18 February

Michelangelo – Renaissance painter and sculptor

‘Greatest artist of all time’ left amazing legacy of work

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni - generally known simply as Michelangelo - died on this day in 1564 in Rome.   His death came three weeks before his 89th birthday while he was still working on his last sculpture, the Rondanini Pietà, a version of the Virgin Mary with the body of the dead Christ.  Michelangelo had been a sculptor, painter, architect and poet who had exerted an enormous influence on the development of art. During his lifetime he was considered to be the greatest living artist and he is now considered to be one of the greatest - if not the greatest - artists of all time.  Michelangelo was born in 1475 in the small town of Caprese near Arezzo in Tuscany, which is now known as Caprese Michelangelo.  He was sent to Florence to be educated but preferred to spend his time with painters, trying to copy the pictures in the churches, rather than be at school.  At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to the artist Ghirlandaio and was asked to produce sculptures for Lorenzo dè Medici.  Eventually he moved to Rome where he was commissioned to carve his first Pietà, a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the dead body of Jesus.  Read more…

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Roberto Baggio - football icon

Azzurri star regarded as Italy's greatest player

The footballer Roberto Baggio, regarded by fans in Italy and around the world as one of the game's greatest players, was born on this day in 1967 in Caldogno, a small town situated about 10km (6 miles) north of Vicenza in the Veneto.  Baggio's career spanned 22 years, most of them spent at the highest level, with Fiorentina, Juventus, Bologna, both Milan clubs and, finally, Brescia, winning the Serie A title twice, the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup.  He played in three World Cups - in 1990, 1994 and 1998 - and achieved the unique distinction among Italian players of scoring at all three.  He scored 318 goals all told, the first Italian for 50 years to top 300 in his career.  Yet he spent almost the whole of his active playing days battling against injury.  Over the course of his career, he had six knee operations, four on his right knee and two on the left, and often could play only with the help of painkillers.  His fans believe that without his injuries, Baggio would have been placed in the same bracket as Pele, Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi as the best players in history.  Italy's most famous football journalist, the late Gianni Brera, said Baggio was the greatest Italian player he ever saw, better than both Giuseppe Meazza and Gianni Rivera.  Read more…

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Blessed Fra Angelico – painter

Talented Friar became patron of Catholic artists

The early Renaissance painter who became known as Fra Angelico died on this day in 1455 in Rome.  Fra Angelico is regarded as one of the greatest painters of the 15th century, whose works reflected his serene religious attitude.   He painted many altarpieces and frescoes for the Church and Priory of San Marco in Florence where he lived for about nine years.   In 1982, more than 500 years after his death, Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope John Paul II in recognition of the holiness of his life. In 1984, Pope John Paul II declared him ‘patron of Catholic artists’.  The artist was born Guido di Pietro at Rupecanina near Fiesole, just outside Florence, towards the end of the 14th century.  The earliest recorded document concerning him dates from 1417 when he joined a religious confraternity at the Carmine Church and it reveals that he was already a painter.  The first record of him as a Friar is dated 1423 and shows him to have been a member of the Dominican order.  It is believed his first paintings were an altarpiece and a painted screen for the Carthusian Monastery in Florence, but these no longer exist.  Read more…

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Francesco Redi - biologist and poet

Renaissance scholar who debunked scientific myths

The physician Francesco Redi, famous for challenging a centuries old belief that certain living things arose through spontaneous generation rather than any reproductive process involving parent organisms, was born on this day in 1626 in Arezzo, Tuscany.  Redi, who enjoyed literary success alongside his work in experimental biology, devoted much of his scientific life to dismantling some of the widely held beliefs in his field that he was sure were incorrect.  The most famous of these was that the maggots frequently discovered in rotting meat occurred spontaneously as a product of the decaying flesh. In order to show that this was a myth, Redi conducted a number of experiments in 1668 involving sets of jars containing dead fish and raw pieces of different meats. In the first, he sealed three of six jars and left the other three open. In the second, he placed raw meat in three jars, plugging one with a cork stopper, placing gauze over the other and leaving the third open.  After a period of time, the flesh in the open jars contained maggots, but in the sealed jars did not.  In the gauze-covered jars, maggots appeared on the surface of the gauze but not in the meat.  Read more…

