5 March

NEW - Lucio Battisti - singer-songwriter

Musician credited with writing ‘the soundtrack of Italian life’

Lucio Battisti, who was one of the most influential figures in Italian pop and rock music in a career spanning four decades, was born on this day in 1943 in Poggio Bustone, a hillside village in the province of Rieti in Lazio, about 100km (62 miles) northeast of Rome.  A songwriter, singer and composer, his work has been described as defining popular music in Italy in the late 1960s and the 1970s in particular, although his popularity continued right up to his death, at the age of just 55, in 1998.  Some music critics and music historians have credited Battisti with writing ‘the soundtrack of our lives’ for several generations of young people, citing songs such as Emozioni (Emotions), Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara (Blue Water, Clear Water), Il mio canto libero (My Free Song) and La canzone del sole (The Song of the Sun) as his most memorable, although there were many more that made their mark.  Of Battisti’s 18 studio albums, 13 reached number one in the Italian charts, while he had at least 10 number one singles, of which his 1971 recording Pensieri e parole (Thoughts and Words) remained in top spot for 14 weeks.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Marietta Piccolomini – soprano

Popular star who found fame as Violetta

The operatic soprano Marietta Piccolomini, who was most famous for her performances as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, was born on this day in 1834 in Siena.   Her career was relatively brief, spanning just 11 years. Yet she managed to achieve unprecedented popularity, to the extent that crowds of fans would gather outside her hotel and men would volunteer to take the place of horses in pulling her carriage through the streets.  Some critics said that the adulation she enjoyed was more to do with her youthful good looks and her acting ability than her voice, who they argued was weak and limited.  Nonetheless, she was seldom short of work and she was the first Violetta to be seen by opera goers in both Paris and London.  She had a particularly enthusiastic following in England, where she undertook several tours of provincial theatres as well as appearing in the capital.  Born Maria Teresa Violante Piccolomini Clementini, she came from a noble Tuscan family. Her musical mother, a talented amateur, would sing duets with her. However, while her family were happy to arrange lessons for her with Pietro Romani, one of Italy’s first professional singing teachers, her father was reluctant to allow her to make opera singing a career.  Read more…

___________________________________

Pier Paolo Pasolini - writer and film director

Controversial figure who met violent death

The novelist, writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini was born on this day in 1922 in Bologna.  Pasolini's best-known work included his portrayal of Jesus Christ in The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), his bawdy adaptations of such literary classics as Boccaccio’s Decameron (1971) and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1972), and and his brutal satire on Fascism entitled Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).   He also wrote novels and poetry, made documentaries, directed for the theatre and was an outspoken columnist for the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, expressing political views that would regularly spark heated debate.  A former member of the Communist Party and openly homosexual, Pasolini died in violent circumstances in Ostia, near Rome, in November 1975, supposedly murdered by a young man he had picked up at the city’s Termini railway station, although there was some mystery around the incident and speculation over motives continues to this day.  The son of an army lieutenant, Pasolini lived in various northern Italian towns in his childhood, determined by his father’s postings. Family life was somewhat turbulent.  Read more…

______________________________________

Alessandro Volta – scientist

Invention sparked wave of electrical experiments

Alessandro Volta, who invented the first electric battery, died on this day in 1827 in Como.  His electric battery had provided the first source of continuous current and the volt, a unit of the electromotive force that drives current, was named in his honour in 1881.  Volta was born Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta in 1745 in Como.  He became professor of physics at the Royal School of Como in 1774. His interest in electricity led him to improve the electrophorus, a device that had been created to generate static electricity. He discovered and isolated methane gas in 1776, after finding it at Lake Maggiore and was then appointed to the chair of physics at the University of Pavia.  Volta was a friend of the scientist Luigi Galvani, a professor at Bologna University, whose experiments led him to announce in 1791 that the contact of two different metals with the muscle of a frog resulted in the generation of an electric current.  Galvani interpreted that as a new form of electricity found in living tissue, which he called animal electricity.  Volta felt that the frog merely conducted a current that flowed between the two metals, which he called metallic electricity.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo – artist

