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The Florentine
Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.
It is indeed a rare occurrence that the mayor of any city be considered a saint. But, in 1986, Pope John Paul II began the process of beatification, the third of four steps in the process towards sainthood, for Giorgio La Pira, twice mayor of Florence, first from 1951 to
In early December 1927, a very small, reserved, middle-aged and somewhat overwhelmed Grazia Deledda made the gruelling journey by train from Rome to Stockholm. She was the first female Italian writer and only the second woman author (after the Swedish writer, Selma Lagerlòf) to be awarded the
Two men with difficult characters formed one of the most significant design teams in the history of the Italian automobile industry. Enzo Ferrari built the motors and chassis of his legendary cars, and Battista Pininfarina often styled their classy and revolutionary bodies. Battista Farina was born in Cortanza d'
Josephine Rogers Mariotti Florence, Edizioni Polistampa, 2009 12 euro What is it about the Mona Lisa that keeps people talking-and publishing books-500 years after the fact? Is it the ambiguous smile? The mysterious identity? An obsession with all things da Vinci? At a time
Thanks to Teresa Mattei, Italian women now exchange or are given sprigs of this bright yellow flower to celebrate their day every March 8.
Just after 8 o'clock on the morning of July 23, 1993, an ambulance was called to the elegant eighteenth-century Palazzo Belgioioso, just behind the Scala Opera House in Milan. A man had shot himself in the head. That man was Raoul Gardini, the charismatic entrepreneur who had dreamed
This is a chapter from Jane Fortune's book Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence Suspicious that artist Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) had been poisoned by an envious maid, her father forced authorities to exhume her corpse from a vault in the Bolognese church of San Domenico. Thus,
I was nervous before interviewing writer and artist Gabriella Kuruvilla: she speaks no English; I speak no Italian. Because we would both rely on translators to relay our ideas, I was sure that something would get lost. She entered the room without hesitation, quickly putting out her cigarette outside the
The name Bugatti conjures up images of Gatsby-type roadsters of the 1930s. Indeed, these magnificent cars were designed and built by Ettore Bugatti, one of Carlo Bugatti's two immensely talented sons. But their father was also a design genius. In fact, at the end of the nineteenth and
A child prodigy who copied the masters and painted the powerful, Angelica Kauffman (also spelled Kauffmann; 1741-1807) accompanied her father on a five-year journey through Milan, Venice, Parma and Naples. Johann Joseph Kauffman was a minor Swiss painter of portraits and frescos. His daughter was an international sensation. &
At the end of World War II, Italians were asked to decide whether they wanted to retain their monarchy or to become a republic. Women, for the first time, also voted in the plebiscite. In the referendum held on June 2 and 3, 1946, the republican side won by a
Many know George Perkins Marsh as a pioneering environmentalist, statesman, author, lawyer, architect and linguist, but few know that he was an expatriate in Italy as the first and longest-serving American ambassador to Italy appointed by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Marsh was first stationed in Turin for four
Women is an expression of love for the female artists of Florence's past. Jane Fortune has dug through the archives of the Florentine museums in search of women's names and their works, which are often in storage and away from the public eye. We learn that Florence conceals
Rumor has it that Piero della Francesca's Early Renaissance masterpiece The Duke and Duchess of Urbino languished in the Uffizi's deposits until the 1860s, when the artist was ‘rediscovered' by Cezanne. Thanks to the renewed attention, the fifteenth-century della Francesca piece quickly became a must-see
Every December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in San Remo, Italy, the Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway. This year, U.S. president Barack Obama will receive the prize for his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. To date, only one Italian
In the summer of 1984, Livorno, the port town on the Tuscan coast, was the site of one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of Italian art. The Museo Progressivo di Arte Moderna was planning to celebrate the centenary of the birth of one of the city's
In the aftermath of the devastating 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), many European countries restricted or banned nuclear energy plants. France, which did not, today produces almost 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, making it the world'
How many fashion designers can boast collaborators like writer and artist Jean Cocteau, surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and sculptor Alberto Giacometti? Clients like the Duchess of Windsor, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn? None, except Elsa Schiaparelli, affectionately known to all as ‘Schiap.' Between the late 1920s
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano translated by Shaun Whiteside Doubleday €19,20 It's a terrible thing to say, but I was determined not to like The Solitude of Prime Numbers, the award-winning book by Italian author Paolo Giordano. I'd heard
A century ago, on October 19, 1909 Cesare Lombroso, physician, psychiatrist and the founder of the Italian school of criminology or, as we know it today, criminal anthropology, died at age 74 of angina pectoris at his home in Turin. In his trailblazing works, especially the five editions of
In her forthcoming book, Invisible women, Jane Fortune spotlights women whose lives and works have enriched Florence's artistic wealth throughout the centuries. Marietta Robusti, known as ‘La Tintoretta,' is one of these women, and her paintings are part of the Florentine collections. Marietta Robusti (Venice, circa
Living in Florence in summertime may not be easy but at least it's colourful and bright. A far cry, then, from the grim November setting of A Time of Mourning, Christobel Kent's latest novel, which opens on il giorno dei morti, the day of the dead, when Italians
A game-shooting safari at Ouagadougou in Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) proved fatal for Fausto Coppi, one of Italy's greatest and most idolized cyclists who, in the 1940s and 50s, was acclaimed by his fans as the Campionissimo or the Airone (Heron), like the bird. When he returned
