moretti's notable work in Pittsburgh includes two imposing entrances to Highland Park and four bronze Panthers erected on Panther Hollow Bridge.

In 1905, Moretti married Dorothea Long, a member of an aristocratic Boston family, in her hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts. Two years later, he encountered the work of Geneva Mercer, a student, whom he took on as an apprentice and then his assistant.

He decided to travel again and in 1909, with Dorothea and Geneva, left Alabama. During the next 13 years they lived in New York City, Florence, Havana and Pittsburgh.  One of his great achievements during this period was to complete, with Mercer's help, 97 sculptures for the Gran Teatro de la Habana in Cuba.

When he suffered another business failure in 1925, and with his health beginning to fail, Moretti decided to return to Italy, settling in a large villa and studio in Sanremo, where he died in February 1935.

The Torre del Mangia towers over Siena's Piazza del Campo

Travel tip:

Siena is best known for the twice-yearly Palio, the horse race between the city's rival contrade (parishes) that takes place in the city's expansive Piazza del Campo, but there are many other good reasons to visit.  Among them, dominating the piazza, is the 800-year old castellated Palazzo Pubblico, which contains frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Simone Martini and Duccio, and the adjoining Torre del Mangia, at 88m (289 feet) high the third tallest tower in Italy.  Visitors wanting to enjoy the stunning view from the top need patience and stamina.  A restriction on 25 people inside the tower at any one time can mean a lengthy queue in high season, followed by a 300-step climb.

Travel tip:

The Academy of Fine Arts in Florence can be found in Via Ricasoli, next door to the Galleria dell'Accamedia, which houses Michelangelo's original David. An instructional art academy, it was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of the artist and historian Giorgio Vasari. It was both a guild for working artists and a body of established artists responsible for supervising artistic production in the area.  Members have included Vasari, Michelangelo, Lazzaro Donati, Francesco da Sangallo, Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Bartolomeo Ammannati, and Giambologna.

More reading:

How Giorgio Vasari wrote the world's first history of art

Giacomo Manzù - the son of a shoemaker who taught himself to sculpt

The genius of Antonio Canova almost brought marble to life

Also on this day:

1757: The birth of eye surgeon Giuseppe Forlenza



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Antonio Segni - prime minister and president

Sardinian politician famous for tactical cunning

Antonio Segni: Christian Democrat was
twice Italian prime minister

Antonio Segni, the first Sardinian to become Italy's prime minister, was born on this day in 1891 in Sassari, the second largest city on the island.

Sassari was also the home town of another Italian prime minister, Francesco Cossiga, and of the country's most successful Communist leader, Enrico Berlinguer.  Like Segni, Cossiga also served the country as president.

Born into a landowning family and a prominent member of the Christian Democratic party from the time of its formation towards the end of the Second World War, Segni was prime minister from 1955 to 1957 and from 1959 to 1960. He was president from 1962 until he was forced to retire due to ill health in 1964.

Frail in appearance for much of his life, Segni was a strong politician nonetheless, given the affectionate nickname Il malato di ferro - the invalid with the iron constitution - by his supporters.

He was also highly astute, particularly when it came to wrong-footing opponents.

Segni became politically active in his late 20s, joining the Italian People's Party (PPI) - predecessor of the Christian Democrats - in 1919 and by 1924 was a member of the party's national council. He spoke out against extremism on the left and the right and opposed PPI participation in any coalition involving the Fascists.

Alcide de Gasperi led Italy's first government as
a republic after the end of the Second World War

In 1926, the debate became irrelevant as Fascist leader Benito Mussolini banned all political organisations apart from his own and for the next 17 years Segni, who had graduated with a degree in agricultural and commercial law, returned to academic life, lecturing in agrarian law at a number of universities.

He resumed his political career in 1943 - the year in which Mussolini was thrown out by his own party and arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III - helping launch the Christian Democratic Party in Sardinia.  He was part of the wartime governments of Ivanoe Bonimi, Ferrucio Parri and Alcide de Gasperi before being elected to the first parliament of the new Italian Republic, serving as Minister for Agriculture, also under De Gasperi.

It was in that capacity that Segni showed himself to be an innovative thinker in political tactics.  Aware that agricultural workers, still living in a somewhat medieval societal structure dominated by large landowners, were a prime target for left-wing revolutionaries, Segni sought to keep them onside by proposing that areas of uncultivated land should be expropriated from large landowners and given to the workers so that they could grow and sell their own produce.

