3 November

La cambiale di matrimonio - opera

Rossini’s first professional work premieres in Venice

La cambiale di matrimonio - the first opera by Gioachino Rossini to be performed before a paying audience - premiered at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice on this day in 1810.  Although the Pesaro-born composer, who would go on to write 39 operas including Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola (Cinderella), had tried his hand at the genre earlier, La cambiale di matrimonio was the first to be staged in public. Rossini had written the one-act farce - translated in English as The Bill of Marriage or The Marriage Contract - in the space of just a few days while he was an 18-year-old student at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna. Based on a play of the same name by Camillo Federici, an 18th century dramatist from Piedmont, La cambiale di matrimonio revolves around the attempts by a London merchant, Tobias Mill, to marry off his daughter, Fanny, to a somewhat mature Canadian businessman by the name of Slook.  Mill makes this arrangement, which is designed primarily for his own financial gain, without knowing that Fanny has a lover, Edward Milfort, whose existence she has kept secret from her father on account of his lowly financial status.  Read more…

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Monica Vitti - actress

Star of Antonioni classics also excelled in comedy roles

The actress Monica Vitti, who became famous as the star of several films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni during the early 1960s, was born on this day in 1931 in Rome.  Antonioni, with whom she had a romantic relationship that lasted a decade, cast her as his female lead in L'avventura (1960), La notte (1961), and L'eclisse (1962), three enigmatically moody films once described as a "trilogy on modernity and its discontents".  She also starred for him in his first colour film, Il deserto rosso (1964), which continued in a similar vein.  Her performance earned her a second of four Golden Grail awards. Vitti was also honoured with five David di Donatello awards as Best Actress from the Italian Film Academy.  After splitting with Antonioni, Vitti excelled in comedy, working with directors such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi, Alberto Sordi and Ettore Scola.  Her performances in movies such as Monicelli’s The Girl With the Pistol (1968) and I Know That You Know That I Know (1982) saw her spoken of as one of the great actors of the commedia all’italiana genre alongside Sordi himself, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi.  Read more…

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Vincenzo Bellini - opera composer

Short but successful career of Sicilian musical genius

The talented composer of the celebrated opera, Norma, was born Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini on this day in 1801 in Catania in Sicily. Bellini became known for his long, flowing, melodic lines, which earned him the nickname, ‘The Swan of Catania’. He enjoyed great success during the bel canto era of Italian opera in the early part of the 19th century and many of his operas are still regularly performed today.  Born into a musical family, Bellini showed early talent. It was claimed he could sing an aria at 18 months and could play the piano by the age of five. Although some writers have said these are exaggerations, Bellini is known to have already begun composing music by his teens.  He was given financial support by the city of Catania to study music at a college in Naples and while he was there he was profoundly influenced by meeting the composer Gaetano Donizetti, having heard his opera, La zingara, performed at Teatro di San Carlo.  Bellini then wrote his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, which his fellow students performed to great acclaim.  In 1825, Bellini began work on what was to be his first professionally-produced opera, Bianca e Fernando. Read more…

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Giovanni Leone - controversial politician

First president to resign over a scandal

The politician Giovanni Leone, who served both as prime minister of Italy and president during a career that spanned seven decades but which was ultimately overshadowed by scandal, was born on this day in 1908 in Naples.  A co-founder, with his father, Mauro, of the Christian Democracy in 1943, Leone was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1948, served as prime minister for brief periods in 1963 and 1968 and was elected president in 1971.  He occupied the Palazzo Quirinale, the main Rome residence of the president, for seven years but was forced to resign after being implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal, the first president to step down over such an impropriety.  The accusation levelled at him was that he accepted payment from the American aircraft manufacturer in connection with the purchase of Hercules military transport planes. The allegations originated from the United States and were published in Italy by the news magazine L’Espresso.  Other politicians were said also to have accepted bribes but Leone was accused directly after documents unearthed in the US referenced an Italian prime minister given the codename Antelope Gobbler, which was taken to mean Leone - lion.  Read more…