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Roberta Vinci - tennis champion

Won five Grand Slam doubles titles with partner Sara Errani

The tennis player Roberta Vinci, one half of the most successful Italian women’s doubles partnerships of all time and one of only four Italian women to rank in the world’s top 10 at singles, was born on this day in 1983 in the major port city of Taranto in Puglia.  Vinci and partner Sara Errani reached the women’s doubles final at eight Grand Slam tournaments between 2012 and 2014, winning five of them.  They were the champions at the French Open and United States Open in 2012 and the Australian Open in 2013 and again in 2014. When they won the Wimbledon title in 2014 they became one of only five women’s doubles partnerships to complete a career Grand Slam of all the four majors.  The pair, who reached No 1 in the world rankings in 2012, unexpectedly ended their five-year partnership in 2015, after which Vinci focussed on singles.  Vinci’s finest achievement in singles came at the US Open in 2015, when she defeated world No 1 Serena Williams in the semi-finals before facing her compatriot and childhood friend Flavia Pennetta in the final, the first in a Grand Slam in the open era to pit one Italian against another.  Read more…

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17 February

Raffaele ‘Raf’ Vallone – actor

Movie star who had four careers

Raffaele Vallone, the stage and screen actor who was born on this day in 1916 in Tropea, Calabria, was remarkable for having embarked on three starkly different career paths even before he made his acting debut.  Usually known as Raf, he grew up from the age of two in Turin, where his father, an ambitious young lawyer, had relocated to set up a legal practice.  A natural athlete, he was a fine footballer – so good, in fact, that at the age of 14 he was snapped up by Torino FC, who made him an apprentice professional.  Compared with the average working man, he was handsomely paid as a footballer, and he won a medal as part of the Torino team crowned Coppa Italia winners in 1936.  Yet he quickly became bored with football and enrolled at Turin University, where he studied Law and Philosophy with a view to joining his father’s firm.  Ultimately, he baulked at the idea of becoming a lawyer, too, and instead joined the staff of the left-wing daily newspaper L’Unità, where he rose quickly to be head of the culture pages, at the same time establishing himself as a drama and film critic for the Turin daily La Stampa.  Read more…

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Giordano Bruno - 'martyr of science'

Dominican friar condemned as a heretic

Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar, philosopher and cosmological theorist who challenged orthodox Christian beliefs in the 16th century, died on this day in 1600 when he was burned at the stake after being found guilty of heresy.  The principal crimes for which he was tried by the Roman Inquisition were the denial of several core Catholic doctrines.  Bruno challenged the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and the transubstantiation - the idea that Eucharistic offering of bread and wine in Mass becomes the body and blood of Christ.  He also questioned the idea of God as a holy trinity of divine persons - the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.  His own belief was closer to pantheism, which contends that a God is an all-encompassing divine presence rather than existing in some personal form with human traits.  This idea formed part of his cosmological theory, in which he supported the idea that everything in the universe is made of tiny particles (atoms) and that God exists in all of these particles.  Yet this was in contradiction of the established Catholic wisdom, as was his support for the idea advanced by the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus that Earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way round.  Read more…

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Arcangelo Corelli – musician

Baroque composer had a major influence on the development of music

Violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli was born on this day in 1653 at Fusignano, a small town near Ravenna.   He is remembered for his influence on the development of violin style and for his use of the genres of sonata and concerto. Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi established the concerto grosso as a popular medium of composition.  Named Arcangelo after his father, who died a few weeks before his birth, he studied music with the curate of a neighbouring village before going to the nearby towns of Faenza and Lugo to learn musical theory.  Corelli later studied with Giovanni Benvenuti, who was a violinist at San Petronio in Bologna and in 1670 he started at the Philharmonic Academy in Bologna.  He moved on to Rome where to begin with he played the violin at a theatre. It is known that by 1677 he had written his first composition, a Sonata for Violin and Lute.  By 1675 Corelli was third violinist in the orchestra of the chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi and by the following year he had become second violinist. In 1681 his 12 Trio Sonatas for two violins and a cello were published and the following year he became first violinist in the San Luigi dei Francesi orchestra.  Read more…

