Guglielmo Ferrero - journalist and historian

Nobel prize nominee who opposed Fascism

Guglielmo Ferrero is best known for his five-volume
history of power and collapse of the Roman Empire

The historian, journalist and novelist Guglielmo Ferrero, who was most famous for his five-volume opus The Greatness and Decline of Rome, was born on this day in 1871.

The son of a railway engineer, he was born just outside Naples at Portici but his family were from Piedmont and while not travelling he lived much of his adult life in Turin and Florence.

A liberal politically, he was vehemently opposed to any form of dictatorship and his opposition to Mussolini’s Fascists naturally landed him in trouble. He was a signatory to the writer Benedetto Croce's Anti-Fascist Manifesto and when all liberal intellectuals were told to leave Italy in 1925, he refused. Consequently he was placed under house arrest.

It was only after four years, following appeals by officials from the League of Nations and the personal intervention of the King of Belgium, that he was allowed to leave Italy to take up a professorship at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Ferrero’s earliest works were in the field of sociology and criminology, inspired by his friendship with Cesare Lombroso, sometimes called the ‘father of modern criminology’, who he met during his studies. Ferrero attended the universities of Pisa, Bologna and Turin. They collaborated on a book called The Female Offender about crime among women.

Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist who
inspired Ferrero's early work

In the course of his work with Lombroso, Ferrero was introduced to Gina Lombroso, Cesare’s daughter, and they subsequently married.

From 1891 to 1894 Ferrero traveled extensively in Europe, working in the libraries of London, Berlin, and Paris on a planned history of justice. As a result of his travels he produced a sociological study entitled Young Europe, in which he noted the differences in societal structure developing in the industrial north compared with the agricultural south of the continent.

It was after musing on how ascendant civilisations could become decadent that he turned his attention to Rome.

His defining work, The Greatness and Decline of Rome was translated into all the major European languages and was a popular success, even though it was scorned by classicists, who took exception to his use of contemporary comparisons and on his attempts at sociological analysis of Roman politics. They did not care either for his assessment of Julius Caesar, usually portrayed as a leader who brought order from chaos, as a major catalyst in the collapse of the Roman Republic.

For the next few years, Ferrero wrote political essays and a number of novels, before turning his attention to the French Revolution, which he analysed as an attempt to establish a new liberal order that unintentionally led to the first modern dictatorship.

Once invited by Theodore Roosevelt, the United States president, to visit him at the White House and to give a number of lectures, Ferraro was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature no fewer than 20 times in six years.

He spent a good deal of his time in his declining years at his villa in Strada in Chianti, in the Tuscan countryside, but was in Mont Pèlerin-sur-Vevey in Switzerland when he died in 1942.

The Royal Palace at Portici, near Naples

Travel tip:

Portici, which lies at the foot of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples, about 8 km (5 miles) southeast of Naples, is a metropolitan suburb these days but essentially evolved as a port, rebuilt after it was destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631. Its neighbour is Ercolano, where excavations revealed the city of Herculaneum, which had disappeared at the same time as Pompeii, following the eruption of 79AD.  Portici is famous for its Baroque royal palace, built as a grand residence by Charles III of Spain, King of Naples, between 1738 and 1742.

The church of San Cristoforo in Strada in Chianti

Travel tip:

Situated almost 300m (984ft) above sea level, Strada in Chianti is a small town that is increasingly favoured as a place to stay when visiting Florence, which is only 20km (12 miles) away to the north, barely half an hour by car and bus. Many Florentines escape to such places in the countryside during the summer, because the heat there is a little less oppressive. The town stages its annual fair in late September. The five parishes once competed in a horse race similar to the Palio di Siena, but they now vie for superiority in a series of games, including football and volleyball, over the course of a week.

More reading:

How Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall became the world's most famous history book

Cesare Lombroso, the first to encourage study of the criminal mind

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, the historian who was both a soldier and a pacifist

Also on this day:

1914: The birth of Suso Cecchi D'Amico, the scriptwriter behind some of Italy's greatest movies

1948: The birth of Beppe Grillo, the comedian and founder of Italy's new political force, the Five Star Movement

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Giovanna Amati - racing driver

Kidnap survivor who drove in Formula One

Giovanna Amati survived a 75-day kidnap
ordeal when she was 18 years old

Racing driver Giovanna Amati, the last female to have been entered for a Formula One Grand Prix, was born on this day in 1959 in Rome.

