Vincenzo da Filicaja – poet

Patriotic writer was inspired by victory against the Turks

Da Filicaja earned comparisons
with the great poet Petrarch

Vincenzo da Filicaja, a writer and a politician whose poetry has been compared with that of the great Italian poet Petrarch, died on this day in 1707 in Florence.

Da Filicaja’s six celebrated odes inspired by a famous battle victory led to scholars placing him on a level with some of the greatest Italian poets.

He was also a respected politician and was named governor of Volterra and Pisa by Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who later appointed him to serve in the Tuscan Senate.

Born into an aristocratic family in Florence in 1642, Da Filicaja was educated by Jesuits before going to Pisa University to study law. In Pisa, he was inspired by the historical associations he saw that were linked with the former glory of the republic of Pisa.

The banners and emblems of the Order of St Stephen, which had its seat in Pisa, had great significance for the young student, who knew that the navy of this military order, created by Cosimo I de’ Medici, formed the main defence of his country and its commerce against Turkish, Algerian and Tunisian corsairs.

After returning to Florence, Da Filicaja married Anna Capponi in 1673, the daughter of a senator and marquis, and he went to live in the Tuscan countryside, where his main interest was writing Italian and Latin poetry.

Da Filicaja earned comparisons
with the great poet Petrarch

He became a member of the Accademia della Crusca, a society for scholars of Italian linguistics and philology, which is now the oldest linguistic academy in the world.

Other scholars and writers he met there, such as the poet Francesco Redi, helped him to gain access to Medici court patronage.

Da Filicaja’s imagination was fired by the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks in 1683 and he composed six odes to celebrate the victory.  Redi showed Da Filicaja’s verses to his own royal patron and sent them to the foreign princes whose noble deeds were praised in them. The quality of Da Filicaja’s odes celebrating the victory of John III Sobieski in the Battle of Vienna is what made many scholars consider him to be on a level with some of the greatest Italian poets.

Christina, the ex Queen of Sweden, contacted Da Filicaja from her exile in Rome, offering to pay for the education of his two sons and to keep the generous gesture a secret. And in 1691, Da Filicaja became a member of the Academy of Arcadia, a literary academy founded in Rome.

Cosimo III made the poet the commissioner of official balloting and governor of Volterra, where Da Filicaja tried to improve public morality. He was also made governor of Pisa in 1700 and he became so popular that when he left office the inhabitants of both cities petitioned to have him brought back.

Cosimo III made him a Senator in Florence, where he spent the last years of his life. After he died, at the age of 64, he was buried in the family vault of the Church of San Pietro in Florence and a monument was erected in his memory in the Basilica di Santa Croce in the city by his only surviving son, Scipione Filicaja.

The Palazzo della Carovana, which was built
by Vasari for the Knights of St Stephen

Travel tip:

Pisa’s most popular tourist attraction by a long way is the Campo dei Miracoli, site of the famous Leaning Tower, which features a beautiful Romanesque cathedral and an equally impressive baptistry. For many visitors, the Campo dei Miracoli is all they come to see, yet there is much more to Pisa than the Leaning Tower. The University of Pisa remains one of the most prestigious in Italy, while the student population ensures a vibrant cafe and bar scene. There is also much to see in the way of Romanesque buildings, Gothic churches and Renaissance piazzas. Interesting churches include Santa Maria della Spina, which sits next to the Arno river, while Piazza dei Cavalieri is notable for the Palazzo della Carovana, built by Giorgio Vasari in 1564 as the headquarters for the Knights of St Stephen.

The magnificent facade of the Basilica di
Santa Croce, a Florence highlight

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Santa Croce, consecrated in 1442, is the main Franciscan church in Florence and the burial place among others of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, the poet Ugo Foscolo, the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, the composer Gioachino Rossini and the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi.  It houses works by some of the most illustrious names in the history of art, including Canova, Cimabue, Donatello, Giotto and Vasari. The construction of the current church, to replace an older building on what was once marshland outside the city wall, began in 1294, paid for by some of the city's wealthiest families. It is the largest Franciscan church in the world.  The floorplan is an Egyptian or Tau cross - a symbol of St Francis - 115 metres in length with a nave and two aisles separated by lines of octagonal columns, with 16 chapels. It stands proudly over the Piazza Santa Croce, one of the most famous and beautiful squares in the city.