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Annibale Carracci - painter

Bolognese master produced his most influential work in Rome

The Baroque painter Annibale Carracci was born on this day in 1560 in Bologna.  Annibale and his followers were to become highly influential in the development of Roman painting, bringing back the classical tradition of the High Renaissance.  He was probably apprenticed as a painter with members of his own family in Bologna. But his talents began to develop during a tour of northern Italy in the 1580s. He lodged in Venice with the painter Jacopo Bassano, whose style of painting influenced him for a time.  Annibale has been credited with rediscovering the early 16th century painter Correggio, who had almost been forgotten outside Parma. Annibale’s Baptism of Christ, painted in 1585 for the Church of San Gregorio in Bologna, is a brilliant tribute to him.  In 1582 Annibale opened a studio in Bologna with his brother, Agostino Carracci, and his older cousin, Ludovico Carracci. While working there, Annibale painted The Enthroned Madonna with St Matthew in 1588 for the Church of San Prospero in Reggio.  Annibale collaborated with the other two Carracci on frescoes in the Palazzo Magnani (now the Palazzo Salem) and two other noble houses in Bologna.  Read more…

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Villa Giusti armistice

Talks held at villa in Padua ended First World War in Italy

An armistice signed between Italy and Austria-Hungary at Villa Giusti near Padua ended World War I on the Italian front on this day in 1918.  After the Allied troops were victorious in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the Austria-Hungary commanding officers asked for a ceasefire and for peace talks. They were invited to Villa Giusti at Mandria just outside Padua, which was owned by Count Giusti del Giardino, a former mayor of Padua and an Italian senator. The principal signatories on the Italian side were Tenente Generale Pietro Badoglio and Maggior Generale Scipione Scipioni. Leading the Austria-Hungary delegation was General Viktor Weber Edler von Webenau. During the war, the Villa Giusti had been the temporary residence of King Victor Emmanuel III when he was away from the front. The armistice signed on 3 November ended the fighting and was seen by many Italians as the final phase of the Risorgimento, the movement started in 1815 to unify Italy. The bells of a nearby church rang out when news came from the villa that the armistice had been agreed.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Cambridge Companion to Rossini, edited by Emanuele Senici

The Cambridge Companion to Rossini is a collection of specially commissioned essays on one of the most influential opera composers in the repertoire. The volume is divided into four parts, each exploring an important element of Rossini's life, his world, and his works: biography and reception; words and music; representative operas; and performance. Within these sections accessible chapters, written by a team of specialists, examine Rossini's life and career; the reception of his music in the nineteenth century and today; the librettos and their authors; the dramaturgy of the operas; and Rossini's non-operatic works. Additional chapters centre on key individual operas chosen for their historical importance or position in the present repertoire, and include Tancredi, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Semiramide, and Guillaume Tell. The last section focuses on the history of Rossini's operas from the viewpoint of singing and staging, as well as the influence of editorial work on contemporary performance practice.

Emanuele Senici is Professor of Music History at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He is a specialist on Italian opera of the 19th century.

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2 November

NEW - Arnoldo Mondadori - publisher

Business launched with socialist magazine became biggest in Italy

Arnoldo Mondadori, who at the age of 17 founded what would become Italy’s biggest publishing company, was born on this day in 1889 in Poggio Rusco, a small Lombardian town about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Mantua.  As the business grew, Mondadori published Italian editions of works by Winston Churchill, Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway among others, as well as by some of Italy’s own literary giants, including Gabriele D’Annunzio and Eugenio Montale.  Mondadori was the publisher of news magazines such as Epoca, Tempo and Panorama, launched the women’s magazine, Grazia, struck a deal with Walt Disney to publish children’s magazines, and introduced Italy to detective fiction with a series of crime mysteries called Gialli Mondadori, whose yellow (giallo) covers eventually led to gialli becoming a generic term in the Italian language, used not only to identify a detective novel but to describe unsolved mysteries in real life.  His Oscar Mondadori paperback novels, sold on newsstands, made fiction accessible to much wider audiences than previously, while he set up the Club degli Editori as Italy’s first mail-order book club.  Read more…