Painter’s decorative work can be seen all over Venice

Painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born on this day in 1696 in Venice.  Also sometimes known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, his output was prolific and he enjoyed success not only in Italy, but in Germany and Spain as well.  Highly regarded right from the beginning of his career, he has been described by experts as the greatest decorative artist of 18th century Europe. Although much of his work was painted directly on to the walls and ceilings of churches and palaces in his native Venice, many of Tiepolo’s paintings on canvas are now in art galleries all over the world.  Tiepolo was the youngest child of a Venetian shipping merchant who died a year after his birth leaving his mother to struggle to bring up her six children alone.  In 1710 he became a pupil of Gregorio Lazzarini, a successful established painter, but Tiepolo quickly developed a style of his own.  His earliest known works are depictions of the apostles, which form part of the decoration of the interior of the Church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti at Ospedaletto in Venice, painted in 1717.  Tiepolo was commissioned to produce portraits for the Doge and he started painting frescoes directly on to the walls of churches in 1717.  Read more…

Home

Lucio Battisti - singer-songwriter

Musician credited with writing ‘the soundtrack of Italian life’

Lucio Battisti, pictured performing at the
 Sanremo Music Festival in 1969

Lucio Battisti, who was one of the most influential figures in Italian pop and rock music in a career spanning four decades, was born on this day in 1943 in Poggio Bustone, a hillside village in the province of Rieti in Lazio, about 100km (62 miles) northeast of Rome.

A songwriter, singer and composer, his work has been described as defining popular music in Italy in the late 1960s and the 1970s in particular, although his popularity continued right up to his death, at the age of just 55, in 1998.

Some music critics and music historians have credited Battisti with writing ‘the soundtrack of our lives’ for several generations of young people, citing songs such as Emozioni (Emotions), Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara (Blue Water, Clear Water), Il mio canto libero (My Free Song) and La canzone del sole (The Song of the Sun) as his most memorable, although there were many more that made their mark.

Of Battisti’s 18 studio albums, 13 reached number one in the Italian charts, while he had at least 10 number one singles, of which his 1971 recording Pensieri e parole (Thoughts and Words) remained in top spot for 14 weeks.

At times during his career, he was spoken of as Italy’s Bob Dylan or Italy’s David Bowie, not for the style of his music as much as the fact that he enjoyed similar status as a cultural icon. Bowie spoke of his admiration for Battisti’s work, as did Bowie’s guitarist, Mick Ronson. The two made a cover version of Il mio canto libero, which Ronson went on to include on his debut solo album, Slaughter on 10th Avenue, under the title Music is Lethal.

Giulio Rapetti, better known as Mogol,
wrote many of Battisti's lyrics

Among other international artists who covered or adapted Battisti’s compositions were the English group Amen Corner, whose 1968 hit (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice was based on Battisti’s Il paradiso della vita.

Much of Battisti’s success stemmed from his partnership with the Italian songwriter Giulio Rapetti, better known by his pen name, Mogol. They worked together for 15 years from the mid ‘60s to the early ‘80s, during which time Mogol’s captivating, emotional lyrics combined with Battisti’s innovative music to take the Italian pop scene by storm.

The son of a customs inspector, Battisti moved with his family to Rome at the age of four, settling in Pigneto, a working class neighbourhood to the southeast of the city centre, just beyond Termini station. Having taught himself the guitar, he began to play with bands in Rome and then Naples as a teenager. 

He enjoyed Naples, where he played with a group called I Mattatori, but did not earn enough to sustain himself and was forced to return to Rome. In the event, this proved fortuitous. Lead guitar with another local band, I Satiri, he found himself playing on the same bill as I Campioni, the support band to the then-famous Italian singer, Tony Dallara, who were in need of a guitarist and offered him the chance to move to Milan and work with them.

Once established in Milan, he was spotted by Christine Leroux, a French-born music producer who worked as a talent scout for the Italian label, Ricordi. It was she that introduced him to Mogol.

Battisti in Milan with his future
wife, Grazia Letizia Veronese

Their output provided hits for major Italian artists such as Mina, Ornella Vanoni and Patty Pravo, before ultimately Battisti’s own, unusually versatile vocals, which displayed at times soft, velvety tones, piercing falsetto moments and the gritty power of rock, became their trademark. Their songs were less dominated by political messages than many popular artists of their era, but young, urban Italians in particular seemed to identify with Mogol’s lyrics as a reflection of their own lives. 

Not long after recording his 1974 album Anima latina (Latin Soul), the collection of songs considered to be Battisti's most complex musical offering, which remained at number one in the Italian charts for 13 weeks, Battisti became something of a recluse, declining to make public appearances or give interviews, declaring his new belief that “an artist should communicate with the public only through his work”.

