3 April

NEW - Maria de’ Medici – the tragic daughter of Cosimo I

Grand Duke grief stricken after death of clever child

Maria de’ Medici, the beautiful, eldest child of Cosimo I de’ Medici was born on this day in 1540 in Florence. The apple of her father’s eye, she was one of the brightest of The Grand Duke of Tuscany’s children, but she was destined to lead a very short life.  Maria was the daughter of Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo and was Cosimo’s first legitimate child. He had fathered an illegitimate daughter, Bia de’ Medici before his marriage to Eleonora but she had died young.   Maria was educated with her brothers and was reputed to have been so clever that when her  brother, Francesco, didn’t understand his Greek lesson, his tutors would ask Maria to explain it to him.  She grew up to be an elegant, highly educated, and decorous young woman according to contemporary accounts and a marriage was arranged for her with Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. However, Maria died unexpectedly in November 1557 at the age of 17.  Maria’s death occurred while she was staying in Livorno and the most likely cause is thought to have been that she contracted malaria.  However, another cause for her death is suggested in a book called The Tragedies of the Medici by Edgcumbe Staley.  Read more… 

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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco – composer

Versatile musician wrote for stringed instruments and for films

One of the most admired composers of the 20th century, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, was born on this day in 1895 in Florence.  He composed more than 100 pieces of music for the guitar, many of them written for the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia.  Because of anti-semitism in Europe, Mario emigrated to the United States in 1939 where he went to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, composing music for about 200 films.  Mario was descended from a family of bankers that had lived in Siena since the Jews were expelled from Spain in the 16th century.  He was introduced to the piano by his mother and was composing music by the time he was nine years old. His mother recognised his musical talent and encouraged him to study the piano and composition under well-regarded musicians.  Mario came to the attention of the composer and pianist Alfredo Casella, who included some of his work in his repertoire and promoted him throughout Europe as an up-and-coming young composer.  In 1926, Mario’s first opera, La mandragola, was premiered. Based on a play by Niccolò Machiavelli, it was the first of his many works inspired by great literature.  Read more…

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Alcide De Gasperi - prime minister who rebuilt Italy

Christian Democrat founder was jailed by Mussolini

Born on this day in 1881, Alcide De Gasperi was the Italian prime minister who founded the Christian Democrat party and led the rebuilding of the country after World War II.  An opponent of Benito Mussolini who survived being locked up by the Fascist dictator, he was the head of eight consecutive governments between 1945 and 1953, a record for longevity in post-War Italian politics.  Although Silvio Berlusconi has spent more time in office - nine years and 53 days compared with De Gasperi's seven years and 238 days - the media tycoon's time in power was fragmented, whereas De Gasperi served continuously until his resignation in 1953.  As prime minister, De Gasperi was largely responsible for Italy's post-War economic salvation and for helping to hold the line between East and West as the Soviet Union established its border on Italy's doorstep.  During his premiership, Italy became a republic, signed a peace treaty with the Allies, joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and became an ally of the United States, who in turn provided considerable help in reviving the shattered Italian economy.  Read more…

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Alessandro Stradella – violinist and composer

Talented musician lived for romance and adventure

Baroque composer Alessandro Stradella, who led a colourful life courting danger while producing more than 300 highly regarded musical works, was born on this day in 1639 at Nepi in the province of Viterbo, north of Rome in the Lazio region.  After an affair with the mistress of a Venetian nobleman he was attacked in the street and left for dead by two hired assassins, but he lived on for another few years to compose more music.  Five years later he was stabbed to death in Genoa, but the identity of his killers was never confirmed.  Stradella was born into an aristocratic family and by the age of 20 was making a name for himself as a composer.  He moved to Rome where he composed sacred music for Queen Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated her throne to go and live there.  It is believed he tried to embezzle money from the Roman Catholic Church and his numerous reckless affairs with women also made him enemies among powerful people in the city.  In 1637 he moved to Venice where he was hired by a nobleman, Alvise Contarini, as a music tutor to his mistress.  Stradella began an affair with her and they attempted to elope together to Turin in 1677.  Read more…

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Maria Redaelli - supercentenarian