Also on this day:

1501: The birth of doctor and mathematician Girolamo Cardano

1934: The birth of Princess Maria-Pia of Bourbon-Parma

1954: The birth of footballer Marco Tardelli

1955: The birth of businessman Ricardo Illy

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23 September

Augustus - the first Emperor of Rome

Great nephew of Julius Caesar became powerful leader

Augustus, who history recognises as the first Emperor of Rome, was born Gaius Octavius on this day in 63 BC in Rome.  He was to lead Rome’s transformation from republic to empire during the stormy years following the assassination of his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar, the dictator of the Roman Republic.  The son of a senator and governor in the Roman Republic, Octavius was related to Caesar through his mother, Atai, who was Caesar’s niece. The young Octavius was raised in part by his grandmother Julia Caesaris - Caesar’s sister - in what is now Velletri, about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Rome.  Octavius was only 17 when he learned of his great uncle’s death, although he had begun to wear the toga - a symbol of manhood - at 16 and fought alongside Caesar in Hispania (Spain), where his bravery prompted Caesar to name him in his will as his heir and successor.  When Caesar died, his allies rallied around Octavius - now known as Octavian - against Mark Antony, his rival for power, and troops loyal to Octavian defeated Antony’s army in northern Italy. However, the future emperor stepped back from seeking to eliminate Mark Antony, preferring that they formed an alliance.  Read more…

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Mussolini's last stand

Deposed dictator proclaims Republic of Salò 

In what would prove the final chapter of his political career - and his life - Benito Mussolini proclaimed the creation of the Italian Social Republic on this day in 1943.  The establishment of this new state with the Fascist dictator as its leader was announced just 11 days after German special forces freed Mussolini from house arrest in the Apennine mountains.  Although Mussolini was said to be in failing health and had hoped to slip quietly into the shadows after his escape, Hitler's compassion for his Italian ally - whose rescue had been on the direct orders of the Führer - did not extend to giving him an easy route into retirement.  Faced with an Allied advance along the Italian peninsula that was gathering momentum, he put Mussolini in charge of the area of northern and central Italy of which the German army had taken control following the Grand Fascist Council's overthrow of the dictator.  Although the area was renamed the Italian Social Republic - also known as the Republic of Salò after the town on the shores of Lake Garda where Mussolini's new government was headquartered - it was essentially a puppet German state.   Read more…

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Paolo Rossi - World Cup hero

Goalscorer who bounced back from two-year ban

The footballer Paolo Rossi, whose goals steered Italy to World Cup glory in 1982, was born on this day in 1956 in Prato in Tuscany.  At the peak of his career in club football, in which his best years were with Juventus and Vicenza, Rossi scored almost 100 Serie A and Serie B goals in seven seasons.  Yet for many his exploits with the Italian national team define his career. In 48 appearances he scored 20 goals, including six in the 1982 finals in Spain, when he won the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer and the Golden Ball as the best player.  In 1982 he also won the Ballon D’Or, the prestigious award given to the player of the season across all the European leagues, following in the footsteps of Omar Sivori and Gianni Rivera to become the third Italian player to win the vote, in which company he has since been joined by Roberto Baggio and Fabio Cannavaro.  His success story is all the more remarkable for the fact that he scaled so many personal peaks after being banned from football for two years in a match-fixing scandal, although he denied the accusations levelled at him.  The 1982 World Cup saved his career and his reputation.  Read more…

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Francesco Barberini – Cardinal

Patron of the arts sympathised with Galileo

Francesco Barberini, a cardinal who as Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Inquisition refused to condemn the scientist Galileo Galilei as a heretic, was born on this day in 1597 in Florence.  As a cardinal working within the Vatican administration, Barberini also became an important patron of literature and the arts.  The son of Carlo Barberini and Costanza Magalotti, Francesco was assisted by Galileo during his studies at the University of Pisa. The scientist was also a family friend. Francesco graduated in canon and civil law at the age of 25 in 1623.  Later that year, his uncle, Maffeo Barberini, who had been recently elected as Pope Urban VIII, made him a cardinal and sent him to be papal legate to Avignon.  He was sent to Paris as a special legate to negotiate with Cardinal Richelieu and then to Spain as a papal legate, but both his missions were unsuccessful.  From 1633 until his death more than 40 years later, Barberini was the Grand Inquisitor of the Roman Inquisition. He was part of the Inquisition tribunal investigating Galileo after the publication of writings supporting the arguments put forward by the German scientist Nicolaus Copernicus that the sun and not the earth was the centre of the universe.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, by Adrian Goldsworthy