The story of Amati’s signing for the Brabham F1 team in 1992 was all the more remarkable for the fact that 14 years earlier, as an 18-year-old girl, she had been kidnapped by a ransom gang and held for 75 days in a wooden cage.

Kidnaps happened with alarming frequency in Italy in 1970s, a period marked by social unrest and acts of violence committed by political extremists, often referred to as the Years of Lead. Young people with rich parents were often the targets and Amati, whose father Giovanni was a wealthy industrialist who owned a chain of cinemas, fitted the bill.

She was snatched outside the family’s villa in Rome in February 1978 and held first in a house only a short distance away and then at a secret location, where she was physically abused and threatened with having her ear cut off while her captors negotiated with her 72-year-old father.

Critics accused Brabham of hiring
Amati as a publicity stunt

Eventually, Giovanni is said to have paid 800 million lira (about $933,000 dollars), for her release, having raised the money through a combination of box office receipts from the Star Wars movie playing at his cinemas, and from the sale of some of his 42-year-old former actress wife’s jewellery.

Seven of the kidnappers were arrested but the ringleader, a gangster from Marseille called Jean Daniel Nieto, evaded the police and got away. He was caught later after contacting Amati, with whom he had allegedly become infatuated, and agreeing to meet her on the fashionable Via Vittorio Veneto in the centre of Rome.

Amati, who has dismissed as untrue newspaper stories at the time that she and Nieto had become romantically involved, returned to normal life and the love of driving she had developed as an eight-year-old, when her father allowed her to drive a tractor on the family estate.

She bought a Honda motorcycle when she was 15 and was inspired to race cars by her friend, the dashing young Roman racing driver Elio de Angelis, with whom she attended a motor racing school.

She first raced professionally in the Formula Abarth series - effectively Formula Four - before graduating to Formula Three. She won some races in both yet it still came as something of bombshell when she was contacted by the then-Brabham boss Bernie Ecclestone in January 1992 and offered a drive in Formula One.

Giovanna Amati failed to qualify in each of
the three Grand Prix she entered

With only weeks to raise the budget she needed to take up the offer, Amati feared she would have to turn down the chance of a lifetime. But at the 11th hour her dream was made possible by an unlikely benefactor, the prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, who had been a friend of her father, by then passed away.

Sadly, her excursion into F1 was not a success.  She failed to qualify for the first three races of the season, in South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, and was promptly sacked, to be replaced by Damon Hill, amid suspicions that, at a time when the Brabham team was desperately in need of exposure and cash, hiring a driver who happened to be an attractive, photogenic young woman was all a publicity stunt.

It was not the end of Amati’s career. She competed in sports and touring cars for a number of years with some success but by the end of the 1990s she was more often sitting alongside TV commentary teams than in the cockpit of a car.  Her compatriot, Lella Lombardi, who started 12 World Championship races between 1974 and 1976, remains in the last female to race in a Formula One Grand Prix.

The Vallelunga autodrome was the home of the Rome
Grand Prix between 1925 and 1991

Travel tip:

Racing drivers in Rome have never had their own home Formula One event but a Rome Grand Prix took place at the Vallelunga circuit between 1925 and 1991. The Vallelunga track is near the town of Campagnano, about 32km (20 miles) north of Rome. It still hosts race meetings and is used by various F1 teams for testing. The city did almost get its first F1 World Championship event in 2013, when plans had been put forward for a street circuit in the EUR district of the city. The idea was eventually abandoned through lack of support and amid fears that it would undermine the supremacy of Monza, home of the Italian Grand Prix, as Italy’s number one racing circuit.

Monza's striking Duomo is one of a number of
attractive architectural features in the city

Travel tip:

Monza, which has hosted the Italian Grand Prix every year since 1950, is situated about 15km (9 miles) north of Milan.  Because so many visitors are interested in little more than cars, Monza’s many notable architectural attractions tend to be under-appreciated. These include the Gothic Duomo, with its white-and-green banded facade, which contains the Corona Ferrea (Iron Crown), which according to legend features one of the nails from the Crucifixion. The crown is on show in the chapel dedicated to the Lombard queen Theodolinda.  The adjoining Museo e Tesoro del Duomo contains one of the greatest collections of religious art in Europe.

