Lazzaro Spallanzani – priest and scientist

18th century biologist who pioneered artificial insemination 

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Lazzaro Spallanzani, the first scientist to interpret the process of digestion and the first to carry out a successful artificial insemination, died on this day in 1799 in Pavia.

Spallanzani made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions and animal reproduction. His investigations into the development of microscopic life in nutrient culture solutions paved the way for the later research of Louis Pasteur.

Born in Scandiano in the province of Reggio Emilia, the son of a wealthy lawyer, Spallanzani attended a Jesuit college and was ordained as a priest but then went to Bologna to study law.

Influenced by the eminent Laura Bassi, a professor of physics at the University, Spallanzani became interested in science.

Laura Bassi, whose work at the University
of Bologna influenced Spallanzani

In 1754 Spallanzani was appointed professor of logic, metaphysics and Greek at a college in Reggio and he later became a professor of physics at the University of Modena.

Spallanzani experimented in transplantation, successfully transplanting the head of one snail on to the body of another.

After a series of experiments on digestion, he obtained evidence that digestive juices contain special chemicals that are suited to particular foods.

He also performed in vitro fertilisation on frogs and, in 1780, artificial insemination on a dog, the first successful experiment of its kind on any animal recorded anywhere in the world.

As Spallanzani’s fame grew he received many offers from scientific societies throughout Europe but he accepted a chair at the University of Pavia in 1769, where he remained for the rest of his life.

He took every opportunity to travel in order to study new phenomena and to meet other scientists.

A coin struck in 1932 to commemorate
Spallanzani's achievements

In 1788 he visited Vesuvius in Campania and the volcanoes of the Lipari islands and Sicily and recorded the results of his research in a large work, Viaggi alle due Sicilie ed in alcune parti dell’Appennino.

Spallanzani died from bladder cancer on 12 February 1799 in Pavia. After his death his bladder was removed for study by his colleagues and it was then placed on public display in a museum in Pavia, where it remains to this day.

A number of medals and coins have been struck to commemorate Spallanzani's achievements, including one produced for the 14th International Congress of Physiology, in Rome, in 1932, designed by Renato Brozzi.

The monument to Lazzaro Spallanzani
in his home town of Scandiano

Travel tip:

There is a statue of Lazzaro Spallanzani showing him examining a frog through a magnifying glass, in his home town of Scandiano, which is near Reggio Emilia in Emilia-Romagna. The town was founded in 1262 when a defensive castle was built and some houses later developed around it. The town is now an important centre for the production of tiles.

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Travel tip:

Pavia, where Lazzaro Spallanzani died, is a city in Lombardy, south of Milan. It is famous for its university, where Spallanzani taught, which was founded in 1361, and for its Certosa, a magnificent monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396. A pretty covered bridge over the River Ticino in the centre of Pavia leads to Borgo Ticino, an area where the inhabitants claim to be the true people of Pavia and are of Sabaudian origin, which means they are connected with the House of Savoy, from where the rulers of Italy came.

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More reading:

How ground-breaking academic Laura Bassi paved way for women

Scientist Luigi Galvani appeared to give new life to dead frog

Giuseppe Forlenza's cataract surgery impressed Napoleon

Also on this day:

1602: The birth of painter Michelangelo Cerquozzi

1923: Birth of film director Franco Zeffirelli 

1937: The birth of Vittorio Emanuele, heir to the last King of Italy

1944: The birth of actress and singer Claudia Mori

(Picture credits: Scandiano monument by Maxo via Wikimedia Commons)

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Carlo Carrà - Futurist artist

Painter hailed for capturing violence at anarchist's funeral

Carlo Carrà, pictured in the late 1930s

The painter Carlo Carrà, a leading figure in the Futurist movement that gained popularity in Italy in the early part of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1881 in Quargnento, a village about 11km (7 miles) from Alessandria in Piedmont.

Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 and attracted many painters and sculptors, designers and architects, writers, film makers and composers who wished to embrace modernity and free Italy from what they perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention. They were also fervent nationalists and encouraged the youth of Italy to rise up in violent revolution against the establishment.

The movement was associated with anarchism. Indeed, Carrà counted himself as an anarchist in his youth and his best known work emerged from that period, when he attended the funeral of a fellow anarchist, Angelo Galli, who was killed by police during a general strike in Milan in 1906.

Carrà's most famous work, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli,
which is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As Galli's body was carried to the cemetery, violence erupted between anarchist mourners and the police. Carrà witnessed the clashes and hastened home to make sketches of what he had seen while the images were still fresh. They became the basis for his 1911 painting, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.