His partnership with Mogol broke up in 1981, an amicable split stemming from their diversion in styles as Battisti became interested in more experimental, electronic sounds. Nonetheless, his success continued, with three more chart-topping albums, including Don Giovanni (1986), for which the poet Pasquale Panella wrote the lyrics. He also recorded some songs written by his wife, Grazia Letizia Veronese, who he had married in the late 1970s and with whom he had a son, Luca.

When Battisti died on 9 September 1998, aged only 55, the Italian music world was plunged into profound shock. It had become known in late August that he had been hospitalised in Milan, but his family respected his desire for privacy and issued no bulletins on his condition. The cause of his death was never officially confirmed, although it was thought to be the result either of a lymphoma that affected his liver, or a disease of the kidneys.

His passing was marked at a small private funeral in Molteno, the hilltop town in the beautiful Brianza area between Milan and Lake Como where he had lived since the early 1970s. There were just 20 guests, including Mogol, who had for a while occupied a neighbouring villa. 

Pigneto has undergone a revival recently and
now has a thriving cafe culture

Travel tip:

Battisti’s home growing up in Rome, Piazzale Prenestina, is an area dominated by the convergence of multiple rail tracks leading to Roma Termini station and an elevated section of Rome’s orbital motorway, the Grande Raccordo Anulare. It lies at the entrance to Pigneto, an area once largely working class and industrial that has evolved in recent years into a trendy neighbourhood of alternative shops, vintage stores, and diverse bars and restaurants, popular with students. The area was badly bombed during World War II, as a consequence of which it was chosen by the director Roberto Rossellini for location shooting for his neorealist classic, Roma Città Aperta - Rome, Open City. The district was a favourite, too, of another director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

A steep staircase leads to Molteno's
Chiesa di San Giorgio

Travel tip:

Battisti’s home in northern Italy - he also kept an apartment in Rome and a villa in Rimini - was in Molteno, a small town about 35km (22 miles) northeast of Milan, about equidistant between the lakes of Como and Lecco in Brianza, an area of natural beauty. The town itself, originally built on the site of a Roman settlement, fans out from Piazza Risorgimento, at the foot of il Ceppo - the summit of the town - from which the parish church of San Giorgio oversees the surrounding area. Battisti’s villa was at Dosso di Coroldo, a hamlet just outside Molteno. Battisti was said to be a frequent diner at Ristorante Riva in Via Roma, where he and Mogol would often meet up with other musicians, many of them famous names in Italy at the time, to enjoy the food and wine and sometimes give impromptu performances.

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1827: The death of scientist Alessandro Volta

1834: The birth of soprano Marietta Piccolomini

1922: The birth of film director Pier Paolo Pasolini

Home

4 March

Lucio Dalla - musician

Cantautore inspired by the great Caruso

The singer/songwriter Lucio Dalla was born on this day in 1943 in Bologna. Dalla is most famous for composing the song, Caruso, in 1986 after staying in the suite the great tenor Enrico Caruso used to occupy overlooking the sea at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Sorrento.  Dalla started playing the clarinet when he was young and joined the Rheno Dixieland Band in Bologna along with the future film director, Pupi Avati.  Avati was later to say that his film Ma quando arrivano le ragazze? was inspired by his friendship with Dalla.  In the 1960s the band won first prize in the traditional jazz band category at a festival in Antibes. After hearing Dalla’s voice, his fellow cantautore - the Italian word for singer/songwriter - Gino Paoli suggested he try for a solo career as a soul singer, but his first single was a failure.  Dalla had a hit with 4 Marzo 1943, originally entitled Gesù Bambino, but which was changed to the singer’s birth date so as not to cause offence.  In the 1970s Dalla started a collaboration with the Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi, who wrote the lyrics for three of his albums.  Read more…

_______________________________________

Giorgio Bassani - writer and novelist

Best-known work reflected plight of wealthy Jewish Italians in 1930s

Giorgio Bassani, rated by many critics as alongside the likes of Cesare Pavese, Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia among the great postwar Italian novelists, was born on this day in 1916 in Bologna.  Bassani’s best-known work, his 1962 novel Il giardino dei finzi-contini - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - was turned into an Oscar-winning movie by the director Vittorio De Sica.  Like much of his fiction, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is semi-autobiographical, drawing on his upbringing as a member of an upper middle-class Jewish family in Ferrara, the city in Emilia-Romagna, during the rise of Mussolini’s Fascists and the onset of World War Two.  Bassani, who was the editor of a number of literary journals and a respected screenplay writer, had already achieved recognition for his work through his Cinque storie ferraresi - Five Stories of Ferrara - which won the prestigious Strega Prize in 1956.  But it was The Garden of the Finzi-Continis that won him international acclaim. The novel was part of a series that expanded on the same theme in presenting a picture of the world during the author's formative years, against a background of state-promoted antisemitism.  Read more…

