1 October

Walter Mazzarri - football coach

Former Watford manager with outstanding record in Italy

The football coach Walter Mazzarri, whose disappointing spell in English football as Watford manager contrasts with a fine record as a coach in his native Italy, was born on this day in 1961 in San Vincenzo, a resort on the coast of Tuscany.  Mazzarri won promotion to Serie A with his local club Livorno and kept tiny Calabrian team Reggina in Serie A against the odds for three consecutive seasons, on the last occasion despite an 11-point deduction for involvement in an alleged match-fixing scandal.  He subsequently had two seasons as coach of Sampdoria, qualifying for the UEFA Cup by finishing sixth in the first of those campaigns and then reaching the final of the Coppa Italia with a team that included the potent attacking duo Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini.  After that he returned to Napoli, where he had previously been assistant to Renzo Ulivieri, to be appointed head coach in 2009, guiding the azzurri to sixth place - their best Serie A finish for 25 years - to qualify for the Europa League in his first season in charge, and doing even better in his second season, when Napoli were third, their highest placing since the golden days of the late 1980s.  Read more…

_________________________________________________________

Attilio Pavesi - Olympic cycling champion

Rider from Emilia-Romagna won Italy's first road racing gold 

Attilio Pavesi, the first winner of an individual Olympic gold medal in Italian cycling history, was born on this day in 1910 in the small town of Caorso in Emilia-Romagna.  At the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932, Pavesi won the individual road race and picked up a second gold medal as a member of the Italian quartet that won the team classification in the same race.  Italy had already won gold medals for the team pursuit in track cycling - indeed, they won that title for the fourth time in a row in 1932 - but had not enjoyed success on the road before Pavesi's triumph.  Pavesi, the last of 11 children born to Angelo, a poultry farmer, and his wife Maria, was a natural all-round sportsman, excelling at running, long jump, swimming, diving, gymnastics and football as he grew up.  He was such a strong swimmer he once saved a boy from drowning in a local river by pulling him to the bank by his hair.  His interest in cycling developed after he left school at the age of 10 to take a job in a workshop, learning how to repair all modes of transport from bicycles to tractors.  He joined a cycling team and won a number of trophies and continued to compete during his national service.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Leonello d’Este - Marquis of Ferrara

Ruler who spent money on the arts and education

Leonello d’Este, who is remembered as a dedicated patron of the arts, literature and culture, died on this day in 1450 in Ferrara.  Leonello was Marquis of Ferrara and Duke of Modena and Reggio Emilia from 1441 to 1450.  An illegitimate son of Niccolo III d’Este, Leonello was favoured by his father as his successor ahead of his legitimate children.  As he was well educated and popular with the common people, he was considered by his father to be the most suitable heir.  During his rule over Ferrara, Leonello transformed the city and reformed the University of Ferrara, actions which influenced the political and artistic achievements of his successors.  Leonello was tutored by Guarino Veronese, who instructed him on the traits of a desirable ruler and how to govern. Veronese was later appointed as a professor at the University of Ferrara.  Because of his strong academic background, Leonello made economic, political and cultural changes to Ferrara as soon as he took over. He was responsible for the building of the first hospital in Ferrara.  Artists such as Pisanello, Bellini, Mantegna and Della Francesca worked for him in Ferrara.  Read more…

Home

30 September

NEW - Massimo Bottura - chef and food activist

Leading restaurateur who set up project to feed hungry

The chef and restaurateur Massimo Bottura, whose Osteria Francescana in his hometown of Modena has twice been named as the world’s best restaurant, was born on this day in 1962.  Bottura is also the founder, in partnership with his American-born wife, the former actress and artist Lara Gilmore, of Food for Soul, a non-profit organisation that sets out to combat waste and feed the hungry through a network of refectories in major cities around the world.  The Food for Soul project was launched in 2015 with a refettorio in Greco, a poor district of northern Milan, and has expanded to the extent that it now numbers seven similar dining rooms for the hungry and homeless, in London, Paris and Rio de Janeiro as well as at three other locations in Italy.  As a young man, Bottura’s passions were food and football. He drew inspiration from the cooking of his mother and grandmothers in his dream of being a chef but envisioned a career as a footballer first, believing he had the talent to play professionally.  His father, a successful businessman, insisted he followed a different path, and Bottura enrolled instead to study law at university.   Read more…

