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 BCE: 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
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. |