______________________________________

Antonio Vivaldi – Baroque composer

The success and the sadness in the life of musical priest 

Violinist, teacher, composer and cleric Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on this day in Venice in 1678.  Widely recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers, he had an enormous influence on music throughout Europe during his own lifetime.  His best-known work is a series of beautiful violin concertos called The Four Seasons.  Vivaldi was a prolific composer who enjoyed a lot of success when his career was at its height.  As well as instrumental concertos he composed many sacred choral works and more than 40 operas.  Vivaldi’s father taught him to play the violin when he was very young and he became a brilliant performer. At the age of 15 he began studying to be a priest and he was ordained at the age of 25. He soon became nicknamed ‘Il Prete Rosso’, the red priest, because of his red hair.  He became master of violin at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Venice, and composed most of his works while working there during the next 30 years.  The orphaned girls received a musical education and the most talented pupils stayed on to become members of the Ospedale’s orchestra or choir. Vivaldi wrote concertos, cantatas and sacred vocal music for them to perform.  Read more…

______________________________________

Birth of the Italian Constitution

Celebrations in Turin for historic Statute

The Albertine Statute - Statuto Albertino - which later became the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, was approved by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, on this day in 1848 in Turin.  The Constitution was to last 100 years, until its abolition in 1948 when the Constitution of the new Italian republic came into effect.  The Statute was based on the French Charter of 1830. It ensured citizens were equal before the law and gave them limited rights of assembly and the right to a free press.  However, it gave voting rights to less than three per cent of the population.  The Statute established the three classic branches of government: the executive, which meant the king, the legislative, divided between the royally appointed Senate and an elected Chamber of Deputies, and a judiciary, also appointed by the king.  Originally, it was the king who possessed the widest powers, as he controlled foreign policy and had the prerogative of nominating and dismissing ministers of state.  In practice, the Statute was gradually modified to weaken the king’s power. The ministers of state became responsible to the parliament and the office of prime minister, not provided for in the Constitution, became prominent.  Read more…

Home

3 March

Teatro Olimpico – Vicenza

Renaissance theatre still stages plays and concerts

The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza , originally designed by Andrea Palladio, was inaugurated on this day in 1585.  A performance of Oedipus the King by Sophocles was given for its opening and the original scenery, which was meant to represent the streets of Thebes, has miraculously survived to this day.  The theatre was the last piece of architecture designed by Andrea Palladio and it was not completed until after his death.  The Teatro Olimpico is one of three Renaissance theatres remaining in existence and since 1994 it has been listed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.  In 1579 Palladio was asked to produce a design for a permanent theatre in Vicenza and he decided to base it on the designs of Roman theatres he had studied.  After his death, only six months into the project, the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi was called in to complete it.  Scamozzi is credited with fulfilling Palladio's wish to use perspective in the design, creating the impression that the streets visible through the archways stretched into the distance.  The theatre is still used for plays and musical performance, but audiences are limited to 400 for conservation reasons.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Charles Ponzi - fraudster

Name forever linked with investment scam

The swindler Charles Ponzi, whose notorious fraudulent investment scheme in 1920s America led his name to be immortalised in the lexicon of financial crimes, was born Carlo Ponzi in the town of Lugo di Romagna on this day in 1882.  Ponzi, who emigrated to the United States in 1903 but arrived there almost penniless, had been in prison twice - once for theft and a second time for smuggling Italian immigrants illegally into the US from Canada - when he came up with his scheme.  Always on the lookout for ways to make a fast buck, Ponzi identified a way to make profits through exploiting the worldwide market in international postal reply coupons.  This was not his scheme, simply the starting point.  These coupons, which allowed a correspondent in one country to pay for the cost of return postage from another country, were sold at a universal cover price but variations in exchange rates meant that a coupon bought in one country might be worth more in another.  Coupons bought in Italy, for example, could be exchanged for stamps in the US that could then be sold for several times more than the dollar-equivalent cost of the coupon in Italy.  Read more…