More reading:

How Lella Lombardi became the only female racing driver to win a point in a Formula One GP

Maria Teresa de Filippis - the first woman to start a Formula One world championship event

Elio de Angelis - the last of the 'gentleman racers'

Also on this day:

1890: The birth of 20th century still life 'master' Giorgio Morandi

1937: The death of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi

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Cesare Cremonini - philosopher

Great thinker famous for Galileo ‘denial’

Cesare Cremonini was one of the most
revered Aristotelian philosophers of his day

The philosopher Cesare Cremonini, the contemporary and friend of Galileo Galilei who famously refused to look at the Moon through Galileo’s telescope, died on this day in 1631 in Padua.

Cremonini was considered one of the great thinkers of his time, a passionate advocate of the doctrines of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He was paid a handsome salary by his patron, Alfonso II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, and kings and princes regularly sought his counsel.

He struck up a friendship with the poet, Torquato Tasso, while he was studying in Ferrara, and met Galileo in 1550 after he was appointed by the Venetian Republic to the chair of the University of Padua.

The two built a relationship of respect and friendship that endured for many years, despite many differences of opinion, yet in 1610 their divergence of views on one subject created an impasse between them.

It came about when Galileo observed the surface of the Moon through his telescope and proclaimed that he had discovered mountains on the Moon.

But Cremonini said that Aristotle had proved that the Moon could only be a perfect sphere and was having none of Galileo’s claim that it was not true. Galileo invited him to look through the telescope and see for himself but Cremonini refused.

Cremonini first met Galileo
in Padua in 1550

It may be that Cremonini simply refused to countenance the idea that Aristotle’s assertion may have been wrong. An alternative theory is that he feared for the consequences if he aligned himself with Galileo.

The Tuscan polymath was already in trouble with the Roman Inquisition for stating his belief in heliocentrism - the idea that Earth and the other planets in the solar system revolve around the sun,  which contradicted the idea to which the Catholic Church subscribed - based on the wisdom of Aristotle - that the sun revolved around Earth as the centre of the universe.

Cremonini had himself been under the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Indeed, he had been charged with atheism and heresy for propagating Aristotle’s argument that the human soul was mortal. As a citizen of Padua, however, he was protected by the leniency of Venice and had been spared punishment.

It may be that he felt that if he had seen what Galileo saw with his own eyes he would have been obliged to argue in support of his friend and could land himself in trouble again.  Given that Galileo was threatened with being burned at the stake and was held under house arrest for the remainder of his life over his belief in heliocentrism, some may argue that Cremonini was wise not to get involved.

He also had genuine concerns for Galileo’s wellbeing, warning his friend that if he decided to move to Tuscany from Padua it would bring him under the Inquisition's jurisdiction.

Born in Cento, nowadays a town of around 35,000 residents about 35km (22 miles) southwest of Ferrara, Cremonini was chair of natural philosophy and chair of medicine at the University of Padua from 1591 until his death.

He died in 1631 when an outbreak of plague swept Padua. He was buried in the Benedictine monastery of St. Justina of Padua, to which he also willed his possessions.

Cento's 14th century castle, originally built by the Bishop
of Bologna and enlarged by future pope Giulio della Rovere

Travel tip:

Cento, which was part of the Papal States when Cremonini was born, is best known as the birthplace of the Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino. The town’s main square, the place at which the four ancient roads into the town once converged, is called Piazza Guercino. Monuments around the square include the Palazzo del Governatore, which has a 17th century clock tower, and the Palazzo Comunale, built in 1612 but improved with the addition of an elegant facade in the 18th century. The town has an impressive castle, built in 1378.

Donatello's statue of the condottiero
Gattamelata outside St Anthony's Basilica

Travel tip:

Padua’s well-preserved medieval layout and artistic heritage attract many hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, although it is much quieter than Venice, which is only a little over 40km (25 miles) away.  The presence in the city of Giotto, Donatello and Mantegna support the claim that Padua was the capital of Italian art in the 15th and 16th centuries. The most famous example of Giotto’s work are the frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, there are works by Donatello in and outside the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, including the equestrian statue in front of the church, while there are restored frescoes by Mantegna in the Chiese degli Eremitani.