He was prepared to lose substantial amounts of his own land under the scheme.  In the event, the proposal met with opposition both from the right, who objected to any imposed limitations on property ownership, and from the left, who saw it as a calculated attempt to undermine their support from agricultural workers.  Nonetheless, the watered down version that was passed still led to some 121,000 working class families becoming landowners.

Giovanni de Lorenzo was the head
of Italy's Carabinieri police force

As prime minister, Segni introduced other social reforms to the benefit of ordinary Italians, particularly in the area of pensions, and in insurance against health problems linked to working conditions.

Later, however, it was alleged that his tactics for keeping the left from gaining power in Italy were not always so honourable.

In 1967, after an investigation by the news magazine L'Espresso, it was claimed that, as president, Segni was so uneasy about the growing popularity of the Italian Socialist and Communist parties he had asked General Giovanni de Lorenzo, the head of the Carabinieri - Italy's quasi-military police force - to work with the Italian secret services and the CIA to prepare a coup.

This supposedly would have involved 20,000 Carabinieri officers on the streets around the country, 5,000 of them in Rome, who would occupy government buildings such as the Palazzo del Quirinale, the offices of the television and radio stations, plus the headquarters premises of the Communist and Socialist parties and the Communist party newspaper, L'Unità.  Leaders and prominent supporters of the Communist party were to be detained and interned at a secret base in Sardinia already used by the clandestine anti-Communist organisation, Gladio.

The existence of the plot was never proved.  It was suggested in some quarters that the story was a plant by the right aimed at dissuading progressive Christian Democrats such as Aldo Moro from entering into coalition deals with left-wing parties; others dismissed the story as an attempt by L'Espresso to discredit De Lorenzo, who was a member of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.

Segni stepped down as president in December 1964, four months after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.  He died in Rome in 1972 at the age of 81.

Travel tip:

Sassari, the origins of which can be traced to the early 12th century, is a city rich in art, culture and history. It is well known for its beautiful palazzi, for the Fountain of the Rosello, and for the elegant neoclassical architecture that can be found around the central Piazza d'Italia and the Teatro Civico. The city - second in size on Sardinia only to Cagliari - is not heavily industrialised, its economy mainly reliant on tourism and the service industries.

Palazzo Madama is the seat of Italy's Senate

Travel tip:

Rome's four main government buildings can be found within a short distance from one another in the centre of the city.  The prime minister's official residence and cabinet office are in Palazzo Chigi in Piazza Colonna, just off Via del Corso.  The Palazzo Montecitori, where Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, convenes, is little more than 150m from Palazzo Chigi in the Piazza di Monte Citori.  Approximately 600m from Palazzo Chigi, going west, and a stone's throw from Piazza Navona, the upper house, the Senate, sits in Palazzo Madama, which can be found in Piazza Madama. The official residence of the Italian president is the Palazzo del Quirinale, or simply il Quirinale, which is roughly 800m from Palazzo Chigi in the opposite direction.  Sitting atop one of Rome's seven hills, it is often referred to also as il Colle – the Hill.

More reading:

Alcide de Gasperi - the Christian Democrat founder who had been jailed by Mussolini

How Enrico Berlinguer turned Italy's Communist Party in a political force

Why the Aldo Moro tragedy overshadowed career of Francesco Cossiga

Also on this day:

1594: The death of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

1723: The death of anatomist Antonio Maria Valsalva

1925: The birth of Olympic showjumper Raimondo D'Inzeo

(Picture credit: Palazzo Madama by Paul Hermans; via Wikmedia Commons)


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Corradino D'Ascanio - engineer

Aeronautical genius famed for helicopters and the Vespa scooter 

D'Ascanio (left) and Enrico Piaggio with the Vespa
scooter that made both their names

Corradino D'Ascanio, the aeronautical engineer whose design for a clean motorcycle turned into the iconic Vespa scooter and who also designed the first helicopter that could actually fly, was born on this day in 1891 in Popoli, a small town about 50km inland of Pescara.

The engineer, whose work on aircraft design during the Second World War saw him promoted to General in the Regia Aeronautica, was always passionate about flight and might never have become involved with road vehicles had he not been out of work in the post-War years.

