The artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo died on 11 July 1593 in Milan. He is celebrated for his imaginative portrait heads built entirely from objects such as fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish,
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Born on 1st July 1464, Clara Gonzaga, the eldest daughter of Federico I Gonzaga lived only 38 years but left a dynastic legacy that stretched from the Bourbon kings of France to King Charles III of Britain and Northern Ireland.
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On 21 June 1919, the pioneering architect, urban planner, and ecologist Paolo Soleri was born in Turin, Italy. Renowned for his radical philosophy of “arcology”, a fusion of architecture and ecology, Soleri dedicated his life to reimagining how human habitations could coexist harmoniously with the natural world.
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The Franciscan friar, mathematician and friend of Leonardo da Vinci – Luca Pacioli – died on 19 June 1517 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro where he had been born. He left behind a legacy that still shapes the way the world does business.
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On 14 June 1837, Giacomo Leopardi — poet, philosopher and one of the most original literary minds in the Italian tradition — died in Naples aged 38. He was the victim of the cholera epidemic then sweeping the city. In a life marked by physical suffering, intellectual isolation and serial heartbreak, he produced a body […]
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On 11 June 1289, two armies met on a Tuscan plain and fought a battle whose consequences would shape the Italian Renaissance. The horrors of the Battle of Campaldino would find their way into one of the greatest poems ever written.
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On 10 June 1918, Milan lost one of the most singular figures in Italian cultural life — Arrigo Boito. He was a composer who nearly destroyed his relationship with the country’s greatest opera composer, then went on to make him immortal.
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On 8 June 1290, Beatrice Portinari, a young woman whose brief life would shape one of the greatest works in the history of literature, died.
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Born on 7th June 1422 in Gubbio, Federico da Montefeltro was the most celebrated condottiere of his age. He was a mercenary commander of formidable military skill who used the profits of war to create one of the finest courts of the Italian Renaissance at Urbino.
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Lorenzo di Pietro di Giovanni — known to posterity as Vecchietta, ‘the little old one’ — died in Siena on 6th June 1480. He left behind a legacy in paint, bronze and stone that remains inseparable from the identity of one of Italy’s most artistically rich cities.
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