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Battista 'Pinin' Farina - car designer

Family's 'smallest brother' became giant of automobile history

Battista 'Pinin' Farina, arguably the greatest of Italy's long roll call of outstanding automobile designers, was born on this day in 1893 in the village of Cortanze in Piedmont.  His coachbuilding company Carrozzeria Pininfarina became synonymous with Italian sports cars and influenced the design of countless luxury and family cars thanks to the partnerships he forged with Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, Nash, Peugeot, Rolls Royce and others - most notably Ferrari, with whom his company has had a continuous relationship since 1951.  Among the many iconic marques that Pinin and his designers created are the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, the Ferrari Dino 206 and the Cisitalia 202.  Battista was the 10th of 11 children raised by his parents in Cortanze, a small community in the province of Asti, situated about 30km (19 miles) east of Turin.  He was always known as 'Pinin', a word from Piemontese dialect meaning 'smallest brother'.  In 1961, he had his name legally changed to Pininfarina.  He acquired his love of cars at a young age and from 12 years old he spent every spare moment working at his brother Giovanni’s body shop, Stabilimenti Industriali Farina, learning about bodywork and design.  Read more…

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Gaspare Nadi - builder and diarist

Craftsmen kept chronicle for 50 years

Gaspare Nadi, a builder who became famous for the insight into life in 15th century Italy provided by a diary he maintained for half a century, was born on this day in 1418 in Bologna.  Nadi worked on several important buildings in Bologna, including the bell tower of the Palazzo d’Accursio and several churches. He built the library of the Basilica of San Domenico.  He attained the position of Master Mason in the local guild of bricklayers, whom he also served for many terms as guild manager and other official positions.  Yet it was the diary he began to compile in 1452 that became his legacy. Written in idiomatic Bolognese, it proved to be an extraordinary document, a source for historians seeking to understand how families and society functioned in the Italy of Nadi’s lifetime.  As well as detailing family issues, the diary explained much about the construction industry of the time, with entries about clients and remuneration, injuries suffered by workers, the times demanded to turn around projects and the workings of the guilds, even down to the taverns in which members met and the vineyards that supplied their wine.  Read more…

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Luchino Visconti – director and writer

The aristocrat of Italian cinema

Luchino Visconti, who most aficionados of Italian cinema would place among the top five directors of all time, was born in Milan on this day in 1906.  Visconti’s movies include Ossessione, Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard, Death in Venice and The Innocent.  One of the pioneers of neorealism – arguably the first to make a movie that could be so defined – Visconti was also known as the aristocrat of Italian cinema, figuratively but also literally.   He was born Count Don Luchino Visconti di Modrone, the seventh child of a family descendant from a branch of the House of Visconti, the family that ruled Milan from the late 13th century until the early Renaissance.  Paradoxically, although he maintained a lavish lifestyle, Visconti’s politics were of the left. During the First World War he joined the Italian Communist Party, and many of his films reflected his political leanings, featuring poor or working class people struggling for their rights.  He enraged Mussolini with his grim portrayal of Italy's poverty in Ossessione (1943), based on James M Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Read more…

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Bartolomeo Colleoni - soldier

Death of an ‘honourable’ Italian military leader

Bergamo soldier Bartolomeo Colleoni, who became known for using his wealth to benefit people, died on this day in 1475.  Colleoni spent most of his life in the pay of the republic of Venice defending the city of Bergamo against invaders.  But he is remembered as one of the most decent condottieri of his era, carrying out charitable works and agricultural improvements in Bergamo and the surrounding area when he was not involved in military campaigns.  Condottieri were the leaders of troops, who worked for the powerful ruling factions, often for high payments.   Bergamo’s Bartolomeo Colleoni was unusual because he remained steadfast to one employer, the republic of Venice, for most of his career.  During a period of peace between Venice and Milan he worked briefly for Milan but the rulers never fully trusted him and eventually he was arrested and imprisoned. On his release, he returned to work for Venice and subsequently stayed faithful to them.  Towards the end of his life he lived with his family at his castle in Malpaga, to the south of Bergamo and turned his attention to designing a building to house his own tomb.   Read more…