Inter fan who was the oldest living person in Europe

Maria Angela Redaelli, a supercentenarian who for 10 months was the oldest living person in Europe and for 14 months the oldest living person in Italy, was born on this day in 1899 in Inzago in Lombardy.  She died in 2013 on the eve of what would have been her 114th birthday, at which point she was the fourth oldest living person in the world, behind the Japanese supercentenarians Jiroemon Kimura and Misao Okawa, and the American Gertrude Weaver.  Kimura died two months later at the age of 116 years and 54 days, which is the most advanced age reached by any male in the history of the human race, according to verifiable records.  Okawa and Weaver survived for another two years, Okawa reaching 117 years and 27 days, which made her the fifth oldest woman in history at the time, although she has since been overtaken by the Italian Emma Morano, who is still living in Pallanza on Lake Maggiore and is, at 117 years and 124 days, the oldest person on the planet of verifiable age.  At the time of her death, Maria was living in Novate Milanese, a suburb of Milan, being looked after by her 88-year-old daughter Carla and her grandson, Lamberto.  Read more…

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Maria de’ Medici – tragic daughter of Cosimo I

Grand Duke grief stricken after death of clever child

A portrait, possibly of Maria de' Medici,
by the Florentine painter Bronzino

Maria de’ Medici, the beautiful eldest child of Cosimo I de’ Medici was born on this day in 1540 in Florence. The apple of her father’s eye, she was one of the brightest of the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s children, but she was destined to lead a very short life.

Maria was the daughter of Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo and was Cosimo’s first legitimate child. He had fathered an illegitimate daughter, Bia de’ Medici before his marriage to Eleonora but she had died young.

Maria was educated with her brothers and was reputed to have been so clever that when her brother, Francesco, didn’t understand his Greek lesson, his tutors would ask Maria to explain it to him.

She grew up to be an elegant, highly educated and decorous young woman according to contemporary accounts and a marriage was arranged for her with Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. However, Maria died unexpectedly in November 1557 at the age of 17.

Maria’s death occurred while she was staying in the port of Livorno and the most likely cause is thought to have been that she contracted malaria.

However, another cause for her death is suggested in a book called The Tragedies of the Medici by Edgcumbe Staley. The book recounts that Maria was so lovely she was kept closely guarded from men, but that she somehow managed to meet a young man, Malatesta de’ Malatesti in secret and they became lovers.

Maria's father, Cosimo I de' Medici,
also depicted by Bronzino

According to the story, she was stabbed in the heart by Cosimo after he caught her with her illicit lover and the Grand Duke then put out the story that Maria had died of a spotted fever and threw her supposed lover into prison.

Other accounts say that Cosimo was devastated by Maria’s death and that he mourned for his daughter deeply and kept her portrait in his bedroom until the day he died.

Maria’s younger sister, Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici, later married Alfonso II.

Cosimo I, whose line was descended from Lorenzo de' Medici the Elder, brother of the dynasty's recognised founder, Cosimo the Elder, was the second Duke of Florence and first Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was both a shrewd and unscrupulous leader, bringing Florence under his despotic control and increasing its territories.

The first to have the idea of uniting all public services in a single building, it was Cosimo I who commissioned the Uffizi, which meant Offices, a beautiful building that is now an art gallery in the centre of Florence.

In a programme of improvements in the city, he had the interior of Palazzo Vecchio redecorated and adopted the Pitti Palace as his residence, overseeing the design of the Boboli Gardens. He also had the gallery over the Ponte Vecchio built to enable him to move from one palace to the other easily.

The Villa Castello is famed for its beautiful
gardens, which attract thousands of visitors

Travel tip:

It is quite likely that Maria de’ Medici was born at Villa Castello, the Medici residence near the town of Sesto Fiorentino, at the foot of the hills northwest of Florence. Cosimo I inherited the house from his father Ludovico de’ Medici - better known as the condottiero, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere - and spent much of his time there after securing his position as ruler following the assassination of the incumbent Duke of Florence, Alessandro de' Medici, in 1537. Cosimo did much to improve the villa, commissioning the engineer Piero da San Casciano to construct a system of aqueducts to bring water to the villa and its gardens, the sculptor Niccolò Tribolo to create fountains, statues and a garden, and the architect Giorgio Vasari to restore and enlarge the villa, which at one time housed some of the great art treasures of Florence, including Sandro Botticelli's Renaissance masterpieces The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Livorno's canal district has become known as Venezia
Nuova, an area famed for its night life

Travel tip:

The port of Livorno, where Maria de’ Medici was thought to have been when she suffered a fatal exposure to malaria, is the second largest city in Tuscany after Florence yet is often overlooked by visitors, many of whom arrive by cruise ship and travel on to Florence, Siena or other destinations. Yet Livorno has plenty to recommend it as a destination in itself. Built during the Renaissance with Medici money as an “ideal town”, it became an important free port, and until the middle of the 19th century was one of the most multicultural cities in Italy thanks to an influx of residents from all round the world who arrived on foreign trading ships. Visitors to Livorno today can sample some of Italy’s best seafood restaurants, enjoy the elegance of the Terrazza Mascagni on the waterfront and the quirky charms of Venezia Nuova, a former commercial district criss-crossed with canals.

