July 8th
1593: Birth of the Roman painter Artemisia Gentileschi (d. 1653). 1822: Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Gulf of Spezia, when his boat sank in a summer storm. The poet was less than a month short of his thirtieth birthday. His ashes are interred in the 'Protestant' Cemetery in Rome. |
July 12th
100 BCE: Birth, in Rome, of Gaius Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE). 1643: Death, in Livorno, of François Duquesnoy (b. 1597), a Flemish Baroque sculptor, who was active in Rome for most of his career. 1884: Birth, in Livorno, of the painter and sculptor Amadeo Modigliani (d. 1920). |
July 20th
1304: Birth, in Certaldo, of the poet Francesco Petrarca (d. 1374), known in English as Petrarch. 1609: Death of the painter Federico Zuccari (b. 1539). 1890: Birth, in Bologna, of the painter Giorgio Morandi (d. 1964). 1903: Death of Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903), one of only three popes to have reigned for twenty-five years or more. 1937: Death of Guglielmo Marconi (b. 1874), who is credited with the invention of radio. In 1909 Marconi won the Nobel Prize for Physics. |
July 29th
1644: Death of Pope Urban VIII (r. 1623-44). 1883: Birth of Benito Mussolini (d. 1945), who founded and led the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. 1900: Assassination, in Monza, of Umberto I (r. 1878-1900), the second king of Italy. |
July 30th
1511: Birth, in Arezzo, of the painter and writer Giorgio Vasari, whose book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, first published in 1550, led to him being hailed as the world's first art historian. 1549: Birth, in Florence, of Ferdinando I de' Medici (d. 1609), the third Grand Duke of Tuscany. 2007: Death, in Rome, of the film director Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912). |
July 31st
1556: Death of St Ignatius of Loyola (b. 1491), the founder of the Jesuits, who is buried in the Chiesa del Gesu in Rome. 1598: Birth, in Bologna, of the Baroque sculptor Alessandro Algardi (d. 1654). 1686: Birth of the Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello (d. 1739). 1919: Birth, in Turin, of Primo Levi (d. 1987), chemist, writer and holocaust survivor. His most famous book is, perhaps, The Periodic Table. |