The dramatic story of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, who plunged into Rome's violent power struggles at the age of nineteen, proceeded to destroy all rivals, and more than anyone else created the Roman Empire. Caesar Augustus's story, one of the most riveting in Western history, is filled with drama and contradiction, risky gambles and unexpected success. Thrusting himself into Rome's extremely violent politics while yet a very young man, Augustus skillfully manoeuvred his way through twisting alliances during years of civil war. Named heir to the murdered Julius Caesar, he outwitted and outlasted far more experienced rivals like Antony and Brutus. Ruling supreme, he reinvented himself as a benevolent man of peace and created a new system of government.  In Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy puts his deep knowledge of ancient sources to full use, recounting the events of Augustus's long life in greater detail than ever before. He pins down the man behind the myths: a consummate manipulator, propagandist, and showman, both generous and ruthless. 

Adrian Goldsworthy is a leading historian of the ancient world and author of acclaimed biographies of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra among many other books. He lectures widely and consults on historical documentaries produced by the History Channel, National Geographic, and the BBC. He lives in the Vale of Glamorgan, UK.

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22 September

Roberto Saviano - writer and journalist

Author of ‘Gomorrah’ who lives under police protection

The author and journalist Roberto Saviano, whose 2006 book Gomorrah exposed the inner workings of the Camorra organised crime syndicate in his home city of Naples, was born on this day in 1979.  Gomorrah was an international bestseller that was turned into a film and inspired a TV series, bringing Saviano fame and wealth.  However, within six months of the book’s publication, Saviano had received so many threats to his life from within the Camorra that the decision was taken on the advice of former prime minister Giuliano Amato to place him under police protection.  Some 15 years later, he remains under 24-hour police guard.  He travels only in one of two bullet-proof cars, lives either in police barracks or obscure hotels and is encouraged never to remain in the same place for more than a few days. His protection team includes seven bodyguards.  Saviano has written several more books including a collection of his essays and Zero, Zero, Zero - an exposé of the cocaine trade. He has also written The Piranhas, a novel set in Naples with the Camorra at the centre of the story.  Yet Saviano has complained that, although he has so far avoided being killed, he has no real life.  Read more…

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Carlo Ubbiali - motorcycle world champion

Racer from Bergamo won nine GP titles

Carlo Ubbiali, who preceded Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi as Italy’s first great motorcycling world champion, was born on this day in 1929 in Bergamo.  Between 1951 and 1960, he won nine Grand Prix titles, in the 250cc and 125cc categories, setting a record for the most world championships that was equalled by Britain’s Mike Hailwood in 1967 but not surpassed until Agostini won the 10th of his 15 world titles in 1971.  Until his death in 2020, Ubbiali was the second oldest surviving Grand Prix champion after Britain’s Cecil Sandford, who was his teammate in the 1950s. Ubbiali’s compatriot Agostini, who came from nearby Lovere, in Bergamo province,was born in 1942.  Ubbiali won a total of 39 Grand Prix races, all bar two of them for the MV Agusta team.  Three times – in 1956, 1959 and 1960 – he was world champion in 125cc and 250cc classes, and on no fewer than five occasions, including both categories in 1956, he won the title with the maximum number of points possible under the scoring system.  He was also a five-times winner at the prestigious Isle of Man TT festival and six-times Italian champion.  Read more…