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Giovanni Pacini – opera composer

Works of overshadowed musician have enjoyed recent revival

Composer Giovanni Pacini, who wrote operas in the early part of the 19th century to suit the voices of the great singers of the period, was born on this day in 1796 in Catania in Sicily.  Pacini began his formal music studies at the age of 12, when he was sent by his father, the opera singer Luigi Pacini, to study voice in Bologna with castrato singer and composer, Luigi Marchesi.  He soon switched his focus to composing and wrote an opera, La sposa fedele - The Faithful Bride. It premiered in Venice in 1818 and, for its revival the following year, Pacini provided a new aria, to be sung specifically by the soprano Giuditta Pasta.  By the mid 1820s he had become a leading opera composer, having produced many successful serious and comic works.  Pacini’s 1824 work Alessandro nelle Indie - Alexander in the Indies - was a successful serious opera based on Andrea Leone Tottola’s updating of a text by librettist Pietro Metastasio.  But by the mid 1830s, Pacini had withdrawn from operatic activity after he found his operas eclipsed by those of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini.  He settled in Tuscany, where his father had been born.  Read more…

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16 February

NEW - The death of Giosuè Carducci – poet

National poet’s work inspired the fight for a united Italy

The poet Giosuè Carducci, who was the first Italian to win the Nobel prize in Literature, died on this day in 1907 in Bologna.  Aged 71, he passed away at his home, Casa Carducci, near Porta Maggiore, a kilometre and a half from the centre of the Emilia-Romagna city. He had been in ill health for some time and was not well enough to travel to Stockholm to receive his prize, awarded in 1906, which was instead presented to him at his home.  His funeral at the Basilica di San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore followed a procession through the streets that attracted a huge crowd.  Carducci had been one of the most influential literary figures of his age and was professor of Italian literature at Bologna University, where he lectured for more than 40 years.  The Italian people revered Carducci as their national poet and he was made a senator for life by the King of Italy in 1890.  Carducci was born in 1835 in the hamlet of Val di Castello, part of Pietrasanta, in the province of Lucca in Tuscany and he spent his childhood in the wild Maremma area of the region.  After studying at the University of Pisa, Carducci was at the centre of a group of young men determined to overthrow the prevailing Romanticism in literature.  Read more…

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Achille Castiglioni - designer

Leading figure in post-war Italian style

The designer Achille Castiglioni, whose innovative ideas for lighting, furniture and items for the home put him at the forefront of Italy’s post-war design boom, was born on this day in 1918 in Milan.  Many of his designs, including the Arco floor lamp for which he is most famous, are still in production today, even 17 years after his death.  The Arco lamp, which he designed in 1962 in conjunction with his brother, Pier Giacomo, combined a heavy base in Carrara marble, a curved telescopic stainless steel arm and a polished aluminium reflector.  Designed so that the reflector could be suspended above a table or a chair, the Arco was conceived as an overhead lighting solution for apartments that removed the need for holes in the ceiling and wiring, yet as an object of simple chic beauty it came to be seen as a symbol of sophistication and good taste.  The Arco was commissioned by the Italian lighting company Flos, which still produces numerous other lamps designed by Castiglioni.  Achille’s father was the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni. His brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo, both older, were architects.  Read more… 

