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Italian Sketches

ART + CULTURE

ART + CULTURE

Renato Balestra

A brief history on the iconic Italian fashion designer Renato Balestra and his impact on the world of fashion.

ART + CULTURE

Carlo Adolfo Schlatter

Home-atelier museum Casa Schlatter houses a collection of over 350 Schlatter works and artefacts that are available for public viewing.

ART + CULTURE

Giuseppe Fiorelli

Summer 2022 brought exciting discoveries in Pompeii, the largest working archaeological site in the world, attracting millions of tourists every year. About 24 kilometers south of Naples, this Ancient Roman ...

ART + CULTURE

Margherita Hack

The centenary of the birth of Margherita Hack, one of Italy’s most illustrious astrophysicists and the first woman to become the director of an astronomy observatory (Trieste, 1964–87), was celebrated ...

ART + CULTURE

Amalia Moretti Foggia della Rovere

Amalia Moretti Foggia della Rovere, aka “Petronilla”, was one of the first woman doctors in Italy as well as a leading journalist.

ART + CULTURE

Angelo de Gubernatis

Florence hides many unexpected jewels, but they take time for the visitor to find, visit and savour. One of these is the Indian Museum, an anthropology and ethnology section of ...

ART + CULTURE

Sylvano Bussotti

For five days between September 20 and 25, as part of Estate Fiorentina, several major Florentine cultural organisations will celebrate the 90th birthday of Sylvano Bussotti, one of the city’s ...

ART + CULTURE

Francesco Carletti

The son of Antonio Carletti and his wife Lucrezia Macinghi, Francesco Carletti was born in Florence in either 1573 or 1574. His father was a descendant of an old merchant ...

ART + CULTURE

The Busatti Family: weavers since 1842

A friend telephoned me a month ago and said, “I’m coming by to take you to see a real piece of industrial archaeology”. He did that and so much more. ...

ART + CULTURE

Elvira Gemignani Puccini

On November 29, 1924, aged 65, the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died of a heart attack as a result of radiation treatment he was undergoing for throat cancer at the ...

ART + CULTURE

Rose Montmasson

When in via della Scala, take a moment to pause outside number 50 and look at the plaque on the wall. It translates into English: In this palace which was ...

ART + CULTURE

Barsene “Baldissera” Conti

On May 15, 1896, a small, slender woman with a baby in her arms lay down across the tram track in Brozzi, a town on the outskirts of Florence. Her ...

ART + CULTURE

Gioachino Rossini

In 1829, at the peak of his superstar fame as the composer of more than 40 operas including L’Italiana in Algeri, La Cenerentola, La gazza ladra, La donna del lago, ...

ART + CULTURE

Suso Cecchi d’Amico

Protests about the gender equality gap in the film industry continued to rumble on as the lights of the 76th annual Venice International Film Festival went out at the end ...

ART + CULTURE

The Fontana sisters

The Fontana sisters, Zoe, Micol and Giovanna, were pivotal in establishing the “Made in Italy” fashion brand internationally.

ART + CULTURE

L’Italienne: Catherine de’ Medici

On January 5, 1589, when Catherine, the great Medici-born queen and regent of France, died of pleurisy at 69 years of age in Blois, just eight months before her son, ...

ART + CULTURE

Francesco Cirio

Summer, spring, winter and fall: there is no better dish than a piping hot plate of spaghetti with pummarola, the rich Italian sauce made from tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive ...

ART + CULTURE

Vittorio degli Albizi

The powerful Albizi family whose German roots dated to the time of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III made its considerable fortune out of importing and selling French wool and ...

ART + CULTURE

Alessandro Sinigaglia

After Mussolini fell and the armistice had been signed, German troops occupied Florence for almost a year between September 1943 and August 1944. A climate of fear, suspicion and betrayal ...

ART + CULTURE

Narciso Latini

The name “Latini” has long been synonymous with traditional Tuscan cooking in Florence. For more than a century, four generations of the Latini family have nurtured and championed the best ...

ART + CULTURE

Franca Sozzani

The rich and beautiful of Italy’s fashion world, including Diego Della Valle, Nina Testa Fuerstenberg, Matteo Marzotto and Lapo Elkann, attended the funeral of Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani at ...

ART + CULTURE

Andrea Bocelli

Opera tenor Andrea Bocelli is a global superstar who today would rank high up in any list of famous living Italians. As classical music’s top-selling artist, with over 80 million ...

ART + CULTURE

Giovanni Fattori

A short street named for Italian World War I patriot Cesare Battisti runs between two of the most important piazze in Florence, San Marco and Santissima Annunziata. Most of us ...

ART + CULTURE

Renzo Rosso

After four years in the fashion wilderness, designer John Galliano finally returned to the catwalks, first in London and then in Paris. Formerly head designer for Christian Dior, in 2011 ...

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