Italian Sketches E-Book

Deirdre Pirro

• Herausgeber: THE FLORENTINE PRESS
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The icons of contemporary culture finally find a forum in Italian Sketches: the faces of modern Italy, a book that dares to investigate the whos and whys behind one of the world’s most-loved countries. Drawn from Pirro’s column in The Florentine, Tuscany’s English-speaking newspaper, Italian Sketches portrays a nation whose modern cultural landscape remains largely undiscovered.

Leseprobe

Italian Sketches

the faces of modern Italy

byDeirdre Pirro

with illustrations byLeo Cardini

Book design: Marco Badiani

Cover, illustrations and layout: Leo Cardini

Editor: Linda Falcone

Copyeditor: Ellen Wert

Proofreader: Giovanni Giusti

ISBN 978-88-97696-12-4

2009 B’Gruppo srl, Prato

Collana The Florentine Press

Riproduzione vietata

1st digital edition: November 2015

1st print edition: June 2009

All rights reserved

© Deirdre Pirro

© Leo Cardini

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

To receive information about The Florentine Press series or to obtain our catalogue write to: [email protected] or visit www.theflorentine.net

eBook by ePubMATIC.com

To Pietro and Piero.

PREFACE

Culture lovers the world over often cultivate an awe-struck sense of familiarity in relationship to Italy’s cultural history, moved by the indisputable genius of Leonardo, Michelangelo or Dante, who still demand our attention on a first-name basis. And when it comes to recounting Italy’s grandeur, Anglo writers from the Grand Tour onwards have always been generous with their ink, spotlighting the splendour of the peninsula’s artistic Renaissance and the ingenious passion of its people. Yet, amidst widespread literary celebration of Italy’s past, the mosaics that make up the country’s modern identity are often left fragmented, uncollected and pitifully unpolished. Its contemporary culture is too overwrought with paradox, tragedy and intrigue to tempt anyone but the boldest authors to venture into the political, moral and social labyrinth that characterized the country throughout the twentieth century, as it forged its way into the second millennium.

To capture the daunting essence of contemporary Italy, one must shed the mystique and accept the mystery, embrace the talent, admit the decadence and shoulder both its failures and its triumphs. With capsule-like chapters that captivate the novice and impress the knowledgeable, Deirdre Pirro’s Italian Sketches provides a showcase for Italy’s unsung heroes, unpunished villains, creative masters and forerunners of innovation and reform. Her bravely straightforward accounts of both icons and unknowns find well-matched visual interpretation in Leo Cardini’s striking biographical illustrations, created by hand on a computer pen tablet, rather than by an applied filter technique.

The idea for Italian Sketches was born in a café in Florence when The Florentine, Tuscany’s English-language newspaper, was looking for a writer to create a column on Italy’s present-day identity. By the morning’s second cup of coffee, Deirdre Pirro, an international lawyer, had decided to champion the challenge.

Unembarrassed by the country’s inherent complexity, she began to create highly popular articles primarily focusing on the personalities that formed twentieth-century Italy.

Italian Sketches is a book whose name reveals its nature. A sketchbook reflects an artist’s whims or inspiration, acting as a springboard for unexpected but important discoveries or unforeseeable creative experiences. Sketchbooks epitomize an exciting brand of artistic energy that overlooks the subtle requirements of more formalized works. As its theme provides for an infinite storehouse of stories, Italian Sketches does not pretend to feature a complete overview of Italian society or a comprehensive study of the men and women who have contributed to its creation. Nonetheless, this forgivably haphazard series of essays, quite suitably reflects Italy and its varied, often animated nature.

Linda Falcone

CONTENTS

Ideas and industry

Maria Montessori

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Alfonso Bialetti

Bruno Cavalieri Ducati

Achille Lauro

Gianni Agnelli

Rita Levi Montalcini

Show and business

Gina Lollobrigida

Sergio Leone

Sofia Loren

Federico Fellini

Moira Orfei

Mario & Vittorio Cecchi Gori

Politics and power

Alcide De Gasperi

Junio Borghese

Loris Fortuna

Aldo Moro

Nilde Iotti

Bettino Craxi

Morality and corruption

Pasquale Rotondi

John XXIII

Lina Merlin

Franca Viola

Enzo Tortora

Roberto Calvi

Giovanni Falcone & Paolo Borsellino

Words and music

Pellegrino Artusi

Arturo Toscanini

Enrico Caruso

Liala

Alberto Moravia

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

Indro Montanelli

Luciano Pavarotti

Fashion and style

Giuseppe Borsalino

Emilio Pucci

Valentino

Fendi

Gianni Versace

Giorgio Armani

Ideas and industry

In 1896, Maria Montessori became a pioneer in Italy by being its first woman graduate in medicine. This achievement alone would have made her famous, but she went on to revolutionise education, changing the way we think about children’s intellectual development, making her a household name around the world. In fact, today, there are over 8,000 Montessori schools everywhere, from Italy to China, Russia to India, Ireland to Sri Lanka, with 4,000 of them in the United States alone. Montessori’s theories have become so influential that the United States, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands have incorporated Montessori schools within their public education systems.

Born into a middle-class family in Chiaravalle, a small town near Ancona, on August 31, 1870, Montessori was the niece of Antonio Stop-pani, a celebrated Italian geologist and palaeontologist. Always interested in the sciences and encouraged by her mother, she originally studied engineering before switching to medicine. After graduating from La Sapienza University in Rome, she began her career at the Santo Spirito hospital in same city working with ‘idiot-children’, as they were called in those days. In 1896, she became the principal of a school for training teachers of mentally retarded children, and between 1899 and 1900 she taught at a college for women in Rome. Her next appointment, in 1901, was director of the new Orthophrenic School, a former asylum for ‘deficient and insane’ children. At the time, children in these kinds of institutes were kept isolated in closed, empty rooms, without any proper care, cleanliness or stimulation. Sensing that this brand of treatment was inappropriate, she studied psychology and pedagogy and began working on developing materials to encourage their mental development. Because the Ministry of Education would not allow her to experiment on normal school-aged children to verify the successful results she had attained with ‘deficient’ youngsters, she jumped at the chance in 1907 to co-ordinate a day-care centre for preschool working-class children in San Lorenzo, a slum in Rome. Thus, in the midst of the appalling conditions in which these children lived, the first Casa dei Bambini or Children’s House was created. There, by trial and error, she tested her method and ideas often saying afterwards ‘I studied my children and they taught me how to teach them’.