__________________________________________________________

Pierina Legnani - ballerina

Italian dancer who conquered St Petersburg

The ballerina Pierina Legnani, considered by many ballet historians to be one of the greatest dancers in history, was born on this day in 1863 in Milan.  Legnani's legacy was the 32-turn fouetté en tournant in which the dancer essentially spins on the point of one foot for 32 revolutions while maintaining perfect balance.  No ballerina had completed 32 turns before Legnani, who is said to have tried it out at the Alhambra Theatre in London before introducing the move to the wider world in 1893 on her debut at the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg in Russia, where she was performing in the title role of Cinderella.  It came in the final act on the night of the premiere and her perfection of technique and execution caused a sensation, with many critics hailing her as the supreme ballerina of her generation.  Her feat set a new standard for future ballerinas as a yardstick of strength and technique. A sequence of 32 fouetté turns was later choreographed into the Black Swan solo in Act Three of Swan Lake, of which it continues to be a feature.  Jealous rivals criticised Legnani for what they saw as showing off, taking an audacious gamble that could have backfired horribly.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Angelo Cerica - Carabinieri general

First job was to arrest Mussolini

General Angelo Cerica, the police commander tasked with arresting the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after he was deposed as party leader in 1943, was born on this day in 1885 in Alatri, in the Ciociaria region of Lazio, about 90km (56 miles) south of Rome.  Mussolini was arrested on July 25 as he left his regular meeting with the King, Vittorio Emanuele III, the day after the Fascist Grand Council had voted to remove him from power.  The monarch had informed him that General Pietro Badoglio, former chief of staff of the Italian army, would be replacing him as prime minister.  Cerica had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary second police force, only two days previously, succeeding General Azolino Hazon, who had been killed in a bombing raid.  He was hand-picked for the job by General Vittorio Ambrosio, who was party to secret plot among Carabinieri officers to depose Mussolini irrespective of the Grand Council vote.  They wanted a commander who would not oppose the anti-Mussolini faction and would carry out the arrest.  Cerica, in fact, shared their view of il Duce, blaming him for leading Italy into a ruinous alliance with Germany.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Monica Bellucci - actress and model

Movie actress who is face of Dolce & Gabbana

The actress and model Monica Bellucci, who has appeared in more than 60 films in a career that began in 1990, was born on this day in 1964 in Città di Castello in Umbria.  Bellucci, who is associated with Dolce & Gabbana and Dior perfumes, began modelling to help fund her studies at the University of Perugia, where she was enrolled at the Faculty of Law with ambitions of a career in the legal profession.  But she was quickly brought to the attention of the major model agencies in Milan and soon realised she had the potential to follow a much different career.  Bellucci, whose father Pasquale worked for a transport company, soon began to attract big-name clients in Paris and New York as well as Italy, but decided not long into her modelling career that she would take acting lessons.  She claimed to have been inspired by watching the Italian female movie icons Claudia Cardinale and Sophia Loren and gained her first part in a TV miniseries directed by the veteran director Dino Risi in 1990.  The following year she made her big screen debut with a leading role in the film La raffa, directed by Francesco Laudadio.   Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Girolamo Mercuriale – physician