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Edda Dell’Orso – vocalist

Soprano was wordless voice of Morricone soundtracks

The singer Edda Dell’Orso, best known for the extraordinary range of wordless vocals that have featured in many of composer Ennio Morricone’s brilliant film soundtracks from the 1960s onwards, was born on this day in 1935 in Genoa.  Her collaboration with Morricone began when he was contracted in 1964 to provide the musical score for A Fistful of Dollars, the first of Sergio Leone’s so-called Spaghetti Western trilogy that was to make Clint Eastwood an international star.  Leone’s producers could only offer Morricone a small budget, which meant his access to a full orchestra was limited, forcing him to improvise and create sound effects in different ways. One idea he had was to replace instruments with human voices, which is where Dell’Orso, a distinctive soprano, came into her own.  Born Edda Sabatini, she had pursued her musical interests with the support of her father who, while not musical himself, could see that she had potential as a pianist.  The quality of her voice became clear when she enrolled at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, the renowned music school in Rome, where she graduated in 1956 in singing and piano.  Read more…

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Valentino Rossi - motorcycle world champion

Rider from Urbino among his sport's all-time greats

Valentino Rossi, the motorcycle racer whose seven 500cc or MotoGP world titles have established him as one of the sport's all-time greats, was born on this day in 1979 in Urbino.  Only his fellow Italian, Giacomo Agostini, the eight-times world champion, has more 500cc or MotoGP titles than Rossi, whose total of 88 race victories in the premier classification is the most by any rider.  Across all engine sizes, he has been a world champion nine times, behind only Agostini (15) and Spain's Ángel Nieto, who specialised in 50cc and 125cc classes.  Britain's Mike Hailwood and Italy's 1950s star Carlo Ubbiali also won nine world titles each.  Still competing at the highest level, Rossi has not won the world title since 2009 but continues to defy his age.  Rossi came from a motorcycling family, his father Graziano having competed on the grand prix circuit himself between 1977 and 1982. He won three races in the 250cc category in 1979, when he finished third in the overall classification.  When Valentino was still a child, the family moved to Tavullia, a small town between Urbino and Pesaro, on the Adriatic coast.  Read more…

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Angelo Peruzzi - footballer

Italy international who was twice world's costliest goalkeeper

The footballer Angelo Peruzzi, who made 31 appearances for Italy’s national team and was a member of Marcello Lippi’s victorious squad at the 2006 World Cup as well as winning the Champions League with Juventus, was born on this day in 1970 in Blera, a hilltop town in the province of Viterbo, north of Rome.  Peruzzi defied his relatively short and stocky physique to become one of the best goalkeepers of his generation, renowned not only for his physical strength but also for his positional sense, anticipation and explosive reactions.  These qualities enabled him to compensate for his lack of height and earned him a reputation for efficiency rather than spectacular stops yet he was much coveted by clubs in Italy’s Serie A.  Twice he moved clubs for what was at the time a world record transfer fee for a goalkeeper.  In 1999 he joined Internazionale of Milan (Inter Milan) from Juventus for €14.461 million but stayed at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza for only a year before switching to Lazio in a deal worth €20.658 million.  That record stood for 11 years until Manchester United bought David de Gea from Atletico Madrid for €22 million in 2011.  Read more…

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Giambattista Bodoni - type designer

Celebrity printer whose name lives on in type

Typographer, printer and publisher Giambattista Bodoni was born on this day in 1740 in Saluzzo in the region of Piedmont.  At the height of his career he became internationally famous, received compliments from the Pope and was paid a pension by Napoleon.  Bodoni designed a modern typeface that was named after him and is still in use today.  His father and grandfather were both printers and as a child he played with their leftover equipment. He learnt the printing trade at his father’s side and at the age of 17 travelled to Rome to further his career.  Bodoni served an apprenticeship at the press of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the missionary arm of the Catholic Church.  In 1768 he was asked to assume management of the Duke of Parma’s Royal Press, where he produced Italian, Greek and Latin books.  He started using modern typefaces of his own design and came up with the typeface that retained the Bodoni name in 1790.  He became well known and important travellers visited his press to see him at work. Bodoni produced fine editions of the writings of Horace and Virgil in 1791 and 1793 respectively and Homer’s Iliad in 1808.  Read more…

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The death of Giosuè Carducci – poet

National poet’s work inspired the fight for a united Italy

Carducci's funeral procession drew
huge crowds on to the streets of Bologna

The poet Giosuè Carducci, who was the first Italian to win the Nobel prize in Literature, died on this day in 1907 in Bologna.