Also on this day:

1639: The birth of musician Alessandro Stradella

1881: The birth of politician Alcide De Gasperi

1895: The birth of composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

1899: The birth of supercentenarian Maria Redaelli

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2 April

Achille Vianelli - painter and printmaker

Artist from Liguria who captured scenes of Naples

The painter and printmaker Achille Vianelli, whose specialities were landscapes and genre pictures, notably in his adopted city of Naples, died on this day in 1894 in Benevento in Campania.  For a while he worked at the French court, giving painting lessons to King Louis Philippe. Some of his works have sold for thousands of euros.  Vianelli was born in 1803 in Porto Maurizio in Liguria. When he was a child, his family moved more than 1,200km (750 miles) to the other end of the Italian peninsula to the coastal town of Otranto in the province of Lecce, where his father, Giovan Battista Vianelli, Venetian-born but a French national, had been posted as a Napoleonic consular agent.  Achille spent his youth in Otranto before, in 1819, he moved to Naples. His father and sister moved to France, although they would return to Naples in 1826. Achille took a job in the Royal Topographic Office.  In Naples, he became close friends with Giacinto Gigante, with whom he shared an interest in painting. Together, they studied landscape painting, attending the school of the German painter Wolfgang Hüber.  Read more…

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Francesca Cuzzoni - operatic soprano

Diva who came to blows with rival on stage

Francesca Cuzzoni, an 18th century star whose fiery temper earned her a reputation as one of opera’s great divas, was born on this day in 1696 in Parma.  Described rather unkindly by one opera historian of the era as “short and squat, with a doughy face” she was nonetheless possessed of a beautiful soprano voice, which became her passport to stardom.  However, she was also notoriously temperamental and jealous of rival singers, as was illustrated by several incidents that took place while she was in the employment of George Frederick Handel, the German composer who spent much of his working life in London.  Already established as one of the finest sopranos in Europe, Cuzzoni was hired by Handel in 1722.  Handel at that time was Master of the Orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music, the company set up by a group of English aristocrats to stage Baroque opera, partly for their own entertainment but also as a commercial enterprise.  One of his responsibilities was to engage the soloists for the company’s productions.  He ran into immediate trouble with Cuzzoni, who was due to make her debut in Handel’s own Italian language opera Ottone at the King’s Theatre in Haymarket.  Read more…

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Giacomo Casanova – adventurer

Romantic figure escaped from prison in a gondola 

Author and adventurer Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born on this day in 1725 in Venice.  He is so well known for his affairs with women that his surname is now used as an alternative word for ‘womaniser’.  Yet Casanova’s autobiography, ‘Story of My Life’, has come to be regarded as one of the most authentic sources of information about European social life produced during the 18th century.  Casanova was widely travelled, had several different professions and was a prolific writer but he spent a lot of his time having romantic liaisons and gambling.  The Venice into which he was born was the pleasure capital of Europe, a required stop on the Grand Tour for young men coming of age, because of the attractions of the Carnival, the gambling houses and the courtesans.  Casanova graduated from the University of Padua with a degree in law and had a short career as an ecclesiastical lawyer before setting out on his adventures.  He was attractive to women, being tall and dark and wearing his long hair powdered and curled.  At various times he worked as a clergyman, military officer, violinist, businessman and spy.  Read more…

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Gelindo Bordin - marathon champion

First Italian to win Olympic gold in ultimate endurance test

Gelindo Bordin, the first Italian to win the gold medal in the Olympic Marathon, was born on this day in 1959 in Longare, a small town about 10km (six miles) south-east of Vicenza.  Twice European marathon champion, in 1986 and 1990, he won the Olympic competition in Seoul, South Korea in 1988.  Until Stefano Baldini matched his achievements by winning the marathon at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and claiming his second European title in Gothenburg in 2006, Bordin was Italy’s greatest long-distance runner.  He attained that status somewhat against the odds, too, having been sidelined for a year with a serious intestinal illness at the age of 20 and then being hit by a car while on a training run.  Bordin’s victory in Seoul at last made up for the disappointment the Italy team had suffered 80 years earlier when Dorando Pietri crossed the line first in the marathon at the London Olympics of 1908 only to be disqualified. In a bizarre finish to the race, Pietri took a wrong turn on entering the White City Stadium and had to be helped to his feet five times after collapsing on the track through exhaustion.  Read more…