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San Giusto of Trieste - martyr

Patron saint of maritime city 

San Giusto of Trieste - also known as Saint Justus of Trieste - died on this day in 293 after being found guilty of being a Christian, which was illegal under Roman law at the time.  His death occurred during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, who was notable for his persecution of Christians.  After his trial, he was given the opportunity to renounce his faith and make a sacrifice to the Roman gods.  He refused to do so and was condemned to death by drowning. The story handed down over the centuries was that weights were attached to his ankles before he was thrown from a small boat into the Gulf of Trieste, off the shore of the area known today as Sant'Andrea.  The legend has it that on the night of San Giusto’s death, his friend Sebastian, said to have been a bishop or priest, was told in a dream that the body had broken free of the weights and been washed ashore.  When he woke from his sleep, Sebastian assembled a group of fellow Christians to search for the body, which they discovered near what is now the Riva Grumula, less than a kilometre from Piazza Unità d’Italia, Trieste’s elegant sea-facing main square.   Read more…

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Book of the Day: Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy, by Guido Bonsaver

The history of totalitarian states bears witness to the fact that literature and print media can be manipulated and made into vehicles of mass deception. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy is the first comprehensive account of how the Fascists attempted to control Italy's literary production. Guido Bonsaver looks at how the country's major publishing houses and individual authors responded to the new cultural directives imposed by the Fascists. Throughout his study, Bonsaver uses rare and previously unexamined materials to shed light on important episodes in Italy's literary history, such as relationships between the regime and particular publishers, as well as individual cases involving renowned writers like Moravia, Da Verona, and Vittorini. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy charts the development of Fascist censorship laws and practices, including the creation of the Ministry of Popular Culture and the anti-Semitic crack-down of the late 1930s. Examining the breadth and scope of censorship in Fascist Italy, from Mussolini's role as 'prime censor' to the specific experiences of female writers, this is a fascinating look at the vulnerability of culture under a dictatorship.

Guido Bonsaver is Professor of Italian Cultural History at Oxford University and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

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Arnoldo Mondadori - publisher

Business launched with socialist newspaper became biggest in Italy

Arnoldo Mondadori (left) pictured with Georges 
Simenon, one of the authors of the early gialli

Arnoldo Mondadori, who at the age of 17 founded what would become Italy’s biggest publishing company, was born on this day in 1889 in Poggio Rusco, a small Lombardian town about 40km (25 miles) southeast of Mantua.

As the business grew, Mondadori published Italian editions of works by Winston Churchill, Thomas Mann and Ernest Hemingway among others, as well as by some of Italy’s own literary giants, including Gabriele D’Annunzio and Eugenio Montale.

Mondadori was the publisher of news magazines such as Epoca, Tempo and Panorama, launched the women’s magazine, Grazia, struck a deal with Walt Disney to publish children’s magazines, and introduced Italy to detective fiction with a series of crime mysteries called Gialli Mondadori, whose yellow (giallo) covers eventually led to gialli becoming a generic term in the Italian language, used not only to identify a detective novel but to describe unsolved mysteries in real life. 

His Oscar Mondadori paperback novels, sold on newsstands, made fiction accessible to much wider audiences than previously, while he set up the Club degli Editori as Italy’s first mail-order book club.

The third of six children born to Domenico Secondo, an itinerant shoemaker, and his wife, Ermenegilda, Arnoldo was forced to give up his formal education at a young age in order to contribute to the family’s income. 

The tradition of gialli crime novels
was started by Mondadori

After the family had moved to Ostiglia, on the banks of the Po river, Arnoldo had a series of jobs and became an active socialist. His publishing career began when he began working in a stationery shop, which gave him access to a printing press.

After teaching himself how to operate the machine, he began to publish a socialist newspaper called Luce.  He enjoyed his new working environment and with the aid of a benefactor was able to raise enough money to buy the shop and its press. 