The abstract painting, which demonstrated strong Cubist influences and is seen as Carrà's masterpiece, shows Galli’s red coffin at the centre of the canvas, held precariously aloft amid a chaotic melee of figures clad in anarchist black, illuminated by light emanating both from the coffin and the sun.

In his memoirs, Carrà described the riot at the funeral, noting that the coffin, covered in red carnations, "swayed  dangerously on the shoulders of the pallbearers."

"I saw horses go mad, sticks and lances clash," he wrote. "It seemed to me that the corpse could have fallen to the ground at any moment and the horses would have trampled it."

Carrà had left home when he was only 12 in order to work as a mural decorator, the work taking him to Paris, where he became interested in contemporary French art, and to London, where he made the acquaintance of a number of exiled Italian anarchists.

Carrà (second left) in Paris in 1912 with Luigi Russolo, Filippo
  Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini

This shaped his life when he returned to Italy in 1901 and settled in Milan, where he enrolled at the Accademia di Brera and began to associate with anarchist groups. Along with Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla, in 1910 he signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painters, which emphasised a commitment to the dynamic portrayal of movement in their paintings, with particular reference to scenes of violent riot.

In the event, in the view of art experts, Carrà's Futurist phase ended around the time the First World War began, at which point his work began to move away from the influence of an angry political ideology towards stillness and calm and from motion towards clearer form, influenced among other factors by his fascination with the work of the French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau.

In 1917 he moved into another phase after meeting the surrealist Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara. Carrà began to include mannequin-like figures in his paintings and the two between them invented the Scuola Metafisica - the metaphysical school, the idea of which was to stress a dislocation between the present and the past, illustrated perhaps by classical figures shown against contemporary backgrounds.

Within a couple of years, Carrà had begun to depart from that phase, his work The Daughters of Lot, painted in 1919, showing the influence of the genius of the early Renaissance, Giotto, who is acknowledged as the first painter to capture true human emotions.

Carrà's political views also changed. He became more opposed to the social reform he supported as a younger man, becoming ultra-nationalist. He found the ideals of Fascism coincided increasingly with his own.

The Basilica of San Dalmazio in Carrà's
home village of Quargnento

In the 1930s, Carrà signed a manifesto in which called for support of state ideology through art, joining a group founded by Giorgio Morandi, another artist with Fascist sympathies and a background in Futurism and the Scuola Metafisica, which responded to the neo-classical guidelines set by the regime in the late 1930s.

After military service in the Second World War, Carrà taught at the University of Milan. He died in 1966, aged 85.

Travel tip:

Quargnento, where Carlo Carrà was born, was originally a Roman settlement, as evidenced by the discovery by archaeologists of the ruins of a Roman garrison. It became a large farming town during the Western Roman Empire, supplying neighbouring cities. Later, the town came under the control of the Bishop of Asti, who made the significant decision in 907 to order the remains of the Christian martyr Dalmazio to be hidden there from raiding Saracens.  The remains today are housed in the Basilica of San Dalmazio.

Carrà's 1914 work Interventionist Demonstration
is part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Travel tip:

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is home to the works of many prominent Futurist painters, including Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini and Luigi Russolo. It houses Carrà's 1914 work, Interventionist Demonstration, a Cubist-influenced collage of fragments of paper bearing words, radiating from the centre in concentric circles, said to have been inspired by the sight of leaflets dropped from aeroplanes fluttering down over Piazza del Duomo.

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More reading:

How architect Marcello Piacentini's buildings symbolised Fascist ideals

The cycle of frescoes that confirmed the genius of Giotto

The anarchist whose 'accidental death' inspired Dario Fo's classic play

Also on this day:

1929: The Lateran Treaty turns the Vatican into an independent state

(Picture credits: Basilica by Tony Frisina via Wikimedia Commons)

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Raffaele Lauro – author and politician

Sorrentine's talents include writing, film directing and song

Raffaele Lauro

Italian Senator and journalist Raffaele Lauro was born on this day in 1944 in the resort of Sorrento in Campania.

A prolific writer, Lauro has also been an important political figure for more than 30 years.

He was born in Sorrento and as a young man worked as a receptionist at a number of hotels along the Sorrento peninsula.

After finishing school he went to the University of Naples where he was awarded degrees in Political Science, Law and Economics.

Lauro then won a scholarship from Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied first at their diplomatic institute and later in Paris.

He later studied for a degree in journalism in Rome and became director of a scientific magazine, moving from there to become a commentator on new technology for Il Tempo in Rome and Il Mattino in Naples. He also studied film directing while living in Rome and taught Law of Mass Communications at Rome University.