Doctor went from hero to villain and back again

Girolamo Mercuriale, who is believed to have written the first book about sports medicine and one of the first books about the benefits of physical exercise, was born on this day in 1530 in Forlì.  He published his most famous book, De Arte Gymnastica, in 1569 in Venice, having studied Greek and Roman medical literature and learnt about the attitude of athletes in ancient times to diet, exercise and hygiene.  Girolamo was the son of a doctor, Giovanni Mercuriale, and he was sent to Bologna, Padua and Venice to study medicine. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy and medicine in 1555 in Venice he went to Rome on a political mission, where he had access to many of the important libraries housing classical manuscripts.  His book is believed to be the first to explain the principles of physical therapy, now known as physiotherapy and the first to suggest that exercise can be helpful, or harmful, depending on its use, duration and intensity.  He became famous and was offered the chair of practical medicine at Padua in 1569, where he studied the works of Hippocrates, which gave him the material to write the first scientific tracts on skin disease, and women’s and children’s diseases.  Read more…

Home

Massimo Bottura - chef and food activist

Leading restaurateur who set up project to feed hungry

Massimo Bottura is seen as one of
the world's best chefs

The chef and restaurateur Massimo Bottura, whose Osteria Francescana in his hometown of Modena has twice been named as the world’s best restaurant, was born on this day in 1962.

Bottura is also the founder, in partnership with his American-born wife, the former actress and artist Lara Gilmore, of Food for Soul, a non-profit organisation that sets out to combat waste and feed the hungry through a network of refectories in major cities around the world.

The Food for Soul project was launched in 2015 with a refettorio in Greco, a poor district of northern Milan, and has expanded to the extent that it now numbers seven similar dining rooms for the hungry and homeless, in London, Paris and Rio de Janeiro as well as at three other locations in Italy.

As a young man, Bottura’s passions were food and football. He drew inspiration from the cooking of his mother and grandmothers in his dream of being a chef but envisioned a career as a footballer first, believing he had the talent to play professionally.

Lara Gilmore and Massimo Bottura met in
New York in the last 1980s

His father, a successful businessman, insisted he followed a different path, and Bottura enrolled instead to study law at university.  In 1986, however, before he had completed his degree, he made the bold decision to buy a dilapidated roadside trattoria on the outskirts of Modena, determined that if one of his dreams had been dashed, the other would not suffer the same fate.

He worked round the clock to restore the building and a week later his first restaurant, Trattoria del Campazzo, opened for business.  Encouraged by his mother, who argued with his father on his behalf, he was determined to make a success of it.

Bottura’s horizons were broadened by a surprise visit to Trattoria del Campazzo by Alain Ducasse, head chef of Le Louis XV, the restaurant at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Ducasse invited him to the kitchen at Le Louis XV, which is where effectively he had his apprenticeship.

Bottura's restaurant Osteria Francescana in
Modena has twice been named best in the world

He had met Lara while he was working in kitchens in New York in the late 1980s and she was an actress in experimental theatre.  He returned to pursue his education under Ducasse but they stayed in touch and in 1993 he invited her to Modena, to help him fulfil his ambition to open a new restaurant that combined food with contemporary art and design.

The culmination of their joint enterprise was the Osteria Francescana, on the corner of Via Stella and Via delle Rose in the centre of Modena. It opened on 19 March, 1995.  Bottura proposed to Lara the same day.

Bottura’s cooking took traditional Italian dishes and gave them a modern twist with a heavy accent on experimentation. At first, he struggled to win over local diners but had something of a lucky break when a renowned Italian food critic happened on the restaurant by chance in 2001 and gave the osteria a rave review.  It sparked a new wave of interest and within a year he had been awarded his first Michelin star.

The Osteria Francescana, which even in normal times serves only 28 guests at lunch and dinner, now has three stars and was named as one of the top three in the World’s Best Restaurants - a list compiled annually by the UK media company William Reed Business Media - for six consecutive years between 2013 and 2018, taking first place in 2016 and 2018.

Bottura launched a project to
feed the hungry and homeless

Bottura did not open another restaurant until Francescana 58, a more informal brasserie launched in Modena in 2011, in Via Vignolese. He moved outside Italy for the first time in 2014 with Ristorante Italia di Massimo Bottura in Istanbul. Subsequent ventures include restaurants in Florence, Dubai and Beverly Hills.

