June 6th
1625: Birth, in Carrara, of the sculptor Domenico Guidi. 1861: Death, in Turin, of Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy. Cavour, as he is generally known, was fifty years old when he died; he had been PM for less than three months! |
June 8th
1290: Death, in Florence, of Beatrice di Folco Portinari, Dante’s muse. 1625: Birth of the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini (d. 1712). 1671: Birth of the Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni (d. 1751). 1768: Death, in Trieste, of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (b. 1717). Wincklemann was murdered by Francesco Arcangeli (1737-68), an unemployed cook who was staying in the same hotel. |
June 9th
68: Death of the Emperor Nero (r. 54-68). Nero was thirty-years old when he committed suicide. With his death, the Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an end. 1311: The Maestà, a monumental and ground-breaking altarpiece, the work of Duccio di Buoninsegna, was unveiled in the cathedral of Siena. |
June 21st
1527: Death of the Florentine diplomat, historian and political theorist, Niccolò Machiavelli (b. 1469), author of Il Principe (The Prince). 1547: Death of the Venetian painter Sebastiano Luciani, better known as Sebastiano del Piombo (b. 1485). |
June 22nd
1633: The Holy Office of the Catholic Church found Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) guilty of heresy and sentenced him to imprisonment. The following day, this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life. 1805: Birth, in Genoa, of Giuseppe Mazzini (d. 1872), politician and leading activist for the unification of Italy. |
June 23rd
79: Death of the Emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79), who commissioned the building of the world's most famous amphitheatre, namely the Colosseum. |
June 27th
1574: Death of the painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (b. 1511), whose book Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori (The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects), which was first published in 1550, led to him being hailed as the world's first art historian. |
June 28th
1503: Birth of Giovanni della Casa (d. 1556), who wrote Il Galateo, a very influential guide to the rules of courtly etiquette, which was published two years after his death. 1607: Death, in Naples, of the architect and engineer Domenico Fontana (b. 1543), who, in 1586, was in charge of moving and re-erecting the ancient Egyptian obelisk in St Peter's Square. 1867: Birth of the Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello (d. 1936), who, in 1934, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pirandello's most famous work is, perhaps, the play Six Characters in Search of an Author. |