Mondadori proved to be an astute businessman, soon recognising that handsome profits could be made by producing textbooks for Italy’s growing education system. In 1912 he launched the La Scolastica imprint with Aia Madama, a collection of folk tales assembled by his friend, Tomaso Monicelli, an Ostigliese scholar whose collaboration encouraged other noteworthy authors to sign up with Mondadori. 

The outbreak of World War One interrupted the growth of the company, although Mondadori struck on another profitable idea by publishing illustrated newspapers to entertain soldiers on the front line. 

After the end of hostilities, the business expanded rapidly, with new partners coming on board, bringing investment and resources that enabled Mondadori to move his headquarters to Milan, open a production centre in Verona and an administrative office in Rome. One such partner, a well-connected Milan industrialist called Senatore Borletti, enabled Mondadori to make valuable contacts inside the increasingly powerful Fascist party, which turned out to be vital when the Fascist government introduced strict controls in the education system.

It was Borletti who helped persuade D’Annunzio, the aristocratic writer, soldier and nationalist politician, to join Mondadori when he retired to his home on Lake Garda to devote his later years to writing poetry and plays.

Arnoldo Mondadori turned his business 
into Italy's biggest publishing company

In 1921, Mondadori acquired the rights to the popular Children’s Encyclopaedia but his ambitions were not limited to the education sector. Seeking to strengthen his relationship with the Fascist government, Mondadori commissioned Margherita Sarfatti, a well-known art critic, to write a biography of the Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. Entitled Dux, it was a largely sympathetic work which met with the approval of the Duce himself and proved to be a best-seller.

This cosying up to the regime proved to be worthwhile when the decision was made in 1928 to require schools to teach from just one, state-sanctioned textbook. Soon, almost a third of these textbooks were being printed and distributed by Mondadori and in time he had a virtual monopoly.

Nonetheless, this shrinking of the market in school books required Mondadori to establish other business models.

Encouraged by Luigi Rusca, a translator and director of the company, who had seen the success of the genre in the United States, Mondadori moved into publishing crime fiction.  At first, it was foreign writers such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon, Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner whose stories began to appear in Italian translation. Yet they were so successful, with 5,000 copies sold in the first month following the launch, that Italian writers began to take an interest in the genre and in 1931 the first truly Italian giallo - Alessandro Varaldo’s Il Sette Bello - was added to the series.

In 1935, the publishing house further diversified through an agreement with Walt Disney to publish children's magazines based on Disney comics characters, a deal which ran until 1988. Grazia magazine launched in 1938.

The present headquarters of Arnaldo Mondadore
Editore at Segrate, an eastern suburb of Milan

World War Two had severe consequences for the company, who had to move its headquarters to Verona after Milan was subjected to heavy allied bombing.  Mondadori and his family sought refuge in Switzerland.

After the war, the business shifted more and more towards magazine publishing, but books remained a large part of Mondadori’s success, particularly the Oscar Mondadori series, which was launched in 1965 with Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. In the same year, the number of people employed by the company, which stood at 335 in 1950, topped 3,000.

Arnoldo Mondadori died in 1971 at the age of 81, after which the control of the business passed to the younger of his two sons, Giorgio, who had been chairman at the time of his father’s death. Arnoldo was survived by his wife, Andreina.

Giorgio commissioned the Mondadori group’s impressive headquarters at Segrate on the outskirts of Milan but left the company in 1976 after his two sisters, Cristina and Mimma, merged their shares to acquire a controlling interest, putting Cristina’s husband, Mario Formenton, in charge.

Since 1991, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore has been controlled by Fininvest, the holding company established by the late Silvio Berlusconi. The former Italian prime minister’s daughter, Marina, has been chair since 2003.