The idea behind Food for Soul developed during Expo 2015 in Milan, at which Bottura was invited to cook. The scale of the event within a city not without social problems set him thinking both about food wastage and social vulnerability, and he decided to take unused produce from Expo’s pavilions to create meals for the city's most vulnerable population. Rather than serve up those meals in the manner of a traditional soup kitchen, Bottura wanted to create a setting in which the diners could feel at least momentarily sheltered from the reality of their everyday lives, connecting with others at long refectory tables.

The first refettorio - the Refettorio Ambrosiano - opened in Piazza Greco in a disused concert theatre next to the parish church of San Martino in Greco. Under a giant mural of The Last Supper, seated at 14 refectory tables, each crafted and donated by a celebrated Italian designer, guests are served a three-course menu, nowadays made from food donated by local supermarkets.

In addition to the seven locations already established, Bottura has plans to open more in Mexico, California, New York and Quebec.  He regularly invites renowned chefs to cook for the project and they willingly oblige, in many cases serving the food themselves and sitting to talk to diners. 

 Modena's grand baroque Ducal Palace is one of the city's
major attractions for visitors

Travel tip:

Modena is a city on the south side of the Po Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. It is known for its car industry, as Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati have all been located there. The city is also well known for producing balsamic vinegar. Operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti and soprano Mirella Freni were both born in Modena.  One of the main sights is the huge, baroque Ducal Palace, designed for Francesco I by the architect, Luigi Bartolomeo Avanzini, who created a home for him that few European princes could match at the time. 

The imposing facade of 
Modena's duomo

Travel tip:

Dominating Piazza Grande, Modena’s 12th-century duomo - the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta e San Geminiano - is regarded as one of the finest products of the Romanesque period in Italy and is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The portal of the west facade is supported by two lions created by the sculptor Wiligelmo, who also did the larger reliefs that run along the wall. Inside, the plain stone coffin of San Geminiano - the patron saint of Modena – sits under the choir. On his feast day, January 31, crowds come to see his coffin, and a market is held in the square.

Also on this day:

1530: The birth of physician Girolamo Mercuriale 

1863: The birth of ballerina Pierina Legnani

1885: The birth of Carabinieri general Angelo Cerica 

1964: The birth of model and actress Monica Bellucci

Home

29 September

Silvio Piola - footballer

Modest star who remains Italy’s great goalscorer

Silvio Piola, a forward whose career tally of 364 goals between 1930 and 1954 remains the most scored by any professional player in the history of football in Italy, was born on this day in 1913 in Robbio Lomellina, a small town about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Milan.  Of those goals, 274 were scored in Serie A and 30 for the Italian national team, with whom he was a World Cup winner in 1938, scoring twice in the final against Hungary.  No other player has scored so many goals in the top flight of Italian football and only two others - Gigi Riva and Giuseppe Meazza - have scored more while wearing the azzurri shirt.  Other records still held by Piola include all-time highest Serie A goalscorer for three different clubs - his hometown club Pro Vercelli, Lazio, and Novara - and one of only two players to have scored six goals in a single match.  Until recently, Piola held a unique double record of being both the youngest player to score two goals in a Serie A match and the oldest, having scored twice for Pro Vercelli in a 5-4 win away to Alessandria in 1931 when he was 17 years and 104 days and twice for Novara against Lazio in a match in 1953, at the age of 39 years and 127 days.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Enrico Fermi – nuclear physicist

Scientist from Rome who created world’s first nuclear reactor

Enrico Fermi, who has been called the architect of the nuclear age and even the father of the atomic bomb, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.  Fermi, who won a Nobel Prize in 1938, created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the so-called Chicago Pile-1, after he had settled in the United States, and also worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret US research project aimed at developing nuclear weapons in the Second World War.  The third child of Alberto Fermi, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, a school teacher, Fermi took an interest in science from an early age, inspired by a book about physics he had discovered in the local market in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, written in Latin by a Jesuit priest in about 1840.  He read avidly as he was growing up, conducting many experiments. After high school, he was granted a place at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, part of the University of Pisa, where it became clear the depth of knowledge he had already acquired was greater than that of many of his professors. It was not long before they began asking him to organise seminars in quantum physics. He graduated with honours in 1922.  Read more…

