19 July

Cesare Cremonini - philosopher

Great thinker famous for Galileo ‘denial’

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, refusing Galileo’s invitation to see for himself.  Read more…

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Petrarch – Renaissance poet

Writer whose work inspired the modern Italian language

Renaissance scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca died on this day in 1374 at Arquà near Padua, now renamed Arquà Petrarca. Known in English as Petrarch, he is considered to be an important figure in the history of Italian literature.  He is often credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance, after his rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, and also with being the founder of Humanism.  In the 16th century, the Italian poet, Pietro Bembo, created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works.  Petrarch was born in Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304. His father was a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri, but he insisted that Petrarch studied law.  The poet was far more interested in writing and in reading Latin literature and considered the time he studied law as wasted years.  Petrarch’s first major work, Africa, about the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, turned him into a celebrity. In 1341 he became the first poet laureate since ancient times and his sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe.  Petrarch travelled widely throughout Italy and Europe during his life and once climbed Mount Ventoux near Vaucluse in France just for pleasure, writing about the experience afterwards.  Read more…

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Jacopo Tiepolo - Doge of Venice

Ruler laid down the law and granted land for beautiful churches

Jacopo Tiepolo, the Doge who granted the land for the building of Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo and Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, died on this day in 1249 in Venice.  His election as Doge in 1229 had sparked a feud between the Tiepolo and Dandolo families, which led to the rules being changed for future elections. He also produced five books of statutes setting out Venetian law which was to change life in Venice significantly, bringing a raft of civil and economic regulations to which Venetians were obliged to adhere.  Tiepolo, who was also known as Giacomo Tiepolo, had previously served as the first Venetian Duke of Crete and had two terms as podestà – chief administrator - in Constantinople.  He acted as the de facto ruler of the Latin Empire, negotiating treaties with the Egyptians and the Turks.  Tiepolo was elected Doge, a month after his predecessor, Pietro Ziani, abdicated. At the election a stalemate was reached between Tiepolo and his rival, Marino Dandolo, both of them having 20 votes each. The contest was decided by drawing lots, which led to Tiepolo’s victory.  Read more…

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18 July

NEW - William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan. Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.  Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time, aware that Italy needed to make up ground on some other western countries in that area of business.  His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round, with the added benefit that the moulds used to produce eggs at Easter did not need to be dismantled and stored away once the Easter holiday had passed.  Salice came up with the Kinder Sorpresa. Read more...

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Mysterious death of Caravaggio

Experts divided over how brilliant artist met his end

The death of the brilliant Renaissance artist Caravaggio is said to have occurred on this day in 1610 but the circumstances and even the location are disputed even today.  Official records at the time concluded that the artist died in the Tuscan coastal town of Porto Ercole, having contracted a fever, thought to have been malaria.  However, there is no record of a funeral having taken place, nor of a burial, and several alternative theories have been put forward as to what happened to him.  One, which came to light in 2010 on the 400th anniversary of the painter's death, is that Caravaggio's death was caused by lead poisoning, the supposition being that lead contained in the paint he used entered his body either through being accidentally ingested or by coming into contact with an open wound.  This was supported by research led by Silvano Vincenti, a prominent art historian and broadcaster, who claimed to have found evidence that Caravaggio had been buried at a cemetery in Porto Ercole that was built over in the 1950s.  Some remains were transferred to the municipal cemetery in Porto Ercole.  Read more…

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Gino Bartali - cycling star and secret war hero

Tour de France champion was clandestine courier

Gino Bartali, one of three Italian cyclists to have won the Tour de France twice and a three-times winner of the Giro d’Italia, was born on this day in 1914 in the town of Ponte a Ema, just outside Florence.  Bartali’s career straddled the Second World War, his two Tour successes coming in 1938 and 1948, but it is as much for what he did during the years of conflict that he is remembered today.  With the knowledge of only a few people, Bartali repeatedly risked his life smuggling false documents around Italy to help Italian Jews escape being deported to Nazi concentration camps.  He hid the rolled up documents inside the hollow handlebars and frame of his bicycle and explained his frequent long-distance excursions as part of the training schedule he needed to maintain in order to keep himself in peak physical fitness.   In fact, he was carrying documents from secret printing presses to people who needed them in cities as far apart as Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Assisi, and the Vatican in Rome.  Sometimes he would pull a cart that contained a secret compartment in order to smuggle Jewish refugees in person into Switzerland.  Read more…