_______________________________________

The Balvano Disaster

Italy’s worst but little known train tragedy

The Italian railway network suffered its worst accident on this day in 1944 when more than 600 passengers died from carbon monoxide poisoning after a train stopped in a tunnel just outside the small town of Balvano, on the border of Basilicata and Campania about 90km (56 miles) east of Salerno.  Yet, despite the death toll being perhaps nine times that of the country’s worst peacetime rail disaster, few Italians were aware that it had happened until author and historian Gianluca Barneschi wrote a book about it in 2014.  Because the tragedy took place during the final stages of the Second World War, when much of southern Italy was a battleground between German and Allied forces, it resonated as a news story for only a short time, the victims essentially added to Italy’s overall count of civilian casualties during the conflict, which is put at more than 150,000.  However, there was no military involvement in the disaster, which was purely an accident, albeit one that was in part caused by the circumstances of the time.  Barneschi discovered details in classified documents at Britain’s National Archives office in Kew, London.  Read more…

____________________________________

Ascanio Sforza – Cardinal

Borgia pope’s ally used his power to benefit Milan

Ascanio Maria Sforza Visconti, who became a skilled diplomat and a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, was born on this day in 1455 in Cremona in Lombardy.  He played a major part in the election of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI in the papal conclave of 1492 and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church from 1492 until 1505.  Ascanio was the son of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Bianca Maria Visconti. Two of his brothers, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Ludovico Sforza, became Dukes of Milan, as did his nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza.  At the age of ten, Ascanio was named commendatory abbot of Chiaravalle and he was promised the red hat of a cardinal when he was in his teens. He was appointed Bishop of Pavia in 1479.  Pope Sixtus IV created him cardinal deacon of SS Vito e Modesto in March 1484. Pope Sixtus died in August before Ascanio’s formal ceremony of investiture had taken place and some of the cardinals objected to him participating in the conclave to elect the next pope.  Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia intervened on his behalf and Ascanio was received with all the rights of a cardinal. The conclave elected Giovanni Battista Cybo as Pope Innocent VIII.  Read more...

____________________________________

Sebastiano Venier – Doge of Venice

Victorious naval commander briefly ruled La Serenissima

Sebastiano Venier, who successfully commanded the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto, died on this day in 1578 in Venice.  He had been Doge of Venice for less than a year when fire badly damaged the Doge’s Palace. He died soon afterwards, supposedly as a result of the distress it had caused him.  Venier was born in Venice around 1496, the son of Moisè Venier and Elena Donà. He was descended from Pietro Venier, who governed Cerigo, one of the main Ionian islands off the coast of Greece, which was also known as Kythira.  Venier worked as a lawyer, although he had no formal qualifications, and he went on to become an administrator for the Government of the Republic of Venice. He was married to Cecilia Contarini, who bore him two sons and a daughter.  Venier was listed as procurator of St Mark’s in 1570, but by December of the same year, he was capitano generale da mar, the Admiral of the Venetian fleet, in the new war against the Ottoman Turks.  As the commander of the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, he helped the Christian League decisively defeat the Turks.  Read more…

______________________________________

Nicola Porpora – composer and teacher

Tutor of celebrated opera singers died in poverty

Nicola Porpora, who composed more than 60 operas and was a brilliant singing teacher in Italy, died on this day in 1768 in Naples.  Among his many pupils were poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, composers Johann Adolph Hasse and Joseph Haydn and the celebrated castrati, Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) and Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano).  Porpora’s most important teaching post was in Venice at the Ospedale degli Incurabili, where there was a music school for girls, in which he taught between 1726 and 1733.  He then went to London as chief composer to the Opera of the Nobility, a company that had been formed in opposition to Royal composer George Frideric Handel’s opera company.  The composer had been born Nicola Antonio Giacinto Porpora in 1686 in Naples.  He graduated from the music conservatory, Poveri di Gesù Cristo, and his first opera, Agrippina, was a success at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second opera, Berenice, was performed in Rome.  To support himself financially while composing, Porpora worked as maestro di cappella for aristocratic patrons and also taught singing.  Read more…