More reading:

Why the philosopher and scientist Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy

The mysterious death of philosopher Giovanno Pico della Mirandola

How a simple friar laid some of the cornerstones of Western philosophy

Also on this day:

1249: The death of Jacopo Tiepolo, Doge of Venice

1374: The death of the scholar and poet Petrarch


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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

Cardinal Alberto di Jorio served the Vatican
Bank for 60 years

Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, who increased the wealth of the Vatican by buying shares in big corporations, was born on this day in 1884 in Rome.

Di Jorio was considered to be the power behind the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, popularly known as the Vatican Bank, which he served for 60 years.

As a young man he had been sent to the prestigious Pontifical Roman Seminary and he became a Catholic priest in 1908.

Di Jorio worked in an administrative role for the Vatican to begin with, but in 1918, when he was still in his early 30s, he took up the position of president of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione - The Institute of Religious Works.

He was directed by Pope Pius XI to form a close working relationship with Bernardino Nogara, a layman working as a financial adviser to the Vatican. Nogara helped di Jorio build up the Vatican’s financial strength.

After the Lateran Treaty settled the Roman Question and made the Vatican an independent state, di Jorio was chosen to run the Vatican Bank and allowed to buy shares in any company, even if it made products that were contrary to Catholic Church teaching.

Pope Paul VI kept Di Jorio in post as head of
the Vatican Bank until he was almost 84

By buying into strong businesses such as General Motors, Standard Oil, IBM and Italgas, the major supplier of gas to Italy at the time, he substantially increased the wealth of the Vatican.

Di Jorio also became secretary of the Sacred College of Cardinals in 1947 and was secretary of the conclave during the election of Pope John XXIII.

Afterwards, the new Pope put his zucchetto - skullcap - on di Jorio’s head, the traditional promise that he would be made a cardinal. Six weeks later di Jorio was made Cardinal-Deacon of the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana.

Di Jorio was later consecrated Titular Archbishop of Castra Nova and he opted to join the order of Cardinal Priests.

He took part in the Second Vatican Council and the conclave of 1963 that elected Pope Paul VI. He continued to be the effective head of the Vatican Bank until 1968 when he was in his 84th year.

In 1976 di Jorio became the oldest member of the College of Cardinals, but he did not participate in the two 1978 conclaves because he was over the age limit.

That same year Pope Paul VI preached a special homily for di Jorio on the 70th  anniversary of his ordination.

Cardinal di Jorio died at his home in Rome in 1979 at the age of 95 and he was buried in a tomb in the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana in Rome.

By night, the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano makes a
stunning sight with its ornate neoclassical facade

Travel tip:

The Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the Vatican Bank, was founded in 1942 and its headquarters are inside Vatican City, which was recognised as an independent state inside Italy by the Lateran Treaty in 1929. The treaty is named after the Lateran Palace where the agreement was signed on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and Pope Pius IX. The Lateran Palace was the main papal residence in Rome between the fourth and 14th centuries. It is in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, next to the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, the first Christian Basilica in Rome and now the cathedral church of the city. Some distance away from the Vatican, the palace is now an extraterritorial property of the Holy See, with similar rights to a foreign embassy. Vatican City covers approximately 40 hectares (100 acres) of land.

Di Jorio's tomb at the Basilica of Santa
Pudenziana in Via Urbana

Travel tip

The Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, where di Jorio is buried, is in Via Urbana to the north of the papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is recognised as one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Rome, built in the fourth century and dedicated to Saint Pudentiana, reusing part of an old Roman bath house that can still be seen on the right side of the present structure. A Romanesque bell tower was added in the early 13th century and a Dome was added in the 16th century.

More reading:

How mystery remains over the violent death of 'God's Banker'

Why Pope Paul VI is to be made a saint

The farmer's son from Bergamo who became the 'Good Pope' 

Also on this day:

1610: The mysterious death of Caravaggio

1914: The birth of Gino Bartali, cycling star and secret war hero



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Michele Casadei Massari - chef and restaurateur

American dream from small beginnings

Michele Casadei Massari began his New York
business with a coffee kiosk in Union Square

The chef and businessman Michele Casadei Massari, who is the owner and founder of the Piccolo Cafe and the Lucciola restaurant in New York City, was born on this day in 1975 in Riccione, on the Adriatic coast of Emilia-Romagna.

