20 May

Albano Carrisi - singer

Performer best known as Al Bano has sold 165 million records

The singer Albano Carrisi, better known as Al Bano, was born on this day in 1943 in Cellino San Marco, a town in Puglia about 30km (19 miles) from Lecce.  He enjoyed considerable success as a solo artist in the late 1960s but became more famous still in Italy and across mainland Europe for his collaboration with the American singer Romina Power – daughter of the actor Tyrone Power.  They met during the shooting of a film - one of several, mainly romantic comedies and a vehicle for his songs, in which he starred during the 1970s.  They not only formed a professional partnership but were married for almost 30 years.  They twice performed as Italy’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing seventh on both occasions, and appeared several times at Italy’s prestigious Sanremo Music Festival, winning the top prize in 1984.  They divorced in 1999 but reunited on a professional basis in 2013 and when they performed at the Arena di Verona in 2015 before a sell-out crowd of 11,000 the show was broadcast by the Italian TV network Rai and shown in seven other countries, with a combined audience estimated at 51 million.  Read more…

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Ondina Valla - ground-breaking athlete

Italy’s first female Olympic champion

Trebisonda ‘Ondina’ Valla, the first Italian woman to win an Olympic gold medal, was born on this day in 1916 in Bologna.  Known as Ondina reputedly after a journalist misspelled her unusual name, Valla won the 80m at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where she also set a world record time in the semi-final.  The victory established Valla as an icon for Italy’s Fascist regime and as a heroine for Italian girls with sporting ambitions, her success breaking new ground for women in the face of considerable opposition to female participation in sport.  The Catholic Church’s attitude was that sport was not compatible with the standards of morality, modesty and domesticity they expected of women, while the view of Italy’s medical profession was that women should take only basic physical exercise if they wanted to maintain the level of health required for motherhood.  Benito Mussolini initially saw women as occupying a traditional role in the society he envisaged for the fascist ideal, supporting their husbands and caring for their children within the family unit.  But he seized upon Valla’s success as a political opportunity, keen to portray her as an example of Italian Fascism’s dynamism and the potential for Italians to make their mark internationally.  Read more...

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Pietro Bembo – poet and scholar

Lucrezia’s lover helped with the development of modern Italian

Pietro Bembo, a writer who was influential in the development of the Italian language, was born on this day in 1470 in Venice.  He is probably most remembered for having an affair with Lucrezia Borgia while she was married to the Duke of Ferrara and he was living at the Este Court with them. His love letters to her were described by the English poet, Lord Byron, centuries later, as ‘the prettiest love letters in the world.’  As a boy, Bembo visited Florence with his father where he acquired a love for the Tuscan form of Italian which he was later to use as his literary medium. He later learnt Greek and went to study at the University of Padua.  He spent two years at the Este Court in Ferrara where he wrote poetry that was reminiscent of Boccaccio and Petrarch.  It was when he returned to the court at Ferrara a few years later that he had an affair with Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, who was at that time the wife of Alfonso I d’Este. The love letters between the pair to which Byron referred are now in the collection of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.  Byron greatly admired them when he saw them there in 1816.  Read more…

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Gabriele Muccino - film director

Enjoyed box office success in US after partnering with Will Smith

The film director Gabriele Muccino, whose best-known work so far has been the Oscar-nominated 2006 Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness, was born on this day in 1967 in Rome.  He is the older brother of the actor, Silvio Muccino.  Muccino, who also directed Smith in Seven Pounds (2008), spent several years in Hollywood following his success in Italy with L’ultimo bacio (The Last Kiss), which won him a David Di Donatello award as Best Director and for Best Screenplay.  His most recent work has been in Italy, with his latest film, Gli anni più belli (The Most Beautiful Years) released in February 2020.  The son of Luigi Muccino, an executive at the state television company Rai, and painter and costume designer Antonella Cappuccio, Gabriele enrolled at Rome’s Sapienza University to study literature, but was already fascinated with the cinema. Indeed, he abandoned his studies soon after he began them, choosing instead to attend Rome’s renowned Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, where he worked unpaid as a director’s assistant, working with the highly-regarded Pupi Avati and Marco Risi.  Read more…

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Hieronymus Fabricius - anatomist and surgeon

Research pioneer known as “Father of Embryology”