The elegant parish church of Santissimo
Nome di Maria in Poggio Rusco

Travel tip:

Poggio Rusco, where Arnoldo Mondadori was born, is a town of around 6,500 inhabitants, to which visitors can experience the authentic culture and cuisine of the Oltrepò Mantovano area. Surrounded by fertile fields and canals, Poggio Rusco has an impressive 16th-century castle, an elegant parish church, and an ancient tower that overlooks the town. Local specialties include tortelli di zucca, the pumpkin-filled pasta, and salame mantovano, a typical cured meat. Poggio Rusco is well placed as a base from which to explore the nearby cities of Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Bologna and Modena, which are all within an hour's drive.

The art nouveau Palazzina Mondadori in Ostiglia,
once the home of La Sociale print workshop

Travel tip:

Ostiglia, where Mondadori launched his business career in 1907, is a small town located along the ancient Via Claudia Augusta Padana, overlooking the Po River, in a strategic position once exploited by the Romans. The area around Ostiglia, which lies just under 35km (22 miles) southeast of Mantua, is popular with visitors for its network of nature trails, many of them in the Paludi di Ostiglia nature reserve, which is home to 175 bird species. There are also many cycle routes, including one that links Ostiglia with the city of Treviso in Veneto, which follows the path of the disused 120km (75 miles) Treviso-Ostiglia military railway line. The centre of Ostiglia is notable for its mediaeval towers and art nouveau houses, while the archaeological museum tells the town’s history from its days as the Roman trading post, Hostilia. The Roman historian Cornelius Nepote, who was born there, as was Ermanno, Marquis of Verona, who built the town’s castle. Mondadori's first printing house, La Sociale, can be visited as part of the art nouveau Palazzina Mondadori, which today houses Arnoldo Mondadori's personal and private library, consisting of about 1,000 volumes. The building is equipped with classrooms, multimedia and exhibition halls used to promote reading in conjunction with the Fondazione Mondadori.

Also on this day:

293: The death of San Giusto of Trieste

1418: The birth of builder and diarist Gaspare Nadi

1475: The death of condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni

1893: The birth of car designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina

1906: The birth of film director Luchino Visconti

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1 November

Pietro da Cortona – painter and architect

Outstanding exponent of Baroque style

Artist Pietro da Cortona was born Pietro Berrettini on this day in 1596 in Cortona in Tuscany.  Widely known by the name of his birthplace, Cortona became the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and contributed to the emergence of Baroque architecture in Rome.  Having been born into a family of artisans and masons, Cortona went to Florence to train as a painter before moving to Rome, where he was involved in painting frescoes at the Palazzo Mattei by 1622.  His talent was recognised and he was encouraged by prominent people in Rome at the time. He was commissioned to paint a fresco in the church of Santa Bibiana that was being renovated under the direction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1624.  Then, in 1633, Pope Urban VIII commissioned Cortona to paint a large fresco on the ceiling of the Grand Salon at Palazzo Barberini, his family’s palace. Cortona’s huge Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power marked a watershed in Baroque painting as he created an illusion of an open, airy architectural framework against which figures were situated, creating spatial extension through the medium of paint.  Read more…

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Antonio Canova - sculptor

Genius who could bring marble to life 

Sculptor Antonio Canova was born on this day in 1757 in Possagno in the hills near Asolo in the Veneto.  He became famous for creating lifelike figures, possessing the ability to make the marble he worked with resemble nude flesh. One of his masterpieces is the group, The Three Graces, now in the Victoria and Albert museum in London.  Canova’s father and grandfather were both stone cutters and his grandfather taught him to draw at an early age.  The noble Falier family of Venice took an interest in Canova’s talent and brought him to the city to learn his trade in the workshop of Giuseppe Bernardi.  Canova also studied anatomy, history and languages and later moved to work in Rome. His first big success was his funerary monument to Clement XIV, which was inaugurated in the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli.  The sculptor travelled to France and England and when he returned to Italy was made Marquis of Ischia and given an annual pension.  He died in Venice at the age of 64 and was buried in Tempio Canova in Possagno, the town of his birth.  Canova’s heart was interred in a marble pyramid he had designed as a mausoleum for the painter, Titian, in the Frari church in Venice.  Read more…

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Sistine Chapel ceiling revealed

