Otto e mezzo - Fellini's masterpiece

Creative crisis spawned director's tour de force

The original publicity poster for the
Fellini movie 8½

The film Otto e mezzo (8½), regarded by some critics as the director Federico Fellini's greatest work, was released in Italy on this day in 1963.

It was categorised as an avant-garde comedy drama but the description hardly does it justice given its extraordinary individuality, evolving from conception to completion as an interweaving of fantasy and reality in which life not so much imitates art as becomes one and the same thing.

By the early 60s, Fellini was already a three-times Oscar winner following the success of La strada, Nights of Cabiria and La dolce vita, the last-named having also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

La dolce vita had signalled Fellini's move away from the neo-realism that characterised cinema in Italy in the immediate post-war years towards the surreal interpretations of life and human nature that became popular with later directors and came to define Fellini's art.

While that movie was generating millions of dollars at the box office and turning Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg into international stars, Fellini was under pressure from his producers to come up with a sequel.

Fellini was under pressure to deliver
a sequel to La dolce vita

He had an idea but it was little more than a vague outline, a story about a man suffering from creative block.  He knew it would be about the internal conflicts thrown up by artistic and marital difficulties and the opportunity to reflect brought about by a period at a health spa recovering from what might today be interpreted as nervous exhaustion, but he had no clear vision of the script, could not decide the profession of his main character and did not even have a working title.

Pressed by the producers to sign off on a deal, it is said that he chose Otto e mezzo on the basis that he had directed six feature films, worked jointly on another and made two shorts, each of which he considered to be worth 'half a feature' and that therefore his latest would be film number eight and a half in his directing career.

He had still not developed a coherent idea when he was ordered to start production in the spring of 1962 yet the wheels were in motion.  Filming dates were agreed, sets were constructed and actors were hired, including Mastroianni for the male lead, yet other than coming up with a name, Guido Anselmi, for his main character, Fellini was scarcely closer to any clarity of thought.

Claudia Cardinale played lead character Guido Anselmi's
 'Ideal Woman' in Fellini's Otto e mezzo

In fact, he would have told Angelo Rizzoli, his producer, that he was abandoning the project had he not been summoned to join the crew in celebrating its launch just as he was drafting a letter to that effect.

Fellini later admitted that as he raised his glass to toast the film he "felt overwhelmed by shame" but that the moment of despair then became one of inspiration.

"I was in a no-exit situation," he said. "I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place.

"I got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no longer knows what film he wanted to make".

The result was a film that blended the storyline such as it was with fantastic dream sequences as the characters moved between reality and Guido's imagination, Fellini so often indulging in impulsive improvisations that essentially he was making up the movie as he went along.  As was the way with Italian films at the time, the dialogue was overdubbed afterwards, which from the point of view of the actors trying to keep up was probably just as well.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anouk Aimée
also starred in Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Yet the end result, starring Mastroianni as Guido, the French actress Anouk Aimée as his wife, and two Tunisian-Italians, Sandra Milo and Claudia Cardinale, respectively as his mistress and the Ideal Woman of his fantasies, was received with almost universal acclaim.

Critics conceded that audiences might find it challenging in its complexity but generally hailed it as a triumph.  One wrote that it had advanced avant-garde cinema "by 20 years in one fell swoop because it both integrates and surpasses all the discoveries of experimental cinema".

Another praised its "fantastic liberality, total absence of precaution and hypocrisy, absolute dispassionate sincerity, artistic and financial courage".

8½ won two Academy Awards, for best foreign language film and best costume design (black-and-white) as well as nominations for best director, best original screenplay and best art direction (black-and-white).

The New York Film Critics Circle also named 8½ best foreign language film while the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded the movie seven prizes for director, producer, original story, screenplay, music - by Nino Rota - cinematography (Gianni di Vananzo) and best supporting actress (Sandra Milo).

At the Saint Vincent Film Festival, it was awarded the Grand Prize over Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo (The Leopard) but had to be passed over for an award after its screening at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival because it had been shown outside the competition.

It also won the Grand Prize at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.

Travel tip:

Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast, which with 15km (nine miles) of sandy beaches is the largest resort in Italy and famous across Europe as a holiday destination.  It is said to have more than 1,000 hotels.  Away from the sea front there is an older part of the town with relics that reflect its Roman origins.  Rimini is proud of its heritage and a Federico Fellini Museum can be found in Via Clementini in the historic centre, covering everything related to his life and career.

A commemorative plaque celebrating Fellini's career can be
found in the Via Veneto in Rome, backcloth to La dolce vita

Travel tip:

Although Fellini's body was returned to Rimini after his death in Rome at the age of 73, and is buried near the main entrance to the Cemetery of Rimini in a tomb designed by Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fellini is also commemorated in Rome, including a plaque on the Via Veneto celebrating the street's central role in La dolce vita.

More reading:

The cinematic legacy of Rimini's most famous son

How Dino de Laurentiis put Italian cinema on the map

Roberto Rossellini - pioneer of Italian neo-realism
 

Also on this day:

How mating birds made San Valentino a symbol of romance

Books:

Federico Fellini: The Complete Films

(Picture credits: Fellini plaque by Peter Clarke via Wikmedia Commons)

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Pierluigi Collina - football referee

Italian arbiter seen as the best in game's history

Pierluigi Collina 

Pierluigi Collina, arguably the best and certainly the most recognisable football referee in the history of the game, was born on this day in 1960 in Bologna.