____________________________________________________________

Silvio Berlusconi - entrepreneur and politician

Businessman who was four times PM

Silvio Berlusconi, who has served as prime minister of Italy in four Governments, was born on this day in 1936 in Milan.  Head of a large media empire and owner of the football club AC Milan, Berlusconi was prime minister for a total of nine years, making him the longest-serving post-war prime minister and the third longest-serving since Italian unification.  Berlusconi was the eldest of three children born to a bank employee and his wife and, after completing his secondary school education, he studied Law at the Università Statale in Milan, graduating with honours in 1961.  While at University he played the double bass in a group and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life he was to co-write both AC Milan’s and Forza Italia’s anthems and, in collaboration with Mariano Apicella, a Neapolitan singer and musician, he wrote the lyrics for two albums of Neapolitan-style songs, which Apicella put to music.  In the late 1960s, Berlusconi’s company, Edilnord, built 4,000 residential apartments in a new 'town' he called Milano Due and he was able to use the profits to fund his future businesses.  Read more…

Home

28 September

Pietro Badoglio - soldier and politician

Controversial general who turned against Mussolini

Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was a general in the Italian Army in both World Wars and became Italy’s wartime prime minister after the fall of Mussolini, was born on this day in 1871 in the village of Grazzano Monferrato in Piedmont.  He was Mussolini’s Chief of Staff between 1925 and 1940, although his relationship with the Fascist dictator was fractious.  Indeed, he ultimately played a key part in Mussolini’s downfall in 1943, encouraging the Fascist Grand Council to remove him as leader and advising King Victor Emmanuel III in the lead-up to Mussolini’s arrest and imprisonment in July of that year, after which he was named as head of an emergency government.  It was Badoglio who then conducted the secret negotiations with the Allies that led to an armistice being signed barely five weeks later. However, historians are divided over whether he should be seen as an heroic figure, in part because of his role in the disastrous defeat for Italian forces at the Battle of Caporetto in the First World War, at a cost of 10,000 Italian deaths and 30,000 more wounded.  Badoglio hailed from a middle-class background. His father, Mario, was a small landowner.  Read more…

___________________________________________________________

Marcello Mastroianni – actor

Film star who immortalised the Trevi Fountain

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, who grew up to star in some of the most iconic Italian films of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1924 in Fontana Liri, in the province of Frosinone in Lazio.  He was the son of Ida Irolle and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop. His uncle, Umberto Mastroianni, was a sculptor.  At the age of 14, Marcello Mastroianni made his screen debut as an extra in a 1939 film called Marionette.  His career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he was interned in a German prison camp until he managed to escape and go into hiding in Venice.  He made several minor film appearances after the war until he landed his first big role in Atto d’accusa, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo, in 1951.  Ten years later, Mastroianni had become an international celebrity, having starred in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita opposite Anita Ekberg. He played a disillusioned tabloid journalist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome’s high society. The film is most famous for the scene in which Ekberg's character, Sylvia, wades into the Trevi Fountain.  Read more…

___________________________________________________________

Filippo Illuminato - partisan

Teenager who gave his life for his city

The partisan fighter Filippo Illuminato died on this day in 1943 in Naples.  He was among more than 300 Italians killed in an uprising known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli - the Four Days of Naples - which successfully liberated the city from occupying Nazi forces ahead of the arrival of the first Allied forces in the city on 1 October.  Illuminato’s memory has been marked in a number of ways in the southern Italian city, honoured because he was only 13 years old when he was killed by German gunfire in a street battle in the famous Piazza Trieste e Trento, just a few steps from the Royal Palace. His last act had been to blow up a German armoured car.  Born into a poor family, Illuminato was working as an apprentice mechanic when he decided to join the uprising, which was sparked by a brutal crackdown imposed by the Nazis in response to the Italian government’s decision to surrender to the Allies, confirmed in the signing of the Armistice of Cassabile on 3 September on the island of Sicily.  The German forces, which had numbered 20,000, had responded to the news by banning all assemblies and introducing a curfew.  Read more…