The pioneering anatomist and physiologist known in academic history as Hieronymus Fabricius, whose Italian name was Girolamo Fabrizio, was born on this day in 1537 in Acquapendente, in Lazio.  Fabrizio, who designed the first permanent theatre for public anatomical dissections, advanced the knowledge of the make-up of the human body in many areas, including the digestive system, the eyes and ears, and the veins.  But his most significant discoveries were in embryology.  He investigated the foetal development of many animals and humans and produced the first detailed description of the placenta. For this he became known as the "Father of Embryology".  Fabrizio spent most of his life at the University of Padua, where he was a student under the guidance of Gabriele Falloppio, who discovered the tube connecting the ovaries with the uterus that became known as the Fallopian tube.  He succeeded Falloppio as chair of surgery and anatomy, holding the post from 1562 to 1613 and building a reputation that attracted students from all of Europe.  Among his pupils were the English anatomist William Harvey, as well as Giulio Casseri and Adriaan van den Spiegel, both of whom went on to become significant anatomists.  Read more…

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19 May

NEW - Pompeo Coppini - sculptor

Italian emigrant famous for Texas monument

The sculptor Pompeo Coppini, best known for the Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio, Texas, was born on this day in 1870 in Moglia, a village in Lombardy a few kilometres south of the city of Mantua.  Coppini emigrated to the United States at the age of 26 and after initially working in New York moved to Texas, where the majority of his work can be found.  The Alamo Cenotaph, also known as The Spirit of Sacrifice, consists of a 60ft high sloping shaft of grey Georgia marble resting on a base of pink Texas granite. Carved into the sides of the monument, erected near the scene of the siege of the Alamo Mission during the Texas Revolution in 1836, are images of the Alamo defenders including William B Travis, Jim Bowie, David Crockett and James Bonham, while the names of those who died at the Alamo were etched along the base.  It was commissioned to commemorate the centenary of the siege and took two years to complete. It is now the centrepiece of a square known as the Alamo Plaza.  The son of a musician, Pompeo moved with his family from Moglia to Florence in 1880 at the age of 10. Read more…

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Michele Placido – actor and director

Role of anti-Mafia police inspector turned actor into a TV star

Actor and director Michele Placido was born on this day in 1946 in Ascoli Satriano in Apulia.  Placido is best known for his portrayal of the character, Corrado Cattani, in the Italian television series, La piovra.  Cattani, a police inspector investigating the Mafia, was the lead character in the first four series of La piovra (meaning The Octopus, a name that referred to the Mafia). It was popular on television in the 1980s and the first three series were shown in the UK on Channel Four.  Placido’s family were originally from Rionero in Vulture in Basilicata and he is a descendant of the folk hero, Carmine Crocco, sometimes also known as Donatello. Crocco had fought in the service of Garibaldi but, after Italian unification, he became disappointed with the new Government and formed his own army to fight on behalf of the deposed King of the Two Sicilies, Francis II.  Placido moved to Rome to study acting and then began working in films. His first success came with his portrayal of soldier Paolo Passeri in Marcia Trionfale in 1976, directed by Marco Bellocchio, a role for which Placido won an award.  Read more…

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Andrea Pirlo - footballer

Midfielder who won multiple honours with AC Milan and Juventus

The footballer Andrea Pirlo, who some commentators bracket with Roberto Baggio as one of the two best Italian footballers of the last 25 years, was born on this day in 1979.  The midfielder, who left Italy to play for the Major League Soccer team New York City, has been part of six Italian championship-winning teams and is a double winner of the Champions League among a host of honours as a club player.  In international football he has a World Cup winner’s medal as a member of the 2006 Italian national team that lifted the trophy in Germany.  The fulcrum of the Azzurri midfield, he scored one goal and was credited with the assist for three other goals during the tournament.  One of those assists resulted in the crucial opening goal for Italy scored by Fabio Grosso in the classic semi-final against the host nation.  He was also one of Italy's successful penalty takers during the shoot-out that decided the final against France.  He was named man of the match three times in the tournament, more than any other player.  He matched that achievement six years later at Euro 2012, when Italy were beaten in the final.  Read more…

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Vittorio Orlando - politician

Prime minister humiliated at First World War peace talks

Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the Italian prime minister best known for being humiliated by his supposed allies at the Paris peace talks following the First World War, was born on this day in 1860 in Palermo.  Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1897, Orlando had held a number of positions in government and became prime minister in 1917 following Italy’s disastrous defeat to the Austro-Hungarian army at Caporetto, which saw 40,000 Italian soldiers killed or wounded and 265,000 captured. The government of Orlando’s predecessor, Paolo Boselli, collapsed as a result.  Orlando, who had been a supporter of Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Allies, rebuilt shattered Italian morale and the military victory at Vittorio Veneto, which ended the war on the Italian front and contributed to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, saw him hailed as Italy’s ‘premier of victory’.  However, his reputation was left in tatters when he and Sidney Sonnino, his half-Welsh foreign secretary, when to Paris to participate in peace talks but left humiliated after the territorial gains they were promised in return for entering the war on the side of Britain, France and the United States were not delivered.  Read more…

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Pompeo Coppini - sculptor

Italian emigrant famous for Texas monument

Pompeo Coppini spent much of his
career working in Texas

The sculptor Pompeo Coppini, best known for the Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio, Texas, was born on this day in 1870 in Moglia, a village in Lombardy a few kilometres south of the city of Mantua.