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Mario Berrino - painter

Artist who was also a popular entrepreneur 

The painter and entrepreneur Mario Berrino was born on this day in 1920 in Alassio, the coastal town in Liguria where he spent almost all his life.  Berrino took up painting full time in his 50s and his simple yet atmospheric and evocative works became sought after by collectors, often selling for hundreds of euros at auction.  Alassio has a gallery dedicated entirely to his work, as does the jet set playground of Monte Carlo, about 100km (62 miles) along the riviera coastline to the west, not far from Italy’s border with France.  Before that, Berrino had lived a colourful life in and around his home town, his entrepreneurial spirit shining through in many projects that left a lasting impression on Alassio.  As a young man, he helped his father and brothers run a bar and restaurant in Alassio, the Caffè Roma, which earned fame in the years between the First and Second World Wars as a hang-out for writers, artists, and musicians, among them the American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was a frequent visitor to Italy and became a close friend of Berrino.  It was when Hemingway was in Alassio in 1953 that Berrino hatched the idea of attaching brightly coloured tiles to the low wall of a public garden opposite the Caffè Roma bearing the signatures of artists who had visited the restaurant.  Read more…

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Andrea Bocelli - tenor

Singer has perfect voice for either opera or pop

Tenor Andrea Bocelli was born on this day in 1958 in La Sterza, a hamlet or frazione of Lajatico in Tuscany.  Bocelli, who is blind, had poor eyesight from birth and was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma, but he lost his sight completely at the age of 12 after an accident while playing football.  He always loved music and started to learn the piano at the age of six. But after hearing a recording by opera singer Franco Corelli, he set his heart on becoming a tenor.  Bocelli won his first singing competition in Viareggio with ‘O sole mio’ at the age of 14.  He has since sold 150 million records worldwide and performed for four US presidents, three Popes and the British Royal family. His voice has been acclaimed by critics as perfect for either opera or pop.  Bocelli originally studied law and spent one year working as a lawyer, but in 1992 the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti heard a recording of his unique voice performing Italian rock and pop artist Zucchero’s song Miserere and helped his career take off.  He sang Miserere with Zucchero during a European tour and performed it at the San Remo song festival, where he won the newcomer’s section.  Read more…

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Leonardo Messina - Mafia ‘pentito’

Sicilian who linked ex-premier with organised crime

The Mafia pentito or turncoat Leonardo ‘Narduzzo’ Messina, the first to accuse former prime minister Giulio Andreotti of links with organised crime, was born on this day in 1955 in San Cataldo, a town in the centre of the island of Sicily.  Messina, who decided to reveal what he knew to the authorities soon after the murder of the anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, named Andreotti as part of extensive testimony that led to the arrest of more than 200 mafiosi in 1992.  A so-called ‘man of honour’ for more than a decade, Messina, who had been arrested for his part in a drugs racket, became a pentito - literally a ‘repentant’ - after Falcone was killed by a massive bomb placed under the highway linking the city of Palermo with its airport.  Falcone’s wife and three police escorts died with him when the bomb was detonated, and it was the emotional appeal for information by the widow of one of the police officers that persuaded Messina he no longer wished to be associated with the Cosa Nostra.  Messina provided a goldmine of information to Falcone’s friend and fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who himself would be killed by a car bomb in July of that year.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Gomorrah (Picador Classic Edition), by Roberto Saviano with an introduction by Misha Glenny 

Since Gomorrah was first published in Italy in 2006, Roberto Saviano has received so many death threats that he has been assigned police protection in his native Naples. A groundbreaking study and a searing exposé, Gomorrah is the astonishing true story of the renowned crime organisation the Camorra, known by insiders as ‘the System’. With a global reach, large stakes in construction, high fashion, illegal drugs and toxic waste disposal, the Camorra exerts a malign grip on cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast.  Now an international sensation, it is at once a bold and gripping piece of investigative journalism as well as the story of one brave young man, his life in Naples and his contempt for the murderous organisation who destroyed the place he calls home. ‘After reading Gomorrah, it becomes impossible to see Italy, and the global market, in the same way again’ - New York Times.

Roberto Saviano is an Italian journalist, writer and essayist. Among his other books, Zero, Zero. Zero - an expose of the cocaine business - has also been an international bestseller.  In his writings, his articles, his books and his television programs, he uses literature and investigative reporting to tell of the economic reality of the territory and business of the Camorra and of organised crime more generally.

Michael V. E. "Misha" Glenny is a multilingual British journalist and broadcaster, specialising in southeast Europe, global organised crime, and cybersecurity.