Massari had planned to become a doctor but abandoned his studies in order to pursue his dream of cooking in his own restaurant.

After working as general manager and executive chef of a restaurant at a holiday resort in Sardinia, Massari and an old school friend decided to go it alone and chose to start a business in New York.

They began by selling coffee from a kiosk on Union Square in Manhattan before graduating to a cafe selling traditional Italian food as well as salads, panini and egg dishes.

Massari and his partner opened their first Piccolo Cafe in Third Avenue, a couple of blocks from Union Square in 2010. Now they have four branches of Piccolo Cafe and a restaurant, Lucciola, that specialises in the cuisine of Bologna and Emilia-Romagna.

The Piccolo Cafe in West 40th Street is one of four
opened by Massari and his partners

Only six years old when he saw the inside of a restaurant kitchen for the first time, Massari acquired his love of cooking from his grandfather, ‘Nonno Gigi’, a chef who had acquired an inventive flair during the Second World War, when ingredients were often scarce.

His education included foraging in the countryside around the family home and learning how even the simplest ingredients, properly prepared, could be turned into tasty and nutritious dishes.

He says he inherited his salesmanship skills from his mother, who had been a door-to-door saleswoman in the 1970s, persuading would-be clients to buy machines for heating hair curlers.

While studying at college, Massari worked in restaurants in Bologna but soon realised he was much more interested in food that becoming a doctor. He and school friend Alberto Ghezzi decided to move to Sardinia, where Alberto managed the restaurant while he worked in the kitchen. Soon they were joined by another friend from Bologna, chef Gianluca Capozzi.

The three still work together today, having teamed up again when Massari, craving a chance to ‘do something different’, came up with his idea of going to New York, even though he had only a few thousand euros to start a business.

Michele also has a dedicated
Bolognese restaurant in New York

To obtain a special visa for businesses and investors, he had to present a business plan. His coffee kiosk idea was rejected initially because he had no water supply but once he had solved that problem he was accepted.

The kiosk took off quickly, selling 70,000 cups of coffee alone in the first 30 days. They had been there little more than four weeks when a customer told them about an empty business premises on Third Street that would be ideal for opening a cafe.

Six months later, with the Piccolo Cafe booming, another client urged them to look at an empty premises opposite the New York Times building on West 40th Street. That became the second branch. Two more Piccolos have opened since, one on Madison Avenue, another not far from Central Park in the Upper West Side, which is where Lucciola is located.

Michele also runs the BiograFilm Food Academy and manages food and beverage operations for the film festival of the same name that takes place in Bologna each year

Trendy tree-lined Via Ceccarini in Riccione

Travel tip:

Riccione, where Massari was born, is sometimes called the ‘green pearl of the Adriatic’ on account of the elegant, tree-lined boulevards that carry echoes of the town’s tradition as a resort that was a cut above its brasher neighbours. These days, it is no less thronged in the high summer months than its big brother Rimini but the Via Ceccarini, with its elegant boutiques, attractive cafés and trendy night spots, is still one of the most famous streets on the whole Adriatic Riviera. Other attractions are the Museo del Territorio, with exhibits reflecting thousands of years of evolutionary history in the area, and the Castello degli Agolanti, once owned by the most powerful local family, now an exhibition and conference venue.

One corner of Bologna's central Piazza Maggiore

Travel tip:

Bologna, which Massari considers to be his home town, boasts what is probably the best maintained and preserved medieval centre in the whole of Italy, a testament in many ways to one of the country’s least corrupt local administrations. The city was for a long time the stronghold of the Italian Communist Party and street names such as Via Stalingrado and Via Lenin say much about the political heroes of some of its former municipal leaders. Yet despite being the cradle of progressive socialism, the city retains one of the best standards of living in Italy and a policy of ‘active preservation’ established in the 1970s, whereby old houses in the city centre were renovated for public housing rather than being demolished, has helped the city maintain its character.

