Curated playlist
Italian Roman Catholics
- MichelangeloMichelangelo said he lived like a poor man, yet he was worth about 50,000 gold ducats.
- TitianTitian painted his own face into a prayer against the plague. The plague reached Venice, and he died in 1576.
- Carlo MadernoA young marble cutter from a Swiss quarry town became chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica.
- TintorettoTintoretto secretly hung a full-sized painting on a ceiling instead of submitting a sketch.
- RaphaelRaphael painted Michelangelo into The School of Athens as Heraclitus.
- Marie de' MediciMarie de' Medici scaled a forty-meter prison wall on a rope ladder in 1619. Her own son had jailed her.
- Victor Emmanuel IIItalian politicians called Victor Emmanuel II an imbecile, yet he became Italy's first king.
- Filippino LippiEvery workshop in Florence closed for a day when painter Filippino Lippi died in 1504. His mother was a nun.
- Christopher ColumbusColumbus believed Japan lay only about 2,400 nautical miles from the Canary Islands. The true figure is over 10,000.
- Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of UrbinoLorenzo de' Medici died at 26, yet his daughter became a queen of France. He ruled Florence and fought a war for Urbino.
- Giorgia MeloniGiorgia Meloni ended a speech at a rally in Rome on the 19th of October 2019 with four short declarations. "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I'm Christian." She was attacking a proposal to replace the words father and…
- Joséphine de BeauharnaisNapoleon's last words included Joséphine, his ex-wife of eleven years. He had annulled their marriage and remarried.
- Lorenzo GhibertiMichelangelo named the second set of Lorenzo Ghiberti's bronze doors the Gates of Paradise.
- Paolo VeroneseFacing the Inquisition in 1573, painter Paolo Veronese refused to repaint his Last Supper. He renamed it instead.
- GiottoGiotto probably did not paint the famous St. Francis frescoes at Assisi.
- MasaccioMasaccio drove a nail into a wall to draw perspective lines with string. His Holy Trinity fresco still shows the marks.
- Amerigo VespucciAmerigo Vespucci most likely died without knowing two continents were named for him.
- DonatelloDonatello kept a bucket of money hanging from his workshop ceiling. Anyone nearby could take what they needed.
- Filippo BrunelleschiTuscany lacked timber to scaffold Florence's cathedral dome, yet Brunelleschi won the 1418 contest.
- Sandro BotticelliIn 1811, no buyer wanted Botticelli's The Mystical Nativity. In 1857, more than a million people saw it in Manchester.
- Luciano PavarottiLuciano Pavarotti hit nine high Cs at the Metropolitan Opera and took seventeen curtain calls.
- Lucky LucianoLucky Luciano, born Salvatore Lucania, was arrested 25 times between 1916 and 1936 and spent no time in prison. The charges ranged from assault and illegal gambling to blackmail and robbery. Then a trial over a prostitution racket ended…
- CaravaggioCaravaggio's Grooms' Madonna hung in Saint Peter's Basilica for exactly two days.
- Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari's word rinascita, meaning rebirth, became the name of the Renaissance.
- Giovanni Pierluigi da PalestrinaThe composer Palestrina, called the prince of music, has no marked tomb. Later construction covered his grave.
- Lorenzo de' MediciLorenzo de' Medici survived a cathedral ambush in 1478 that killed his brother. The assassins had a pope's blessing.
- CimabueA painting from a French kitchen, attributed to Cimabue, sold for 24 million euros in 2019.
- Antonio SalieriAntonio Salieri's own Requiem was first played at his memorial service.
- Salvatore SchillaciSalvatore Schillaci, known to Italians as Totò, ended the 1990 World Cup ranked above Lothar Matthäus and Diego Maradona as the best player of the tournament. Almost nobody saw that coming. He was a striker from a poor family in Palermo,…
- Giovanni Battista TiepoloIn Madrid, a rival got Tiepolo's church paintings removed. Anton Raphael Mengs had the ear of the king's confessor.
- Alcide De GasperiAlcide De Gasperi cataloged books in the Vatican Library for fourteen years.
- Andrea MantegnaAndrea Mantegna's teacher mocked his first frescoes as figures "like men made of stone."
- Gianluigi BuffonGianluigi Buffon reached three Champions League finals and lost all three. The Italian goalkeeper never won the trophy.