Lucio Dalla, the songwriter about whom
Lauro has written three books

His political career began when he was elected as a Councillor for Sorrento in 1980. He went on to become Deputy Mayor and Councillor for finance, personnel and culture, in which role he opened the Public Library of Sorrento and established a theatre school. He moved to Rome in 1984 and held a number of Government posts.

In the general election of 2008, Lauro was appointed a Senator for Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party, representing Campania.

He was made a member of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the Mafia and other criminal organisations and later became political advisor to the Minister of Economic Development, Claudio Scajola. In 2015 Lauro joined the Democratic Party of Lazio.

For more than 40 years, Lauro has worked as a freelance journalist, essayist, screenwriter, author and director. He has written about foreign affairs and politics, brought out works of fiction under the pseudonym Ralph Lorbeer and composed music.

In January 2017, Lauro published a song, Uno straccione, un clown, dedicated to the songwriter Lucio Dalla, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his death. Lauro had previously written three books about Dalla, who was a popular singer-songwriter from Bologna.

Piazza Sant'Antonino is an elegant square in Sorrento

Travel tip:

Sorrento in Campania, where Raffaele Lauro was born, is a beautiful town in the south of Italy, perched on a cliff high above the bay of Naples. It has good views of the volcano Vesuvius and the islands of Procida, Ischia and Capri across the water. A popular holiday resort, Sorrento is famous for producing colourful ceramics, objects made from inlaid wood and the lemon-flavoured liqueur, Limoncello.

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Marina di Puolo is one of several charming fishing villages
on the Sorrentine Peninsula

Travel tip:

The Sorrentine Peninsula, where Raffaele Lauro worked in hotels as a student, is a finger of land with the bay of Naples to the north and the bay of Salerno to the south. On the northern side, the main towns are Castellammare di Stabia, Vico Equense, Sorrento and Massa Lubrense, with Punta della Campanella at the tip of the peninsula. On the southern side are Marina del Cantone, Positano, Amalfi and Salerno. The Lattari mountains form the geographical backbone of the peninsula and there are many picturesque small towns inland. Orange and lemon trees, olive trees and vines grow on the fertile land sloping down towards the sea.



More reading:

Witty observations that set writer Beppe Severgnini apart

What made journalist Enzo Biagi a giant of his trade

The American novelist inspired by Sorrento

Also on this day:

1482: The death of sculptor Luca della Robbia

1791: The birth of painter Francesco Hayez

1821: The birth of painter Roberto Bompiani

1918: The death of 'militant pacifist' Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

1953: The founding of energy giant ENI

1966: The birth of footballer Andrea Silenzi

Books:

Sorrento: The Romance, an historical novel by Raffaele Lauro

(Picture credit: Lucio Dalla by Lucarelli via Wikimedia Commons)

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Vito Antuofermo - world champion boxer

Farmer's son from deep south who won title in Monaco

Vito Antuofermo won the European light-middleweight title
in 1976 and became world middleweight champion in 1979

Vito Antuofermo, who went from working in the fields as a boy to becoming a world champion in the boxing ring, was born on this day in 1953 in Palo del Colle, a small town in Apulia, about 15km (9 miles) inland from the port of Bari.

He took up boxing after his family emigrated to the United States in the mid-1960s.  After turning professional in 1971, he lost only one of his first 36 fights before becoming European light-middleweight champion in January 1976.

In his 49th fight, in June 1979, he beat Argentina's Hugo Corro in Monaco to become the undisputed world champion in the middleweight division.

Antuofermo's success in the ring, where he won 50 of his 59 fights before retiring in 1985, opened the door to a number of opportunities in film and television and he was able to settle in the upper middle-class neighbourhood of Howard Beach in New York, just along the coast from John F Kennedy Airport.  He and his wife Joan have four children - Lauren, Vito Junior, Pasquale and Anthony.

He grew up in rather less comfort. The second child of Gaetano and Lauretta Antuofermo, who were poor tenant farmers, he was working in the fields from as young as seven years old.

Antuofermo (left) in action against Britain's Alan Minter

Often travelling two hours even before starting work, young Vito would help to harvest grapes, olives and almonds, sometimes trudging along behind a mule-drawn plough attempting to break up sun-baked earth to prepare for planting crops.

It was physically hard work from which it was difficult for his family to make a living and after a series of severe droughts in southern Italy, they decided to move to the United States, where Lauretta had an uncle living in Brooklyn, New York.  Leaving Gaetano to follow later, she took her two oldest boys, hoping they would find opportunities for a better life. For Vito, one came along - although not in a way he had planned.