More reading:

How daytime TV made chef Simone Rugiati famous

Much-loved celebrity chef and restaurateur Antonio Carluccio

Gennaro Contaldo's passion for the cooking of Amalfi

Also on this day:

1824: The British aristocrat and travel writer Lady Blessington arrives in Naples

1976: The birth of celebrity chef Gino D'Acampo


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Andrea del Sarto – painter

The brief career of an artist ‘senza errori’

Andrea del Sarto, captured here in a self-
portrait. lived in Florence all his life

Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore on this day in 1486 in Florence.

He had a brilliant career but died at the age of 43 during an outbreak of plague and afterwards his achievements were eclipsed by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Andrea’s father, Agnolo, was a tailor and therefore the child became known as del Sarto, meaning son of the tailor.

As a young boy del Sarto was apprenticed to a goldsmith and then a woodcarver before being sent to learn to be an artist.

He decided to open a joint studio with an older friend, Franciabigio, and from 1509 onwards they were employed to paint a series of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Del Sarto also painted a Procession of the Magi, in which he included a self-portrait, and a Nativity of the Virgin for the entrance to the church.

He married Lucrezia del Fede, a widow, in 1512 and often used her as a model for his paintings of the Madonna.

Part of Del Sarto's fresco series at the Villa Medici at
Poggio a Caiano, near Florence

After spending a year as court painter to Francis I of France in 1518, del Sarto returned home to his wife and was offered a major commission by the Medici family, to decorate the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano near Florence. The work was offered to him by Pope Leo X but the project ended when the Pope died in 1521.

Del Sarto’s fresco at the villa, Tribute to Caesar, is a fragment now incorporated into a much later decorative scheme.

His most important work is considered to be a series of frescoes on the life of St John the Baptist in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence. He started the series in 1511 and it was not completed until 1526, so the work spans a large part of his career and most of the paintings are by his own hand.

Del Sarto's Nativity of the Virgin at the Basilica
della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

His artistic style reflected his interest in colour and atmosphere and showed natural expressions of emotion. Del Sarto had a reputation for integrity and professionalism and was regarded by his peers as an artist ‘senza errori’ - faultless.

Del Sarto had a house built for himself in Florence, which was modified by other painters who lived there later. He died at his home after plague swept the city in 1530. The exact date of his death is unknown but he was buried in the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata on September 29, 1530.

A play, Andrea del Sarto, by Alfred de Musset, was premiered in Paris in 1848. The 1968 opera Andrea del Sarto by the French composer Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur was based on de Musset’s play.

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence

Travel tip:

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, where Andrea del Sarto is buried, is in the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in the San Marco district of Florence. The church was founded by the Servite order in 1250 and later rebuilt by Michelozzo between 1444 and 1481. Del Sarto’s frescoes can be seen in the atrium of the church. Newly wed couples traditionally visit the church to present a bouquet of flowers to a painting of the Virgin by a 13th century monk, where they pray for a long and fruitful marriage.

The Chiostro dello Scalzo in Via Cavour

Travel tip:

The Chiostro dello Scalzo, where del Sarto painted his fresco cycle featuring the life of St John the Baptist, is in Via Cavour in the San Marco area near the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata. The cloister used to be the entrance to the chapel of the Confraternity of St John the Baptist, which was founded in 1376 and lasted until 1786. Thankfully the frescoes were preserved and can be viewed free of charge in the cloister every Monday and Thursday and on some Saturdays and Sundays each month.

More reading:

The precocious genius of Raphael

Michelangelo 'the greatest of all time'

The multiple talents of Leonardo da Vinci

Also on this day:

1194: The birth of Saint Clare of Assisi

1852: The birth of Neapolitan sculptor Vincenzo Gemito

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Guido Crepax - cartoonist

Erotic character Valentina captured spirit of 1960s Italy

Erotic imagery was central to the success of Crepax's
most famous character, Valentina

The cartoonist Guido Crepax, whose character Valentina became a heroine of the 1960s generation in Italy and beyond, was born on this day in 1933 in Milan.

Valentina first appeared in May 1965 as a secondary character in another cartoon, the photographer girlfriend of an art critic and amateur sleuth.

But the sinuous, sensual female depicted by Crepax, her hair cut in a glossy bob, soon acquired fans both male and female.