Booking.com

Home

2 March

Pope Pius XII

Pope elected on 63rd birthday to lead the church during the war

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope and took the name of Pius XII on this day in 1939, his 63rd birthday.  A pre-war critic of the Nazis, Pius XII expressed dismay at the invasion of Poland by Germany later that year.  But the Vatican remained officially neutral during the Second World War and Pius XII was later criticised by some people for his perceived silence over the fate of the Jews.  Pope Pius XII was born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli on March 2, 1876 in Rome.  His family had a history of links with the papacy and he was educated at a school that had formerly been the Collegio Romano, a Jesuit College in Rome.  He went on to study theology and became ordained as a priest.  He was appointed nuncio to Bavaria in 1917 and tried to convey the papal initiative to end the First World War to the German authorities without success. After the war he worked to try to alleviate distress in Germany and to build diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Soviet Union.  He was made a Cardinal priest in 1929 and elected Pope on March 2, 1939.   When war broke out again he had to follow the strict Vatican policy of neutrality.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Pietro Novelli – painter and architect

Sicilian great who was killed in Palermo riot

Pietro Novelli, recognised as the most important artist in 17th century Sicily, was born on this day in 1603 in Monreale, a town about 10km (6 miles) from Palermo.  A prolific painter, his works can be seen in many churches and galleries in Sicily, in particular in Palermo.  There are good examples of his work outside the city, too, for example at Piana degli Albanesi, about 30km (19 miles) from Palermo, where he painted a fresco cycle in the cathedral of San Demetrio Megalomartire and another fresco, entitled Annunciation, in the church of Santissima Annunziata.  At his peak, wealthy and aristocratic members of Sicilian society, as well as monasteries and churches, competed to be in possession of a Novelli work.  His father, also called Pietro, was a respected artist who also worked with mosaics and Pietro initially worked in his father’s workshop in Monreale.  A great student of art who travelled extensively, among his major influences were Caravaggio, whose work in Sicily he studied, particularly his Adoration of the Shepherds, which was commissioned for the Capuchin Franciscans and was painted in Messina for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.  Read more…

________________________________________

Vittorio Pozzo - double World Cup winner

Manager led Azzurri to victory in 1934 and 1938

Vittorio Pozzo, the most successful manager in the history of Italy's national football team, was born on this day in 1886 in Turin.  Under Pozzo's guidance, the Azzurri won the FIFA World Cups of 1934 and 1938 as well as the Olympic football tournament in 1936. He also led them to the Central European International Cup, the forerunner of the European championships, in 1931 and 1935. No other coach in football history has won the World Cup twice.  Pozzo managed some outstanding players, such as Internazionale's Giuseppe Meazza and the Juventus defender Pietro Rava, but his reputation was tarnished by the success of his team coinciding with the Fascist regime's tight grip on power. Italy's success on the football field was exploited ruthlessly as a propaganda vehicle.  While not a Fascist himself, Pozzo upset many opponents of Mussolini across Europe at the 1938 World Cup in France when his players gave the so-called 'Roman' salute - the extended right-arm salute adopted by the Fascists - during the playing of the Italian anthem.  Read more…

Home

1 March

NEW - Giovanni Dupré - sculptor

Work helped end the dominance of Neoclassicism

Giovanni Dupré, who came to be seen as one of the most important figures in 19th century Italian sculpture, was born on this day in 1817 in Siena. Like his contemporary, Lorenzo Bartolini, Dupré went back to the Renaissance for inspiration and his success helped Italian sculpture move on from the dominance of Antonio Canova, whose brilliant work in the Neoclassicist style had spawned a generation of imitators.  Dupré did much of his work in Florence and Siena, his greatest piece generally judged to be the Pietà he carved between 1860 and 1865 for the family tomb of the Marchese Bichi-Ruspoli in the cemetery of the Misericordia in Siena.  Although his family were of French descent, they were long established in Tuscany when Giovanni was born. The street in the Contrada Capitana dell'Onda where the family lived, a few steps away from Piazza del Campo, subsequently saw its name changed to Via Giovanni Dupré.  As a young man working in the workshops of his father and of another sculptor, Paolo Sani, he became familiar with the work of Renaissance sculptors, carving copies of the great works. Read more…