His scooter would have been built by Lambretta had he not fallen out with the company founder, Ferdinando Innocenti, in a dispute over his design.  Instead, D'Ascanio took his plans to Enrico Piaggio, with whom he had worked previously in the aeronautical sector.

Piaggio saw in D'Ascanio's scooter an irresistible opportunity to revive his ailing company and commissioned the design, which became known as the Vespa after Piaggio remarked that its body shape resembled that of a wasp.

A 1949 model of the classic Vespa 125

After graduating in 1914 in mechanical engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, D'Ascanio enlisted in the voluntary division of the Italian Army entitled "weapon of Engineers, Division Battalion Aviatori" in Piedmont, where he was assigned the testing of airplane engines. He undertook a brief pilot training course but soon returned to engineering.

He spent a year working in America immediately after the end of the First World War. On his return to Italy he set up a company in partnership with Baron Pietro Trojani, a wealthy friend from Pescara province, with the sole aim of proving the viability of an idea first mooted by Leonardo da Vinci, namely that an aircraft could fly by means of a vertical rotating mechanism.

D'Ascanio achieved his objective in 1930 after his D'AT 3, commissioned by the Ministry dell'Aeronautica and which had two double-bladed counter-rotating rotors, successfully took off at Ciampino Airport, south of Rome, and made a flight lasting eight minutes and 45 seconds.

His ambitions to build more aircraft were thwarted by several factors.  Firstly, Mussolini's government wanted the aeronautical industry to concentrate on standard products and D'Ascanio's helicopter company collapsed in 1932.

D'Ascanio's D'AT 3 helicopter, which he launched
successfully at Ciampino airport outside Rome in 1930

He found employment with Piaggio only for their factory in Pisa to be destroyed during the Second World War.  After the conflict ended, the terms of the peace settlement included a ban on both research and production in military or aerospace technology in Italy for 10 years, which meant effectively that D'Ascanio was unemployable.

The offer to design road vehicles came from Innocenti and the Vespa would have been a Lambretta product had D'Ascanio been allowed to build it to his exact specifications. But Innocenti wanted the frame made from rolled tubing that he could produce in another of his factories.  D'Ascanio told him it was not suitable but he would not back down.

As a result, D'Ascanio left Lambretta for Piaggio, taking his design with him. The Vespa, with its aerodynamic body shape, enclosed engine and ease of mounting and dismounting, was a massive success.  Launched in 1946, it has sold approaching 20 million machines.

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn famously careered
around Rome on a Vespa in Roman Holiday

Naturally enough, D'Ascanio was lauded for his design as the Vespa turned into a classic of Italian technology that appealed not just to buyers who wanted an easy means of two-wheel transport but to admirers of Italian style, particularly after Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck toured Rome on the back of one in the film Roman Holiday.

Yet he was deeply frustrated when Piaggio diverted resources away from the aeronautical section of his business in order to exploit demand for the Vespa.  Eventually, in 1964, D'Ascanio left to join the Agusta group, where he designed the ADA training helicopter, which was later modified for agricultural use.

Recognised for his achievements with the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, D'Ascanio died in Pisa in 1981, aged 90.

The hilltop town of Popoli in Abruzzo

Travel tip:

Popoli is small town between mountainous L'Aquila and the coastal city of Pescara in the Abruzzo region. It consists mainly of rural housing but there are a few buildings of importance such as the beautiful 18th century church of San Francesco and the ducal Palace of the mid-14th century.  Much of the town was destroyed in Allied bombing raids in 1944, when its strategic position in a valley made it a target.

D'Ascanio's house in Popoli

Travel tip:

Visitors to Italy can learn more about D'Ascanio's work at to the Piaggio Museum at Pontedera, the industrial town in the province of Pisa in Tuscany, which is the headquarters of the Piaggio company, as well as of the Castellani wine company and the Amedei chocolate factory. D'Ascanio's house in Popoli is commemorated with a wall plaque.



More reading:

Why Enrico Piaggio switched from building aircraft to motorcycles

How Flaminio Bertoni created beauty on four wheels

When Ciampino airport launched a flight to the North Pole

Also on this day:

1690: The birth of virtuoso violinist Francesco Maria Veracini

1922: The birth of opera singer Renata Tebaldi

(Picture credits: Vespa 125 by Sailko; Popoli by RaBoe via Creative Commons)


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