Coppini emigrated to the United States at the age of 26 and after initially working in New York moved to Texas, where the majority of his work can be found.

The Alamo Cenotaph, also known as The Spirit of Sacrifice, consists of a 60ft high sloping shaft of grey Georgia marble resting on a base of pink Texas granite. Carved into the sides of the monument, erected near the scene of the siege of the Alamo Mission during the Texas Revolution in 1836, are images of the Alamo defenders including William B Travis, Jim Bowie, David Crockett and James Bonham, while the names of those who died at the Alamo were etched along the base.

It was commissioned to commemorate the centenary of the siege and took two years to complete. It is now the centrepiece of a square known as the Alamo Plaza.

The son of a musician, Pompeo moved with his family from Moglia to Florence in 1880 at the age of 10. His craft skills began to earn him an income at an early age through work with ceramics and miniature models of famous monuments.

Coppini's most famous work is the
Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio 

At 16, he enrolled at the Accademia dell'Arte del Disegno in Florence, furthering his knowledge and technical skills under the Genovese sculptor Augusto Rivalta.

Upon graduating, he opened a small studio and continued to make items he could sell, including busts of local celebrities and cemetery monuments. 

Business was slow, however, and in 1896, Coppini followed the example set by others of his generation in deciding to move to the United States, specifically New York.

He arrived there, reportedly with nothing but a trunk full of clothes and $40 in cash, and found work sculpting figures for a wax museum before being commissioned to create a memorial to Francis Scott Key, best known for writing the lyrics for the American national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner.

A model hired to pose for Coppini’s memorial to Key, Elizabeth di Barbieri, ultimately became his wife.

His progress in New York was steady if not spectacular. Craving a base which would give him more chance to stand out, in 1901 he moved to Texas to work alongside the German-born sculptor Frank Teich. A year later he became an American citizen.

Apart from his most famous work, sculpted with the help of a $100,000 donation from the state of Texas, Coppini’s other creations in Texas include the Confederate Monument in Paris, Terry's Texas Rangers Monument and Hood's Texas Brigade Monument in Austin, the Littlefield Memorial Fountain, also in Austin, with which he worked with the French-born architect Paul Cret, and several statues at the Texas State Fair Hall of State in Dallas.

Coppini's Littlefield Memorial Fountain
at the University of Texas in Austin

Coppini sculpted three statues of George Washington, the founding father of the United States. The first, to commemorate the 1910 centennial of Mexican Independence, was installed in 1912 in the Plaza Dinamarca since renamed Plaza Washington, in Mexico City; the second, in Portland, Oregon, was created to commemorate the 1926 sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence; the third, commissioned by the Texas Society, Daughters of the American Revolution to commemorate the 1932 bicentennial of Washington's birth, stands on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, although because of fund-raising problems it was not installed until February, 1955.

Coppini died in San Antonio in 1957, his body laid to rest in the city’s Sunset Memorial Park in a tomb he sculpted himself.

Travel tip:

Moglia, the village where Coppini was born, is situated a little over 30km (19 miles) south of Mantua in Lombardy. With a population of more than 5,000 today, it has grown to about five times its size in the last 150 years. A feature is a marble monument by Coppini to the Martyrs of War, finished in 1951 and sited in front of the village’s primary school. Moglia was hit badly in the 2012 earthquake that hit the area, with the Town Hall, the parish church and several other buildings in the historic centre suffering severe damage, along with many private residences.

The Palazzo Ducale in Mantua was the home for  
four centuries of the Gonzaga family 

Travel tip:

Mantua is an atmospheric old city in Lombardy, to the southeast of Milan. In the Renaissance heart of the city is Piazza Mantegna, where the 15th century Basilica of Sant’Andrea houses the tomb of the artist, Andrea Mantegna. The church was originally built to accommodate the large number of pilgrims who came to Mantua to see a precious relic, an ampoule containing what were believed to be drops of Christ’s blood mixed with earth. This was claimed to have been collected at the site of his crucifixion by a Roman soldier.  Mantua is famous for its Renaissance Palazzo Ducale, the seat of the Gonzaga family between 1328 and 1707, in which the Camera degli Sposi is decorated with frescoes by Mantegna, depicting the life of Eleonora’s ancestor, Ludovico Gonzaga and his family in the 15th century. 