______________________________________

Gastone Nencini - cycling champion

Lion of Mugello won both Tour de France and Giro d’Italia

Gastone Nencini, sometimes described as Italy’s forgotten cycling champion, and certainly one of its least heralded, was born on this day in 1930 in Barberino di Mugello, a town in the Tuscan Apennines, about 38km (24 miles) north of Florence.  Nencini won the 1957 Giro d’Italia and the 1960 Tour de France, putting him in the company of only seven Italians to have won the greatest of cycling’s endurance tests.   He followed Ottavio Bottecchia, Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi and preceded Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani and the most recent winner, 2014 champion Vincenzo Nibali.  Yet often even cycling fans asked to name the seven Italian champions sometimes forget Nencini, despite his courage and resilience earning him the nickname The Lion of Mugello.  This may be in part because he died very young, a month short of his 50th birthday, after developing a rare disease of the lymphatic system.  Others, in particular members of his family, believe it was his maverick nature, his refusal to comply with the sport’s etiquette, that damaged his reputation.  In his era, some claim, there were unwritten rules in cycling.  Read more…

____________________________________

Luigi Vanvitelli – architect

Neapolitan genius drew up a grand design for his royal client

The most famous Italian architect of the 18th century, Luigi Vanvitelli, died on this day in 1773 in Caserta in Campania.  The huge Royal Palace he designed for the Bourbon kings of Naples in Caserta is considered one of the greatest triumphs of the Baroque style of architecture in Italy.  Vanvitelli was born Lodewijk van Wittel in Naples in 1700, the son of a Dutch painter of landscapes, Caspar van Wittel. His father later also took up the Italian surname Vanvitelli.  Luigi Vanvitelli was trained as an architect by Nicola Salvi and worked with him on lengthening the façade of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Palazzo Chigi-Odelscalchi in Rome and on the construction of the Trevi Fountain.  Following his notable successes with the facade of the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano (1732) and the facade of Palazzo Poli, behind the Trevi Fountain, Pope Clement XII sent Vanvitelli to the Marche to build some papal projects.   At Ancona in 1732, he directed construction of the Lazzaretto, a large pentagonal building built as an isolation unit to protect against contagious diseases arriving on ships. Later it was used as a military hospital or as barracks.  Read more…

_____________________________________

Cesare Danova - movie actor

Acclaim came late for Bergamo-born star

The actor Cesare Danova, who appeared in more than 300 films and TV shows over the course of a 45-year career, was born Cesare Deitinger on this day in 1926 in the Lombardy city of Bergamo.  The son of an Austrian father and an Italian mother, he adopted Danova as his professional name after meeting the film producer, Dino De Laurentiis, in Rome.  De Laurentiis gave him a screen test and was so impressed he immediately cast Danova in the 1947 movie The Captain's Daughter, playing alongside Amedeo Nazzari and Vittorio Gassman.  So began a career that was to see Danova star opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Joseph L Mankiewicz's 1963 hit Cleopatra, opposite Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret in Viva Las Vegas (1964), alongside Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese's cult movie Mean Streets (1973) and as part of a star-studded cast in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978).  In his later years, Danova became a familiar figure on TV screens in America, making appearances in almost all the popular drama series of the 1980s, including Charlie's Angels, Murder, She Wrote, Falcon Crest and Hart to Hart.  Read more…

______________________________________

Pietro Canonica - sculptor

Artist in demand from European royalty

The sculptor Pietro Canonica, who was also a proficient painter and an accomplished musician but who found himself most in demand to create busts, statues and portraits for the royal courts of Europe, was born on this day in 1869 in Moncalieri in Piedmont.  Canonica’s ability to create realism in his work, bringing marble sculptures almost to life, resulted in an endless stream of commissions, taking him from Buckingham Palace in London to the courts of Paris, Vienna, Brussels and St Petersburg.  He was highly skilled in equestrian statuary and after the First World War was commissioned to create many monuments to the fallen, which can be seen in squares around Italy to this day.  Canonica’s mastery of Naturalism and Realism were the qualities that set him apart, exemplified nowhere with such stunning effect as in his 1909 work L'abisso - The Abyss - which depicts Paolo and Francesca, the ill-fated lovers from Dante’s Inferno, locked in their eternal punishment, clinging desperately to one another with fear in their eyes, her fingers digging into his back as the vortex in which they are trapped drags them towards their fate.  Read more…

Home

Giovanni Dupré - sculptor

Work helped end the dominance of Neoclassicism

Giovanni Dupré, painted by the 
Swiss-Italian artist Antonio Ciseri

Giovanni Dupré, who came to be seen as one of the most important figures in 19th century Italian sculpture, was born on this day in 1817 in Siena.