Collina, who was in charge of the 1999 Champions League final and the 2002 World Cup final, was named FIFA's referee of the year for six consecutive seasons.

He was renowned for his athleticism, his knowledge of the laws of the game and for applying them with even-handedness and respect for the players, while using his distinctive appearance to reinforce his authority on the field.

Standing 1.88m (6ft 2ins) tall and with piercing blue eyes, Collina is also completely hairless as a result of suffering a severe form of alopecia in his early 20s, giving him an intimidating presence on the field.

Growing up in Bologna, the son of a civil servant and a schoolteacher, Collina shared the dream of many Italian boys in that he wanted to become a professional footballer.  In reality, he was not quite good enough, although he was a decent central defender who played amateur football to a good standard.

Pierluigi Collina is now UEFA's
 chief  refereeing officer

When he was 17 and at college, he was persuaded to take a referee's course and displayed a natural aptitude. Soon, he was taking charge of matches in regional football and, after graduating with a degree in economics at the University of Bologna and completing his compulsory military service, began to contemplate that instead of playing he might one day referee at the highest level.

In the meantime, though, he had to work.  His first job was in the marketing department of a newspaper group based in Milan, from which he then moved to Viareggio in Tuscany to work for a bank, where he would later establish himself as a financial consultant.

He began to officiate in Serie D and Serie C matches in 1988 and within just three years had been promoted to Serie B and Serie A.

Bu 1995, with only 43 Serie A matches to his name, he was co-opted to the FIFA list for international matches, winning his first major appointment in 1996, when he was allocated five matches at the Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, including the final between Argentina and Nigeria.

Named Serie A's referee of the year in 1997 and 1998 and FIFA's best in 1998, he was put in charge of the Champions League final in Barcelona in 1999, which turned out to be one of most dramatic of all finals when Manchester United scored twice during the three minutes of stoppage time added on by Collina to beat Bayern Munich 2-1.

He described the match, in which Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer scored for United to overturn Mario Basler's goal for Bayern, as the most memorable of his career, likening the noise generated by United fans at the end to the "roar of a lion."

Pierluigi Collina was never easily intimidated on the
field and earned the respect of players

The players and supporters of the German side remembered the occasion less fondly and came to regard Collina as bringing them bad luck.  He was also in charge when the German national team lost 5-1 at home to England in a World Cup qualification match in 2001 and officiated in the World Cup final in Yokohama, Japan the following summer, when Germany were beaten 2-0 by Brazil.

Collina published his autobiography, My Rules of the Game (published in English as The Rules of the Game) in 2003, and took charge of another showpiece occasion in 2004 when Valencia met Marseille in the UEFA Cup final before his career ended in regrettable circumstances the following year in a row with the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) over sponsorship.

He had agreed to a substantial contract to advertise for Opel cars (Vauxhall Motors in the United Kingdom) but as Opel were already sponsors of AC Milan the deal was seen as presenting a conflict of interest.  The FIGC felt they had no option but to bar Collina from top-level matches in Italy, to which he responded by tendering his resignation.

Despite attempts by the Italian Referees Association to find a compromise that would enable Collina to continue, he decided he would stick by his decision to resign and never officiated at a competitive professional match again, although he has refereed a number of charity matches since and serves the administration of the game as UEFA's chief refereeing officer.

Away from football, Collina has been married since 1991 to Gianna, with whom he established the coastal resort of Viareggio as his home. He has two daughters and is a lifelong supporter of Fortitudo Bologna basketball club.

Tagliatelle bolognese, one of Bologna's most famous dishes

Travel tip:

Famed for its culinary tradition, Bologna is known as La Grassa - the Fat One - and with good reason. The home of the world's most famous pasta dish - although bolognese sauce is always served with tagliatelle rather than spaghetti in the city of its birth - Bologna is also famed for its mortadella sausage, which is also a key ingredient of the city's second most well-known pasta, tortellini, the little twists of pasta that are also stuffed with pork loin and proscuitto crudo (raw ham), parmesan cheese, egg and nutmeg. The best traditional food shops in Bologna can be found in the area known as the Quadrilatero, bordered by Piazza Maggiore, Via Rizzoli, Via Castiglione and Via Farini.

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Viareggio's seafront promenade is lined with
Art Nouveau buildings from the 1920s and 1930s

Travel tip:

Viareggio is a seaside resort in Tuscany that has an air of faded grandeur, its seafront notable for the Art Nouveau architecture that reminds visitors of the town's heyday in the 1920s and '30s. Nonetheless, with wide sandy beaches it remains hugely popular, especially with Italians, and the flamboyant Carnevale, featuring a wonderful parade of elaborate and often outrageous floats, is second only to the Venice carnival among Mardi Gras celebrations.

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More reading:

The record-breaking career of AC Milan's Paolo Maldini

How one goal turned Fabio Grosso into a national hero

Marcello Lippi - the coach from Viareggio who steered Italy to World Cup glory

Also on this day:

1539: The death of influential marchioness Isabella d’Este

1571: The death of Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini

1816: Fire rips through Teatro San Carlo in Naples

1912: The birth of poet Antonia Pozzi

1960: The birth of football referee Pierluigi Collina

Books:

The Rules of the Game, by Pierluigi Collina

(Picture credits: Viareggio promenade by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)

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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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