Aged 71, he passed away at his home, Casa Carducci, near Porta Maggiore, a kilometre and a half from the centre of the Emilia-Romagna city. He had been in ill health for some time and was not well enough to travel to Stockholm to receive his prize, awarded in 1906, which was instead presented to him at his home.

His funeral at the Basilica di San Petronio in Piazza Maggiore followed a procession through the streets that attracted a huge crowd.

Carducci had been one of the most influential literary figures of his age and was professor of Italian literature at Bologna University, where he lectured for more than 40 years.

The Italian people revered Carducci as their national poet and he was made a senator for life by the King of Italy in 1890.

Carducci was born in 1835 in the hamlet of Val di Castello, part of Pietrasanta, in the province of Lucca in Tuscany and he spent his childhood in the wild Maremma area of the region.

After studying at the University of Pisa, Carducci was at the centre of a group of young men determined to overthrow the prevailing Romanticism in literature and return to classical models.

Carducci's poetry became an inspiration
to patriots fighting for a united Italy

Carducci was attracted to Greek and Roman authors and also studied the works of Italian classical writers such as Dante, Torquato Tasso and Vittorio Alfieri.

The poets Giuseppe Parini, Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo were influences on him, as is evident from his first book of poems, Rime, produced in 1857.

In 1863, Carducci showed both his great power as a poet and the strength of his republican, anticlerical feelings in his Inno a Satana - Hymn to Satan - and, in 1867, in his Giambi ed epode - Iambics and Epodes - inspired by the politics of the time.

The best of Carducci’s poetry came in 1887 with Rime nuove - New Rhymes - and Odi Barbare - Barbarian Odes - which evoke the landscape of the Maremma and his childhood memories, the loss of his only son, and also recall the glory of Roman history.

Carducci’s enthusiasm for the classical led him to adapt Latin prosody to Italian verse and to imitate Horace and Virgil. His poetry was to inspire many Italians fighting for independence and for a united Italy.

The poet became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1906. According to the Swedish Academy this was awarded ‘not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style and lyrical force, which characterise his poetic masterpieces’.

Carducci also wrote prose prolifically in the form of literary criticism. biographies, speeches and essays and he translated works by Goethe and Heine into Italian.

After his funeral on 19 February he was laid to rest at the Certosa di Bologna, the city’s monumental cemetery.

Pietrasanta's Cattedrale
di San Martino

Travel tip:

Pietrasanta, the town where Carducci was born, is on the coast of northern Tuscany, to the north of Viareggio. It had Roman origins and part of a Roman wall still exists. The medieval town was built in 1255 upon the pre-existing Rocca di Sala fortress of the Lombards and the Duomo (Cathedral of San Martino) dates back to the 13th century. Pietrasanta grew in importance in the 15th century due to its marble, the beauty of which was first recognised by the sculptor, Michelangelo.

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Leonardo Bistolfi's monument to Giosuè Carducci
in the garden of the Casa Carducci in Bologna

Travel tip:

The Museum of the Risorgimento in Bologna is now housed on the ground floor of the house where Carducci died in Piazza Carducci in the centre of the city. The museum has exhibits and documents that chronicle the history of the Risorgimento from the Napoleonic invasions of Italy to the end of the First World War. The museum was first inaugurated in 1893 and moved to Casa Carducci, the last home of the poet, in 1990.  In the garden, there is an imposing monument to Carducci by the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi.

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More reading:

How the revolutionary Ugo Foscolo expressed Italian sentiment in verse

Why Dante Alighieri remains in exile from his native Florence

The nobleman whose poetry inspired the oppressed

Also on this day:

1740: The birth of type designer Giambattista Bodoni

1918: The birth of designer Achille Castiglioni

1935: The birth of vocalist Edda Dell’Orso

1970: The birth of footballer Angelo Peruzzi

1979: The birth of motorcycle world champion Valentino Rossi

(Picture credits: Pietrasanta cathedral by Stephencdickson; Bologna monument by Nicola Quirico; via Wikimedia Commons)

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