Like his contemporary, Lorenzo Bartolini, Dupré went back to the Renaissance for inspiration and his success helped Italian sculpture move on from the dominance of Antonio Canova, whose brilliant work in the Neoclassicist style had spawned a generation of imitators.

Dupré did much of his work in Florence and Siena, his greatest piece generally judged to be the Pietà he carved between 1860 and 1865 for the family tomb of the Marchese Bichi-Ruspoli in the cemetery of the Misericordia in Siena.

Although his family were of French descent, they were long established in Tuscany when Giovanni was born. The street in the Contrada Capitana dell'Onda where the family lived, a few steps away from Piazza del Campo, subsequently saw its name changed to Via Giovanni Dupré.

As a young man working in the workshops of his father and of another sculptor, Paolo Sani, he became familiar with the work of Renaissance sculptors, carving copies of the great works, for which there was some demand among wealthy Sienese and was the basis of a thriving family business.

He began to make a name for himself after moving to Florence and winning a competition run by the Accademia di Belle Arti with a Judgment of Paris. 

Dupré's Pietà for the family tomb of the Marchese
  Bichi-Ruspoli is seen as his finest work

In 1842, when he was just 25, he carved a lifesize Dying Abel, which was startling for its natural realism. It was bought by a Russian duchess and resides now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. A bronze version can be seen in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Bartolini made a point of encouraging Dupré  to be aware of his talent and to continue. He followed his Abel with a Cain, the marble version of which is also in the Hermitage Museum with a bronze in the Pitti. 

Also in Florence, commissions followed for statues of Giotto and St Antoninus for the Loggiato degli Uffizi and a Triumph of the Cross lunette above the main entrance of the Basilica di Santa Croce.

Despite a period of ill health, Dupré worked prolifically. His sculptures included a representation of the Greek poet Sappho which was reminiscent of Michelangelo, which is now in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, the bronze base for a grand table in the Sala del Castagnoli at the Palazzo Pitti, a funeral monument for contessa Berta Moltke Ferrari-Corbelli in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and a Madonna Addolorata for Santa Croce.

The startlingly realistic Dying Abel brought the
young Dupré his first major success

The Pietà for the Bichi-Ruspoli family tomb, for which he was so acclaimed, won him the Grande medaille d'honneur at the International Exhibition in Paris.

Other notable works included busts of prominent figures such as Letizia Cristina Bonaparte, niece of Napoleon, a San Zanobi for the façade of the Duomo di Siena, the huge allegories of the Cavour monument in Turin and a bronze bust of Savonarola at the monastery of San Marco, Florence.

After his death in 1882 at the age of 64, Dupré’s last work, a depiction of St. Francis inside the Cattedrale di San Rufino in Assisi, was finished by his daughter, Amalia, who was also his pupil.

Despite a steady workload, Dupré managed to write a book, Pensieri sull'arte e ricordi autobiografici - Thoughts on Art and Autobiographical Memories - which was translated into English in 1882 and republished in 1935.

The beautiful Piazza del Campo in Siena is regarded
as one of the finest mediaeval squares in Europe

Travel tip:

Dupré’s family home growing up was just a short distance from Siena’s Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped square that originated in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form Siena. It is regarded as one of Europe's finest mediaeval squares, looked over by the Palazzo Pubblico - also known as the Palazzo Comunale - and the Torre del Mangia.  Via Giovanni Dupré opens on to the piazza alongside the Palazzo Pubblico. The building where his family lived is indicated by a plaque, placed above the main entrance of the building. Piazza del Campo is well known also as the venue for the twice-yearly Palio di Siene horse race.

The inner courtyard and the Loggiato, which links
the two palaces of the Uffizi Gallery complex

Travel tip:

What is now the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, one of the world’s most famous art galleries, was originally built to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi (offices). It was Cosimo I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany who commissioned the building, who gave it its parallel identity as an art gallery, displaying prime artworks of the Medici collections. Over the years, more sections of the palace were chosen to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici.  It was officially opened to the public as an art gallery in 1765. The Uffizi complex, which consists of two palaces alongside the Arno river linked by the Loggiato and a semi-enclosed courtyard, was designed by Giorgio Vasari.

Also on this day:

1773: The death of architect Luigi Vanvitelli

1869: The birth of sculptor Pietro Canonica

1926: The birth of actor Cesare Danova

1930: The birth of cycling champion Gastone Nencini

(Picture credits: Pieta by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons; Piazza del Campo by Gerhard Bögner from Pixabay)

Home