Italian Sketches

Some of Italy’s most remarkable citizens have made their names in Florence, whether they be Florentine, Tuscan or from further afield, across the peninsula and its islands. Their personal histories are recorded in the wide-ranging articles here, which document the lives of scientists, artists, politicians and more, who chose to enrich Florence with their work, and root their legacies here.

 

ART + CULTURE

Giorgio La Pira

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

ART + CULTURE

Grazia Deledda

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

ART + CULTURE

Battista Pininfarina

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'

ART + CULTURE

Teresa Mattei

Thanks to Teresa Mattei, Italian women now exchange or are given sprigs of this bright yellow flower to celebrate their day every March 8.

ART + CULTURE

Raoul Gardini

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

ART + CULTURE

Carlo Bugatti

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

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Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

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

ART + CULTURE

Amedeo Modigliani

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

ART + CULTURE

Felice Ippolito

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'

ART + CULTURE

Elsa Schiaparelli

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

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Cesare Lombroso

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

ART + CULTURE

Fausto Coppi

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

ART + CULTURE

Giovanni Spadolini

The Italian political cartoonist Giorgio Forattini always depicted Giovanni Spadolini, the first non-Christian Democrat prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic, as an impish, corpulent cupid, gradually making him more and more naked as his political powers increased. But Spadolini was not just a politician. He was

ART + CULTURE

Guccio Gucci

Family, fame, feuding, passion, litigation and homicide. All the ingredients of a successful Hollywood soapie like are, instead, the backdrop to the story of one of Italy's best known luxury label clans: the Gucci family. The patriarch of this dynasty was Guccio Gucci. A native of Florence, Guccio was

ART + CULTURE

Franco Basaglia

Feigning madness in Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won Jack Nicholson an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1976.  Based on a novel of the same name written in 1962 by Ken Kesey, who had worked as an aide on the night

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Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa

On September 3, 1982, Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and his 32-year-old bride of less than two months, Emanuela Setti Carraro, were gunned down with almost military precision by mob hitmen ...

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Domenico Modugno

To watch an original clip of modugno singing nel blu, dipinto di blu, go to Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-dvi0ugelc.   At the beginning of January 1951, the first annual Festival della Canzone ...

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Arturo Toscanini

The twentieth century's great conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was born in Parma on March 25, 1867, the son of a music-loving tailor who spent much of his time fighting in Giuseppe Garibaldi's republican forces. Blessed with a prodigious memory-which would later enable him to remember the entire

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Giuseppe Borsalino

  What could men like Al Capone, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astair, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Sinatra, Pope John XXIII and Robert Redford possibly have in ...

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Nilde Iotti

In its short history, the Republic of Italy has only once almost had a woman prime minister. That woman was Leonilde Iotti, or Nilde, as everyone called her, who, in ...

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Junio Valerio Borghese

Where do you go if your attempt to overthrow the legitimate government in Italy fails? To have a plate of spaghetti, where else? This is exactly what happened when the coup d'etat planned by Junio Valerio Borghese, the heroic World War II naval commander and post-war, right-wing

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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Italians and pasta are like a horse and carriage: they just naturally go together. The very idea of depriving Italians of their beloved pasta seems crazy, but Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the poet, novelist, critic and founder of Italy's Futurist movement, tried to do just that, although, as grocery stores

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Gianni Versace

In 1992, Gianni Versace, the eclectic Italian fashion designer, purchased Casa Casuarina in South Beach, Miami, for $2.9 million. Constructed in 1930 and modelled after a residence built in Santo Domingo in 1510 by the son of Christopher Columbus, restoration of the house became Versace's obsession. Five years

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Roberto Calvi

On June 17, 1982, with his pockets filled with building bricks, $15,000 in three different currencies and a false passport, Roberto Calvi was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge ...

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