Picked up by the police with two other young men after a fight in the street, he was lucky that his arresting officer was a boxing fan and a friend of Joe LaGuardia, the ex-boxer in charge of the gym at the Police Athletic League. Instead of taking the three into the police station, the officer took them to the gym, instructing LaGuardia to “see if you can do something with them."

Vito Antuofermo in 2006 after his
induction to the Boxing Hall of Fame

LaGuardia saw potential in Antuofermo, who lacked physical strength but packed a good punch and never backed off his opponent.  He inspired him by talking about Rocky Marciano, another son of southern Italian immigrants, who was world heavyweight champion from 1952 to 1956, and Antuofermo became fixated with the idea of becoming world champion too.

As an amateur, he won the New York Golden Gloves championship in 1970, turning professional the following year after it became clear his status would not allow him to compete for Italy or the United States in the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

He began to rack up wins and good purses as a professional, even winning the approval of his father, who had initially opposed his ambitions to box.

Victories over former world champions Denny Moyer and Emile Griffith in November 1974 confirmed Antuofermo's potential, and he claimed his first major title by defeating Germany's Eckhard Dagge on his home soil in Berlin to become European champion in January 1976.

His reign was short-lived, the British fighter Maurice Hope taking the crown from him nine months later.  It was another British boxer, Alan Minter, who deprived him of his world title in March 1980, again after only nine months, although Antuofermo did have the satisfaction of making one successful defence, against America's Marvin Hagler, who would go on to beat Minter for the title in 1980 and hold on to it for seven years.

Antuofermo quit the ring after losing to Hagler in 1981 but make a comeback in 1984, winning four more bouts before defeat to Canada's Matthew Hilton in Quebec in October 1985 prompted him to retire for good.

Antuofermo played a bodyguard
in The Godfather Part III

After retirement, Antuofermo enjoyed success as an actor. He was picked for a small role in The Godfather Part III as the chief bodyguard of gangster Joey Zasa and was a mobster in the hit television show The Sopranos.  After Godfather star Al Pacino persuaded him to take acting lessons, he also landed a series of parts in theatre plays.

Never afraid of hard work, he was employed by the Port Authority of New York as a crane operator for a sizeable part of his fight career, while his business pursuits included stints working in marketing for Coca-Cola and for an Italian beer company, and running a landscaping company in Long Island.

Travel tip:

Often overlooked in favour of Lecce and Brindisi when tourists venture towards the heel of Italy, Bari is the second largest urban area after Naples in the south of the country. It has a busy port and some expansive industrial areas but plenty of history, too, especially in the old city - Bari Vecchia - which sits on a headland between two harbours.  Fanning out around two Romanesque churches, the Cattedrale di San Sebino and the Basilica of St Nicholas, the area is a maze of medieval streets with many historical buildings and plenty of bars and restaurants.  There is also a castle, the Castello Svevo.

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Bari's San Sebino cathedral by night

Travel tip:

Bari's more modern centre is known as the Centro Murattiano, or the Murat quarter, in that it was built during the period in the early 19th century in which Joachim Murat, for a long time Napoleon's most trusted military strategist, ruled the Kingdom of Naples, of which Bari was a part.  Set out in a grid plan between Bari's main railway station and the sea, the area is the commercial heart of the city and the home of the most prestigious shops, but also of a vibrant night life in a city with a large student population.



More reading:

Angelo Siciliano - the Brooklyn Italian who became Charles Atlas

How Bruno Sammartini dodged wolves and Nazis in Abruzzo before finding fame in the wrestling ring

Why charismatic Joachim Murat's life was ended by a firing squad

Also on this day:

1621: Alessandro Ludovisi becomes Pope Gregory XV

1770: The birth of classical guitar composer Ferdinando Carulli

1891: The birth of politician Pietro Nenni

1953: The birth of tragic missionary Ezechiele Ramin

(Picture credit: Hall of Fame picture by Chris Cassidy via Wimedia Commons)

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Guercino - Bolognese master

Self-taught artist amassed fortune from his work

Guercino - a self-portrait from about 1624-26,
which is part of a private collection

The artist known as Guercino was born Giovanni Francesco Barbieri on this day in 1591 in Cento, a town between Bologna and Ferrara in what is now the Emilia-Romagna region.

His professional name began as a nickname on account of his squint - guercino means little squinter in Italian.  After the death of Guido Reni in 1642, he became established as the leading painter in Bologna.

Guercino painted in the Baroque and classical styles. His best known works include The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia Ego - I too am in Arcadia), showing two shepherds who have discovered a skull, which is now on display at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Rome, and The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo, which can be found in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, both of which were painted in 1618.