Home

27 September

NEW - Cosimo de’ Medici – banker and politician

Father of Florence used his wealth to encourage great architecture

Today is the date Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, the founder of the Medici dynasty, celebrated his birthday.  Cosimo and his twin brother, Damiano, were born to Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici and Piccarda Bueri in April 1389, but Damiano survived for only a short time.  The twins were named after the saints Cosmas and Damian, whose feast day in those days was celebrated on 27 September. Cosimo later decided to celebrate his birthday on 27 September, his ‘name day’, rather than on the actual date of his birth.  Cosimo’s father came from a wealthy family and after making even more money he married well. A supporter of the arts in Florence, he was one of the financial backers for the magnificent doors of the Baptistery by Ghiberti, although they were not completed until after his death.  By the time his father died, Cosimo was 40 and had become a rich banker himself, which gave him great power. He had also become a patron of the arts, learning and architecture.  The Abizzi family, who ruled Florence, feared his power and also coveted his wealth so they had Cosimo arrested on the capital charge of having tried to raise himself up higher than others.  Read more…

_____________________________________________________________

Jovanotti - musician

Former rapper an important figure in Italian pop culture

The singer-songwriter Lorenzo Cherubini – better known as Jovanotti – was born on this day in 1966 in Rome.  Famous in his early days as Italy’s first rap star, Jovanotti has evolved into one of Italian pop music’s most significant figures, his work progressing from hip hop to funk and introducing ska and other strands of world music to Italian audiences, his increasingly sophisticated compositions even showing classical influences.  He has come to match Ligabue in terms of the ability to attract massive audiences, while his international record sales in the mid-90s were on a par with Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini.  Since his recording debut in 1988 he has sold more than seven million albums.  Although born in Rome, Cherubini came from a Tuscan family and spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Cortona in the province of Arezzo, where he now has a home.  He began to work as a DJ at venues in and around Cortona, mainly playing dance music and hip hop, which at the time was scarcely known in Italy. After finishing high school he went back to Rome because he felt he had a better chance of launching a musical career via the capital’s club scene.  Read more…

______________________________________________________________

Grazia Deledda - Nobel Prize winner

First Italian woman to be honoured

The novelist Grazia Deledda, who was the first of only two Italian women to be made a Nobel laureate when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, was born on this day in 1871 in the city of Nuoro in Sardinia.  A prolific writer from the age of 13, she published around 50 novels or story collections over the course of her career, most of them drawing on her own experience of life in the rugged Sardinian countryside.  The Nobel prize was awarded "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."  Deledda’s success came at the 11th time of asking, having been first nominated in 1913. The successful nomination came from Henrik Schuck, a literature historian at the Swedish Academy.  Born into a middle-class family - her father, Giovanni, was in her own words a “well-to-do landowner” - Deledda drew inspiration for her characters from the stream of friends and business acquaintances her father insisted must stay at their home whenever they were in Nuoro.  She was not allowed to attend school beyond the age of 11 apart from private tuition in Italian.  Read more…

_____________________________________________________________

Gracie Fields - actress and singer

English-born performer who made Capri her home 

The English actress, singer and comedian Gracie Fields died on this day in 1979 at her home on Capri, the island on the south side of the Gulf of Naples.  The 81-year-old former forces sweetheart had been in hospital following a bout of pneumonia but appeared to be regaining her health.  The previous day she had walked with her husband, Boris, to the post office on the island to collect her mail.  Some English newspapers reported that Gracie had died in the arms of her husband but that version of events was later corrected. It is now accepted that Boris had already left La Canzone del Mare, the singer's original Capri home overlooking the island's landmark Faraglioni rocks, to work on the central heating at a second property they had bought in Anacapri, on the opposite side of the island, and that Gracie was with her housekeeper, Irena, when she passed away suddenly.  Fields, born Grace Stansfield in Rochdale, England, in 1898, had visited Capri for the first time in the late 1920s or early 30s, with two artists she had befriended in London, where she was becoming an established star in the revue format.  Read more…