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21 September

Giacomo Quarenghi - architect

Neoclassicist famous for his work in St Petersburg

The architect Giacomo Quarenghi, best known for his work in Russia, and in St Petersburg in particular, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was born on this day in 1744 in Rota d’Imagna, a village in Lombardy about 25km (16 miles) northwest of Bergamo.  His extensive work in St Petersburg between 1782 and 1816, which followed an invitation from the Empress Catherine II (Catherine the Great), included the Hermitage Theatre, one of the first buildings in Russia in the Palladian style, the Bourse and the State Bank, St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace, several bridges on the Neva river, and a number of academic buildings including the Academy of Sciences, on the University Embankment.  He was also responsible for the reconstruction of some buildings around Red Square in Moscow in neo-Palladian style.  Quarenghi’s simple yet imposing neoclassical buildings, which often featured an elegant central portico with pillars and pediment, are responsible for much of St Petersburg’s stately elegance.  As a young man, Quarenghi was allowed to study painting in Bergamo despite his parents’ hopes that he would follow for a career in law or the church.   Read more…

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Maurizio Cattelan - conceptual artist

Controversial work softened by irreverent humour

The conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, known for the dark humour and irreverence of much of his work, was born on this day in 1960 in Padua.  Cattelan, probably best known for his controversial waxwork sculptures of Pope John Paul II and Adolf Hitler, has been described at different times as a satirist, a prankster, a subversive and a poet, although it seems to have been his aim to defy any attempt at categorisation.  His works are often interpreted as critiques of the art world and of society in general and while death and mortality are recurring themes there is more willingness among modern audiences to see how even tragic circumstances can give rise to comedic absurdities.  Although some of his work has provoked outrage, more viewers have been enthralled than angered by what he has presented, and some of his creations have changed hands for millions of dollars.  Cattelan has said that his memories of growing up in Padua are of economic hardship, punishments at school and a series of unfulfilling menial jobs.  His artistic skills were entirely self-taught. He was designing and making wooden furniture in Forlì, in Emilia-Romagna, when he began his first experiments with sculpture and conceptual art.  Read more…

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Cigoli – painter and architect

First artist to paint a realistic moon

The artist Cigoli was born Lodovico Cardi on this day in 1559 near San Miniato in Tuscany.  He became a close friend of Galileo Galilei, who is said to have regarded him as the greatest painter of his time. They wrote to each other regularly and Galileo practised his drawing while Cigoli enjoyed making astronomical observances.  Cigoli painted a fresco in the dome of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome depicting the Madonna standing upon a pock-marked lunar orb, exactly as it had been seen by Galileo through his telescope.  This is the first example still in existence of Galileo’s discovery about the surface of the moon being portrayed in art. The moon is shown just as Galileo had drawn it in his astronomical treatise, Sidereus Nuncius, which published the results of Galileo’s early observations of the imperfect and mountainous moon.  Until Cigoli’s fresco, the moon in pictures of the Virgin had always been represented by artists as spherical and smooth.  Lodovico Cardi was born at Villa Castelvecchio di Cigoli, and was therefore commonly known as Cigoli.  He trained as an artist in Florence under the Mannerist painter Alessandro Allori.   Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Architecture of Modern Italy: Volume I: The Challenge of Tradition 1750-1900, by Terry Kirk

This groundbreaking and authoritative two-volume survey is the first truly comprehensive history of modern Italian architecture and urbanism to appear in any language. Told in lively prose, it recounts more than 250 years of experimentation, creativity, and turmoil that have shaped the landscape of contemporary Italy. Volume I: The Challenge of Tradition, 1750-1900, explores the dynamic balancing of forces demanded by a reverence for Italy's unparalleled architectural patrimony and a desire for new means of expression and technological innovation. From the neoclassical fantasies of Giovanni Battista Piranesi to the spectacular steel-and-glass gallerie of Milan and Naples, it reveals an underappreciated history of richness and complexity. The Architecture of Modern Italy is exhaustively illustrated with rare period images, new photography, maps, drawings, and plans. With Colin Rowe's Italian Architecture of the 16th Century, it provides a nearly complete overview of the history of Italian architecture.

Terry Kirk was a professor of architectural history at the American University of Rome, where he began working in 1988, teaching an introductory course titled “The Art of Rome”.  He is remembered as a professor who changed people’s lives through his engaging and inspiring personality. A singer and a performer also, he led students through the streets of Rome as if it were an open book, an eternal site that was only waiting to be discovered.

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