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Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed

The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.  An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.  Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.  Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.  He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, whose work tried to capture the power and energy of modern industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change, in that his focus was primarily on exploring the dynamics of light and movement.  Giacomo Balla was the son of a seamstress and a waiter who was an amateur photographer. He lost his father at the age of nine, at which point he gave up an early interest in music and began working in a lithograph print shop.  Read more…

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Alberto di Jorio – Cardinal

Priest spent 60 years accumulating money for the Vatican

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.  Read more…

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William Salice - businessman and chocolatier

Former salesman known as inventor of Kinder Eggs

William Salice worked for the Ferrero company
for almost half a century after joining them in 1960

William Salice, the man credited with being the inventor of the enormously popular children’s confectionery known as Kinder Eggs, was born on this day in 1933 in Casei Gerola, a small town in Lombardy, southwest of Milan.

Salice worked for the chocolate and confectionery company headed by Michele Ferrero, which had already enjoyed considerable success thanks to the Nutella hazelnut chocolate spread launched in the 1960s.

Keen to better himself after joining Ferrero as a salesman in 1960 at the age of 27, Salice studied marketing in his spare time, aware that Italy needed to make up ground on some other western countries in that area of business.

His willingness to embrace new ideas impressed Michele Ferrero, who commissioned him to come up with a way of turning the popularity in Italy of children’s chocolate Easter eggs into a product that could be sold all year round, with the added benefit that the moulds used to produce eggs at Easter did not need to be dismantled and stored away once the Easter holiday had passed.

Salice came up with the Kinder Sorpresa - a chocolate egg but with the extra appeal that each one came with the surprise - sorpresa - of a free gift contained inside a plastic shell within the egg. He chose Kinder - the German for children - for the name because Germany was expected to be an important market for the product.

The Kinder Egg's packaging
is familiar the world over

Michele Ferrero was sold on Salice’s idea and the first Kinder Sorpresa rolled off the production line in 1974.

The gifts inside were often traditional toys, such as spinning tops, dolls, plastic soldiers or model cars, sometimes needing the help of an adult to assemble, something Salice saw as a way to promote interaction between parents and their children.

The product was an immediate success, which Salice put down to the relative poverty of many Italians even in the 1970s, when toy stores were virtually non-existent in the country. The hand-painted figurines in particular were hugely popular. At Christmas, Ferrero produced versions that came with tiny nativity sets.

In time, the product’s popularity saw Ferrero link with companies in the entertainment industry to produce themed toys based on popular films or TV shows, or cartoon characters.  Themed series based on Smurfs and Asterix, for example, were exceptionally popular and increased sales exponentially as children - and adults - set out to acquire complete collections of each line.

The small size of the toys raised concerns over safety, particularly given that a non-edible product was being concealed within something edible, and there were a number of incidents of children choking on the toys. Some countries banned Kinder Eggs altogether; others required changes to packaging and clearer warnings displayed.

Salice had the idea to include a free toy
inside the Kinder Egg's chocolate shell

Nonetheless, it is estimated that more than 30 billion Kinder Eggs have been sold worldwide, with a whole range of other products created using the Kinder brand and the particular blend of cocoa and milk used in Kinder chocolate.

Salice also played a key role in developing the company’s best selling Ferrero Rocher chocolates, Tic-Tac mints and Pocket Coffee, which comprises a hollow square of hard, dark chocolate containing a shot of sweetened espresso coffee.

Salice grew up in a postwar Italy that was still struggling to recover economically.  Despite limited opportunities to enjoy a proper education, he studied for a diploma in commerce at Voghera, near Pavia. 

He spent almost half a century working for Ferrero, and in retirement devoted much time and money to helping future generations of Italians to realise their potential via his Color Your Life foundation - set up jointly with Italian entrepreneur Enrico Gasperini - which has a campus near Savona that offers courses for talented children with artistic, academic and entrepreneurial ambitions and helps young people to make the contacts which, in Italy, are still often fundamental to personal advancement. 

A keen supporter of Inter-Milan away from work, he died in December 2016 at the age of 83.

An etching depicting the Castello di Casei
Gerola in medieval times

Travel tip:

Casei Gerola is a small town in Lombardy some 60km (37 miles) southwest of Milan and about 25km (16 miles) from Pavia. It is the home of the Castello di Casei Gerola, built in the early 15th century on the site of an existing structure that dates back to the 10th century, and substantially rebuilt in the 16th century after it suffered damage inflicted by Spanish forces.  A large, brick construction, it has a central courtyard and the remains of four towers are still visible.  Just outside Casei Gerola is the natural park of La Folaghe, a flooded quarry that has become home to a host of wildlife, including many species of birds.