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1 April

Alberto Zaccheroni - football coach

First Italian coach to lead a foreign nation to success

The football coach Alberto Zaccheroni, who won the Serie A title with AC Milan and steered the Japan national team to success in the Asia Cup, was born on this day in 1953 in Meldola, a town in Emilia-Romagna.  In a long coaching career, Zaccheroni has taken charge of 13 teams in Italy, a club side in China and two international teams, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.  In common with many coaches in Italy, Zaccheroni began at semi-professional level and worked his way up through the professional leagues.  Before winning the Scudetto with Milan in 1999, he had twice won titles at Serie D (fourth tier) level and twice in Serie C.  Zaccheroni played as a fullback, with the youth team at Bologna and the Serie D team Cesenatico in Emilia-Romagna, but his career was hampered by a lung disease he contracted at the age of 17, which meant he could not train or play for two years.  He quit playing in his mid-20s and began to coach Cesenatico’s youth teams.  His coaching talents began to attract attention when, in two consecutive seasons, he was asked to take over on the bench for Cesenatico’s first team following the sacking of the head coach and on each occasion saved them from relegation.  Read more…

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Giancarlo Antognoni - footballer

Midfield star recovered from horrific injury to win World Cup

The footballer Giancarlo Antognoni, who won 73 international caps for his country and was a member of the Italy team that won the 1982 World Cup in Spain, was born on this day in 1954 in Marsciano, a mediæval town in Umbria, some 25km (16 miles) south of the regional capital, Perugia.  Antognoni, who spent most of his club career with Fiorentina and still works for the club today, was regarded as one of the most talented midfield players of his generation, but had the misfortune to miss Italy’s triumph against West Germany in the 1982 final, having suffered a broken foot in the semi-final against Poland.  Nonetheless, he made a major contribution to the performances that carried the azzurri through to the final, including the victories over holders Argentina and tournament favourites Brazil in the second phase. As the team's main playmaker, he set up numerous goalscoring opportunities for his teammates. Throughout the 1982 tournament, only Brazil's Zico and West Germany's Pierre Littbarski made more passes that directly led to goals.  Antognoni himself had a goal incorrectly ruled out for offside against Brazil, although Italy still came out on top thanks to Paolo Rossi’s stunning hat-trick in a famous 3–2 victory.  Read more…

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Arrigo Sacchi -- football coach

AC Milan manager's tactics revolutionised football in Italy

Arrigo Sacchi, the football coach who led AC Milan to back-to-back European Cups and steered Italy to a World Cup final, was born on this day in 1946 in Fusignano, a small town not far from Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.  Unusually among top coaches, Sacchi never played football as a professional.  Aware of his limited ability, he quickly decided he would concentrate instead on becoming a manager, taking charge of a local amateur team, Baracca Lugo, when he was just 26.  Literally, he worked his way up from the bottom, making a living as a shoe salesman while training his players in his spare time.  Yet step by step he ascended to the very top of the game, landing jobs on the coaching staffs at Cesena, Rimini and Fiorentina before Parma, then in the third tier of the Italian football pyramid, made him head coach in 1985.  He won promotion to Serie B in his first season and finished only three points short of promotion to Serie A in his second year, when Parma also pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the season, knocking AC Milan out of the Coppa Italia, which is Italy's equivalent of England's FA Cup.  Read more…

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April Fools' Day - Italian style

What lies behind the tradition of Pesce d'Aprile?

Playing practical jokes on April 1 is a tradition in Italy in the same way as many other countries, although in Italy the day is called Pesce d’Aprile – April’s Fish – rather than April Fools’ Day.  It is said to have become popular in Italy between 1860 and 1880, especially in Genoa, where families in the wealthier social circles embraced the idea, already popular in France, of marking the day by playing tricks on one another.  The most simple trick involves sticking a cut-out picture of a fish on the back of an unsuspecting ‘victim’ and watching how long it takes for him or her to discover he had been pranked but over the years there have been many much more elaborate tricks played.  Often these have involved spoof announcements or false stories in the newspapers or on TV or radio shows, aimed at embarrassing large numbers of gullible readers, viewers or listeners.  One of the first such large-scale hoaxes took place in 1878, when the newspaper Gazzetta d’Italia announced the cremation of an Indian Maharaja was to take place in Florence, attracting a large crowd to Parco delle Cascine where a pyre had been built in preparation.  Read more…

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