The Vatican altarpiece The Burial of Saint Petronilla is considered his masterpiece.

Guercino's Burial of St Petornilla,
the Vatican altarpiece

Guercino's frescoes were notable for the technique of creating an illusionist ceiling and would make a big impact on how churches and palaces in the 17th century were decorated.

Mainly self-taught, Guercino became apprenticed at 16 to Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese school at his workshop in Cento before moving to Bologna in 1615.

There he made the acquaintance of Ludovico Carracci, whose work was a great influence on him. Carracci encouraged him and Guercino's use of bold colours, and his ability to capture emotion in faces, was an echo of Carracci's style, although some of his early work also bears the stamp of Caravaggio. 

As his style developed, Guercino's altarpieces in particular were noted for their depth, achieved by his use of light and darkness.  His 1620 altarpiece of the Investiture of Saint William - currently housed at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna - is a great example.

In 1621, Guercino went to Rome, where he was influential in the evolution of Roman High Baroque art. His commissions included the decoration of the Casino Ludovisi, where his outstanding fresco, Aurora, adorns the ceiling of the Grand Hall.  It creates the illusion that there is no ceiling, with Aurora’s chariot painted as if it were moving directly over the building.

A detail from the ceiling at the Casino Ludovisi in Rome

He also painted the ceiling in the church of San Crisogono in the Trastevere district, a portrait of Pope Gregory XV (now in the Getty Museum) and the St. Petronilla Altarpiece in the Vatican, which is now housed in the Museo Capitolini.

Some critics believe Guercino's move to Rome brought about a subtle change in his style - in the view of some critics, not necessarily for the better - due to the influence of Pope Gregory XV’s private secretary, Monsignor Agucchi, who was a proponent of the classicism of Annibale Carracci, whose work was somewhat more restrained than his cousin, Ludovico.

He is said to have felt under pressure to paint in the popular classical style on his return to Cento two years later, largely because most of his paying clients wanted traditional paintings.

Guercino ran his Cento studio until 1642, when Guido Reni died. Guercino moved to Bologna, taking over Reni's religious picture workshop, and was quickly recognised as the city's leading painter.

Guercino's tomb at the church of Santissimo Salvatore

Notable for his prolific output - he completed more than 100 large altarpieces for churches and around 144 other paintings during his career - Guercino continued to paint and teach until his death in 1666, amassing a notable fortune.

As he never married, his estate passed to his nephews and pupils, Benedetto Gennari II and Cesare Gennari. His tomb is in the church of Santissimo Salvatore in Via Cesare Battisti in Bologna.

Travel tip:

The town of Cento, situated in the flatlands of the Po Valley equidistant from Bologna and Ferrara, grew from a fishing village in the marshes to an established farming town in the first few centuries in the second millennium.  Previously controlled by the Bishop of Bologna, it was seized by Pope Alexander VI and made part of the dowry of his daughter Lucrezia Borgia.  Main sights include the 18th century Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, which houses the Civic Gallery and some paintings by Guercino, whose works can be seen also in the Basilica Collegiata San Biagio, Santa Maria dei Servi, the church of the Rosary, and, in the frazione of Corporeno, the 14th-century church of San Giorgio.

Guercino's Madonna del Passero is part
of the Pinacoteca Nazionale collection

Travel tip:

Bologna's Pinacoteca Nazionale can be found in Via delle Belle Arti, a little over a kilometre from Piazza Maggiore to the north-east, inside a former meeting place for young Jesuits in the university district. The Pinacoteca's origins go back to 1762, when paintings from two other collections, one belonging to the Carracci family, were brought together. During the time of Napoleonic rule the most important works were hidden in Paris and Milan. The basis for the current collection was formed in 1827 with a catalogue of 274 paintings.  The gallery nowadays consists of 30 exhibition rooms showing works by Bolognese artists from the 14th century onwards, including a number of important canvases by the Carracci brothers, Annibale and Agostino, and their cousin Ludovico. Notable works include Ludovico's Madonna Bargellini, the Comunione di San Girolamo (Communion of St Jerome) by Agostino and the Madonna di San Ludovico by Annibale. There are 15 works by Guercino and 29 by Guido Reni.  Also represented in the gallery are Vitale di Bologna, Perugino, Giotto, Raphael, El Greco and Titian.

More reading:

How mystery still surrounds the death of Caravaggio

Titian - the Venetian giant of Renaissance art

The skill that enabled Giotto to bring figures on canvas to life

Also on this day:

1848: Students join uprising in Padua



(Picture credit: Guercino tomb by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)

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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.

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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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