In an era when Italian society was beginning to experience a sense of sexual liberation for the first time, Valentina’s eroticism naturally attracted a legion of male fans. But her assertive individuality struck a chord with many modern Italian women, too, even if her readiness to shed her clothes caused outrage among others.

Soon, Valentina left behind her fictional boyfriend and starred in a series of her own adventures, which Crepax continued to produce for three decades. She was outspoken in her left-wing political views, while her uninhibited fantasies increasingly reflected the world of dreams and psychoanalysis that fascinated her creator.  Her style even influenced the Milan fashion world.

Guido Crepax created his most
famous character in 1965

Crepax was born Guido Crepas, the son of Gilberto Crepas, a musician from Venice who had moved to Milan to play at Teatro alla Scala, where he eventually became first cellist under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. 

The family home in Milan was virtually destroyed during a bombing raid in the Second World War but Guido survived to study architecture at Milan University. He graduated in 1958, by which time he had already begun  working as a graphic artist with some success.

His design work included advertising posters, record sleeves - among them Domenico Modugno's hit Nel blu, dipinto di blu (aka Volare) - and magazine and book covers.

His publicity campaign for Shell Oil won him the Palme d'Or for advertising in 1957. The following year he began a long-running collaboration with Tempo Medico, the first Italian medical journal, for which he designed every cover for 22 years.

Then came his first experience of drawing cartoons, with which he had been involved only two years when Valentina appeared for the first time in Linus magazine, in a series in which the main character was her boyfriend Philip Rembrandt, an art critic in his day job who led a double life as the crime fighter Neutron, helped by having the power to freeze people with a penetrating gaze.

Crepax created a back story for Valentina that in many ways reflected his own.

Guido Crepax designed the sleeve for Domenico
 Modugno's hit, Nel blu, dipinto di blu

He named her Valentina Rosselli after the resistance heroes Nello and Carlo Rosselli, whose courage he admired. He gave her an address in Milan's Via De Amicis, where he lived, and filled her apartment with the books that he and his intellectual circle were inspired and informed by.

She was modelled, in part, on the silent movie actress Louise Brooks, who favoured the archetypal ‘flapper’ look with the short bob, and on Crepax's own wife, Luisa.

Valentina was far from Crepax’s only character. He created several other female heroines, such as Belinda, Bianca and Anita, for whom the inspiration was Anita Ekberg, the star of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.

He also drew cartoons based on works of literature, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the scandalous novels of the Marquis de Sade, the Gothic novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

None, however, brought him the acclaim of Valentina, who was published in France, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Japan, the United States, Finland and Greece as well as Italy.

Valentina was twice adapted for the screen: in the 1973 Franco-Italian production Baba Yaga, and as a television series, starring the American actor Demetra Hampton. Both were a disappointment for her author.

A long-time sufferer from multiple sclerosis, Crepax died in Milan in 2003, at the age of 69.

Via Edmondo de Amicis, where Guido Crepax lived

Travel tip:

The Via Edmondo de Amicis, where Crepax lived and where he placed the fictional apartment of his comic book heroine Valentina, is in central Milan, between the Carrobbio and San Vittore neighbourhoods to the southwest of the city centre. A pleasant urban boulevard, it is a short distance from the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio, one of the most ancient churches in the city, the original structure of which was built in the 4th century. The Baroque church that stands there today was completed in the 11th century.

The Teatro alla Scala, where Crepax's father was a musician,
has become of the world's premier opera houses

Travel tip:

The Teatro alla Scala - usually referred to by its abbreviated name La Scala - was built in the late 18th century as a replacement for the Teatro Regio Ducale, which was destroyed in a fire in 1776.  The project was financed by some 90 wealthy Milanese and built on the site of the church of Santa Maria alla Scala, from which it takes its name. The theatre has come to be regarded as the premier opera venue in Italy and one of the most important venues for opera and ballet in the world, with ambitious young singers and dancers from every corner of the globe clamouring for places at La Scala Theatre Academy.

More reading:

Hugo Pratt - the Rimini-born artist behind the adventurer Corto Maltese

How Franco Bonvicini's characters mocked the Nazis

The cinematic legacy of Fellini

Also on this day:

1823: Ancient Roman basilica badly damaged by fire

1850: The birth of Frances Xavier Cabrini - America's first saint


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