All Saints’ Day chosen to show off Michelangelo’s work

Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were unveiled for public viewing for the first time on this day in 1512.  The date of All Saints’ Day was chosen by Pope Julius II, who had commissioned Michelangelo, because he felt it appropriate to show off the frescoes on a significant festival in the Catholic Church year.  The frescoes, the central nine panels of which depict stories from the Book of Genesis, have become one of the most famous works of art in the world, the image of  The Creation of Adam rivalled only perhaps by Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa for iconic status.  Yet Michelangelo was reluctant initially to take on the project, which was first mooted in 1506 as part of a general programme of rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica being undertaken by Julius II, who felt that the Sistine Chapel, which had restored by his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, ought to have a ceiling that carried more meaningful decoration than the gold stars on a blue background of his uncle’s design.  Michelangelo, only 31 or 32 at the time, regarded himself as a sculptor rather than a painter.  Read more…

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Annibale Bergonzoli - soldier

Commander who was both decorated and imprisoned by the British

The military commander Annibale Bergonzoli, who served the Italian army in both world wars and led an Italian expeditionary force supporting General Francisco Franco’s nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, was born on this day in 1884 in Cannobio, a town on the shore of Lago Maggiore. Bergonzoli had the distinction of being awarded a medal for bravery by the British during World War One only to be held by them as a prisoner of war after being captured during World War Two. As a boy, Bergonzoli always had a taste for adventure. He completed a 1.5 mile (2.4km) swim across Lago Maggiore at the age of seven. He enrolled at the Military Academy of Modena, graduating with the rank of sub-lieutenant in 1907. He joined the Royal Italian Army in 1911 and was immediately sent to take part in the Italo-Turkish War, helping to take control of the areas of the Ottoman Empire in Libya that became known as Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, as well as some islands in the Aegean Sea.  He remained in Libya for some years after the conflict. Read more…

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Giulio Romano – artist and architect

Painter from Rome left his mark on Mantua

Giulio Romano, who was the principal heir to the artist Raphael and one of the most important initiators of the Mannerist style of painting, died on this day in 1546 in Mantua.  He is most remembered for his masterpiece, the Palazzo del Te, built on the outskirts of Mantua as a pleasure palace for the Gonzaga family, which was designed, constructed and decorated entirely by him and his pupils.  The artist had been born in Rome some time in the 1490s and was given the name Giulio di Pietro di Filippo de’ Gianuzzi. He was known originally as Giulio Pippi, but later was referred to as Giulio Romano because of where he was born.  Giulio was apprenticed to Raphael when still a child and worked on the frescos in the Vatican loggias to designs by Raphael. He also collaborated with him on the decoration of the ceiling in the Villa Farnesina.  He became so important in the workshop that on Raphael’s death in 1520 he was named as one of the master’s chief heirs and he also became his principal artistic executor, completing a number of Raphael’s works, including the Transfiguration.  His own works from this time, such as the Madonna and Saints and the Stoning of St Stephen, both completed in 1523, show he had developed a highly personal style of painting.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Baroque Sculpture in Rome, by Alessandro Angelini

On the whole, when one thinks of 17th-century sculpture in Rome, one has in mind the wonderful and famous works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, such as the Fountain of the Rivers or The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. The very idea of Roman baroque is commonly identified with the century's great genius. And indeed, the influence of Bernini's work on the sculpture and art in general of the period was, especially in Rome, decisive. However, this domination spread only during the second half of the seventeenth century, and less unequivocally than one might suppose. Other great sculptors, with personalities that were often very different from Bernini's, contributed to making the extraordinary proliferation of Roman statuary extremely complex and varied at that time.  Baroque Sculpture in Rome is aimed especially at students and museum visitors who would like to learn more about the topic and discusses the art in a straightforward and strictly chronological fashion.

Alessandro Angelini teaches History of Modern Art at the University of Siena. He specialises in 15th and 16th-century Tuscan art (Disegni italiani del tempo di Donatello, Florence, 1986) and 17th-century sculpture. He also mounted the Alessandro VII Chigi exhibition in Siena in 2000.

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