Also on this day:

1860: The birth of politician Vittorio Orlando

1946: The birth of actor and director Michele Placido

1979: The birth of footballer Andrea Pirlo

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18 May

Giovanni Falcone - anti-Mafia crusader

Sicilian lawyer made life's work of taking on Cosa Nostra 

Giovanni Falcone, who would become known as an anti-Mafia crusader during his career as a judge and prosecuting magistrate, was born on this day in 1939 in Palermo.  The son of a state clerk, he was raised in a poor district of the Sicilian city. Some of the boys with whom he played football in the street would go on to become Mafiosi but Falcone was determined from an early age that he would not be drawn into their world.  Educated at the local high school, he studied law at Palermo University. In 1966, at the age of 27, he was appointed a judge in Trapani, a crime-ridden port on the west coast of Sicily and began his lifelong quest to defeat the criminal organisation.  In time, Falcone became the Mafia's most feared enemy and by 1987, when he was the chief prosecutor at the so-called Maxi Trial in Palermo which convicted 342 members of the so-called Cosa Nostra, the likelihood he would be murdered meant he could not leave home without a heavily armed police escort.  He worked in a bomb-proof bunker underneath the city's law courts. His home was similarly protected and when he travelled between the two it was with a convoy of armoured police cars.  Read more…

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Ezio Pinza - opera and Broadway star

Poor boy from Rome who made his home at the Met

The opera star Ezio Pinza, who had 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1926 to 1948 and sang to great acclaim at many other of the world’s most famous opera houses, was born on this day in 1892 in Rome.  Pinza, a bass who was blessed with a smooth and rich voice and matinee idol looks, also had a successful career in musical theatre on Broadway and appeared in a number of Hollywood films.  Born Fortunio Pinza in relative poverty in Rome, he was the seventh child born to his parents Cesare and Clelia but the first to survive.  He was brought up many miles away in Ravenna, which is close to the Adriatic coast, about 85km (53 miles) from Bologna and 144km (90 miles) from Venice.  He dropped out of Ravenna University but studied singing at Bologna’s Conservatorio Martini and made his opera debut at Cremona in 1914 in Bellini’s Norma.  Pinza signed up to fight for his country in the First World War, after which he resumed his career in 1919. Within a short time he was invited to perform at Italy’s most prestigious opera house, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he came under the baton of the brilliant but demanding conductor, Arturo Toscanini.  Read more…

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Domenico di Pace Beccafumi – artist

Painter from Siena experimented with rich colour 

Considered one of the last true representatives of the Sienese school of painting, Domenico di Pace Beccafumi died on this day in 1551 in Siena.  He is remembered for his direction of the paving of the Duomo - cathedral - of Siena between 1517 and 1544, when he made ingenious improvements to the technical processes employed for this task, which in the end took more than 150 years to complete.  Domenico was born in Montaperti near Siena in about 1486. His father, Giacomo di Pace, worked on the estate of Lorenzo Beccafumi, whose surname he eventually took.  Seeing his talent for drawing, Lorenzo had taken an interest in him and recommended that he learn painting from the Sienese artist, Mechero.  In 1509 Di Pace Beccafumi travelled to Rome for a short period, where he learnt from artists working on the Vatican.  Back in Siena, he painted religious pieces for churches and was only mildly influenced by the trends dominating the neighbouring Florentine school.  He designed scenes from the Old Testament to decorate the floor of the cathedral and also painted frescoes for Palazzo Pubblico in the city.  Read more…

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Giuseppe Ayala – politician and magistrate

Judge who was part of struggle against the Mafia

Anti-Mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Ayala was born on this day in 1945 in Caltanissetta in Sicily.  Ayala became well known as an anti-Mafia magistrate and anti-Mafia judge. He was a prosecutor at the so-called Maxi Trial in Palermo in 1987, which resulted in the conviction of 342 Mafiosi.  He has continually raised doubts about whether it was the Mafia working alone who were responsible for the killing of his fellow anti-Mafia investigator Giovanni Falcone in 1992.  The deaths of Falcone and another prominent anti-Mafia magistrate, Paolo Borsellino, also murdered by the Mafia, came a few months after the killing of Christian Democrat politician, Salvatore Lima, who was thought to be the Mafia’s man on the inside in Rome and had close links with Italy’s three-times prime minister, Giulio Andreotti.  There was speculation that it suited senior figures in the Italian government that the two magistrates were killed because they knew too much about corruption at the highest level.  Ayala studied at the University of Palermo and obtained a degree in jurisprudence. Afterwards he worked as a public prosecutor.  Read more…

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