Home

Cosimo de’ Medici – banker and politician

Father of Florence used his wealth to encourage great architecture

Bronzino's portrait of Cosimo de'
Medici, painted between 1565 and 1569

Today is the date Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, the founder of the Medici dynasty, celebrated his birthday.

Cosimo and his twin brother, Damiano, were born to Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici and Piccarda Bueri in April 1389, but Damiano survived for only a short time.

The twins were named after the saints Cosmas and Damian, whose feast day in those days was celebrated on 27 September. Cosimo later decided to celebrate his birthday on 27 September, his ‘name day’, rather than on the actual date of his birth.

Cosimo’s father, who was the founder of the Medici Bank, came from a wealthy family and after making even more money he married well, his wife coming from an ancient Florentine family. A supporter of the arts in Florence, Giovanni was one of the financial backers for the magnificent doors of the Baptistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti, although they were not completed until after his death.

By the time his father died, Cosimo was 40 and had become a rich banker himself, which gave him great power. He had also become a patron of the arts, learning and architecture.

The Abizzi family, who ruled Florence, feared his power and also coveted his wealth so they had Cosimo arrested on the capital charge of having tried to raise himself up higher than others.

Brunelleschi's huge dome of Florence
Cathedral, which Cosimo supported

But Cosimo was able to use his money to buy back his life and then later his freedom, before he went into exile for a year.

When he returned to Florence he became the de facto ruler of the city and banned the Abizzi family for ever. He became Europe’s richest banker and a great art patron, supporting Fra Angelico, Donatello, Ghiberti and many others.

He encouraged Filippo Brunelleschi to complete his great dome for Florence’s cathedral and ordered the construction of the Medici Chapel in the Basilica di Santa Croce.

He established the importance of the Medici family, who were to rule Florence for hundreds of years to come.

As he became older, Cosimo became badly affected by gout and he died in 1464 at the age of 75 at Careggi, where he had been born.

He was succeeded by his son Piero, who was to father Lorenzo the Magnificent, one of the most famous and admired of the Medici.

The Florentines awarded Cosimo the title Pater Patriae - Father of the Fatherland - an honour once awarded to Cicero, and they had it carved upon his tomb in the Church of San Lorenzo in the city.

The Villa Medici at Careggi, outside Florence,
where Cosimo's life began and ended

Travel tip:

Cosimo was born and also died at the Villa Medici at Careggi in the hills above Florence, which is the oldest of the Medici villas. After his father died, Cosimo had it remodelled by Michelozzo, who designed a walled garden overlooked by the upper loggias of the villa. The property was bought by an Englishman, Francis Sloane, in 1848, who added exotic plants and palms to the gardens. The villa now belongs to Regione Toscane and is in the process of being restored.

Luigi Pampaloni's statue of
Bunelleschi in Piazza del Duomo

Travel tip:

Santa Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral or Duomo of Florence, dominates the city with its enormous dome by Brunelleschi, which Cosimo had encouraged him to design. The largest dome of its time, it was built without scaffolding and given an inner shell to provide a platform for the timbers that support the outer shell. The architect died in 1446 before it was completed, but a statue of Brunelleschi was erected in Piazza del Duomo and he still looks up thoughtfully towards his greatest achievement, the dome that would forever define Florence and remains to this day the largest masonry dome in the world.

Also on this day:

1871: The birth of author and Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda

1966: The birth of singer-songwriter Jovanotti

1979: The death on Capri of singer and actress Gracie Fields

Home