On This Day: children’s author Gianni Rodari dies
The creator of beloved vegetable rebel Cipollino, Gianni Rodari, winner of children’s literature’s highest honour, passed away on 14 April 1980.
Continue Reading
Category: Culture
On this day: Futurist pioneer Gino Severini born
The painter and mosaicist Gino Severini was born on 7 April 1883 in the hilltop Tuscan town of Cortona. A leading figure in early 20th-century Italian art, Severini became one of the most internationally connected members of the Futurist movement, bridging artistic developments in Italy and Paris before moving through Cubism and later Neoclassicism.
Continue Reading
Pompeii’s walls reveal evidence of the ancient world’s ‘machine gun’
The ruins of Pompeii have once again rewritten the historical record, casting new light on the military technology of the ancient world. A team of Italian researchers has identified impact marks on the city’s northern defensive walls that they believe were made by a polybolos. The Greek-engineered repeating artillery weapon (‘machine gun’) was capable of […]
Continue Reading
Uffizi hit by Cyber-Attack
Florence’s Uffizi Galleries have confirmed they were the target of a cyber-attack earlier this year. However, the museum is pushing back hard against reports that its world-famous art collection was ever at risk.
Continue Reading
Art theft: Masterpieces vanish from Italian museum in 3 minutes
A midnight art theft at the Magnani Rocca Foundation near Parma has shocked the art world, with thieves making off with three Impressionist masterpieces worth an estimated €9 million.
Continue Reading
On this day: birth of artist Fra Bartolommeo
Born 28 March 1472 in Savignano di Prato, Tuscany, Fra Bartolommeo, a Dominican friar and High Renaissance master, whose figures were said to move “with a seraphic grace that must have struck the young Raphael with the force of revelation.”
Continue Reading
Italy buys Antonello Ecce Homo and vows to keep buying
A tiny devotional panel, Ecce Homo, by Antonello da Messina, worn smooth by centuries of prayer, went on display in Rome’s Senate on Thursday. At $14.9 million, it is almost certainly the last work by one of Italy’s most transformative painters still in private hands.
Continue Reading
Multimedia project at Rome’s Museo dell’Ara Pacis
A new immersive experience at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis will allow visitors to rediscover one of ancient Rome’s most important monuments through light, sound and narration.
Continue Reading
On this day: writer Dario Fo born
On 24 March 1926, one of the most provocative and prolific figures in twentieth-century theatre was born in the small Lombardy town of Leggiuno Sangiano, in the Province of Varese. Dario Fo would go on to write more than 80 plays, win the Nobel Prize in Literature, be banned from Italian television, and spend a […]
Continue Reading
The founding of the Franciscan Order
From the founding of the Franciscan Order in medieval Umbria, Italy to how the modern-day order functions, Italy News Online looks at how St Francis changed many aspects of Chritiantity.
Continue Reading