Voghera's imposing 17th century duomo was
inspired by Bramante's design of Pavia cathedral

Travel tip:

Voghera, where Salice studied commerce, has a castle erected by the Visconti family between 1335 and 1372 and an 11th century cathedral later remodelled in Baroque style. It is famous for the term 'Casalinga di Voghera' - Voghera housewife - which is often used in the media and political discourse to refer to the average Italian citizen - not particularly well educated or sophisticated but working hard and striving through self-sacrifice to raise a family in the best way possible.  In England, an equivalent but now somewhat archaic phrase is 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', which was once regularly used in courtrooms to represent someone whose hypothetical opinion might determine whether an action was or was not reasonable. Voghera's duomo was rebuilt in the 17th century to a design by Antonio Maria Corbetta who was inspired by the Bramante layout of the Pavia cathedral.

Also on this day:

1610: The death of Renaissance master Caravaggio

1871: The birth of painter Giacomo Balla

1884: The birth of Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, head of the Vatican Bank 

1914: The birth of three-times Giro d’Italia winner Gino Bartali

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17 July

Michele Casadei Massari - chef and restaurateur

American dream from small beginnings

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.  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’.  Read more…

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Maria Salviati - noblewoman

Florentine whose line included kings of France and England

The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on this day in 1499 in Florence.  Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and a powerful figure in the mid-16th century.  Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, and Charles II and James II of England.  Married for nine years to Lodovico de’ Medici, who was more widely known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Salviati herself had Medici blood. One of a family of 10 children, her mother was Lucrezia de Lorenzo de’ Medici, who had married the politician Iacopo Salviati, who was from another major banking family in Florence.  Maria’s maternal grandfather was Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler who famously sponsored Michelangelo and Botticelli.  She was married to Giovanni dalle Bande Nere when she was 18, having known him since she was 10, when he was placed in the care of her parents following the death of his mother, Caterina Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan.  As a professional soldier, her husband spent much less time with her than she would have liked and Cosimo was their only child.  Read more…

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Gino D'Acampo - celebrity chef

Neapolitan inherited talent from grandfather

The celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo was born on this day in 1976 in Torre del Greco, a conurbation of around 90,000 inhabitants within the Metropolitan City of Naples.  Based in England since 1995, D’Acampo is scarcely known in his native country yet his social media pages have more than two and a half million followers.  The author of 11 books on cooking, his numerous television appearances include several series of his own show, Gino’s Italian Escapes.  He owns a number of restaurants and pasta bars and is the co-owner of a company selling Italian ingredients.  His success is all the more remarkable given that he had to rebuild his life after being convicted in 1998 of burglary, an episode that took place while he was working as a waiter. He described the incident as a mistake he vowed never to repeat and has since spent time helping disadvantaged young people to learn from their mistakes.  Born Gennaro d’Acampo, he grew up around food. His grandfather, Giovanni, who had been head chef for a cruise company, owned a restaurant and although he had early aspirations to become a doctor or a dentist, he eventually enrolled at the Luigi de Medici catering school in Naples.  Read more…

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Lady Blessington’s Neapolitan Journals

Irish aristocrat fell in love with Naples

Marguerite, Lady Blessington, an Irish-born writer who married into the British aristocracy, arrived in Naples on this day in 1823 and began writing her Neapolitan Journals.  She was to stay in the city for nearly three years and her detailed account of what she saw and who she met has left us with a unique insight into life in Naples nearly 200 years ago.  Lady Blessington made herself at home in Naples and thoroughly embraced the culture, attending local events, making what at the time were adventurous excursions, and entertaining Neapolitan aristocrats and intellectuals at the former royal palace that became her home.  Those who know Naples today will recognise in her vivid descriptions many places that have remained unchanged for the last two centuries.  She also provides a valuable insight into what life was like at the time for ordinary people as well as for the rich and privileged.  A society beauty, she came to Naples during a long European tour after her marriage to Charles Gardiner, the first Earl of Blessington, and immediately became fascinated by the local customs, food and traditions. She also visited Ercolano, Paestum, Capri, Ischia and Sorrento and made an ascent of Vesuvius on an ass.  Read more…

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