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| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Regions MARCHE Official Website: www.regione.marche.it The Territory Located in central Italy between the Apennines and the Adriatic, the region enjoys a very varied landscape going from mountains through hills to beautiful beaches. In the hinterland there are fine, ancient medieval boroughs, whereas the centers along the coast are mostly modern, and suited to summer tourism, thanks to the low waters and fine sandy beaches, apart from one high, rocky cliff at Monte Conero, with, just below, the city of Ancona, the only natural port of the region. The People The "marchigiani" like to live in the small centers, and they are hard-working, orderly people who established a network of small industries of high quality merchandise in the textile and leather sectors, or in very special niches like high quality paper at Fabriano and musical instruments at Castelfidardo. Agriculture relies mostly on vegetables, olive trees and vineyards, and fishing is also an important resource, since the region is the fourth in Italy for fishing. Tourism, especially to the seaside resorts, has been growing in recent times. History Before the Roman conquest (3rd century BC) the region was inhabited by the Piceni along the coast and the Gauls in the mountains, then under the Romans it was important for trade, which developed along the Via Flaminia and Via Salaria. At the time of the barbarians' invasions, it was split in two, with the Southern part under the Lombards and the Northern under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire. The name of the region comes from the establishment by the Franks of "Marche", that is Marquisdoms, such as Camerino, Fermo and Ancona. Little by little the towns and cities got more and more independent from the feudal lords, and in the 14th century the region was divided into a number of small states with the Malatesta in Fano, and the Montefeltro and later the Della Rovere in Urbino. Then the State of the Church gradually widened its influence in the region, until in the 17th century all the territory was under the rule of the Popes. In the Napoleonic period Marche was a republic, then after the Congress of Vienna returned under the State of the Church, to be finally annexed to Italy in 1860, during the Second War of Independence. Landmarks in Marche The region is full of cultural and natural wonders, from the medieval ages to Renaissance, mountain forests and romantic landscapes of great beauty, and the hills producing oil and wine of exceptional quality. A census of castles in the Marches region gives 33 "rocche", 106 castles, 15 fortresses, 170 towers, almost more in number than the communes of the region. This crowded fortified landscape is explained by the borderline position of the region, for many centuries surrounded by strong monarchies, bordering to the south the Kingdom of Naples and the State of the Church, and to the north and west a number of independent states and the powerful Austrian dominions. Almost all these castles are in great condition and well kept, thanks also to the hard-working character of the population, based for centuries on a sound small-size industry economy, and their deep love of culture and history. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Genealogy What is Genealogy Research? Genealogy, the research of our roots, both genetical and cultural. From the dusty, crumbling papers of documents people who belong to what we now are come out of the mist of time and look at us silently, affectionately, waiting for someone to decipher their stories, rescue them from oblivion and pass their as yet forgotten names and stories on to the next generations. HOW TO START Genealogy Research in Italy You want to go backwards and find ancestors To start any serious attempt of this kind, you need the earliest possible name with place and date (death, birth or marriage). From there you'll proceed through births, marriages etc, according to the availability of resources - municipalities certificates, civil records, onciari, parish books, notary records and still other possible sources. As you proceed backward in time, resources will become scantier, and research longer and more expensive. You want to go forward and find relatives You can try writing a letter to all those families bearing the surname of your ancestor in his/her municipality of origin. You want to know more You want to know more about the places, traditions, customs of your ancestral land, the recipes and economy, you want to reconstruct the real life of your ancestors, to preserve the heritage that you had from your forefathers through thousands of years of Italian history . We can Help you If you would like to do Italian Genealogcal Research by yourselves, here are our step-by-step, detailed and useful suggestions on: How to Find Places of Birth and Residence of your Ancestors and Living Relatives in ITALY How to Obtain Information and Documents of your Ancestors in ITALY How to Contact your Living Relatives in ITALY We can Assist you If you would like us to Italian Genealogy Research for you, we can Assist you. Here are our easy instructions to use our Assistance: ITALIAN Genealogical Research ITALIAN Translation |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Recipes Spaghetti and Meat Balls Ingredients 1 large egg Coarse salt and ground pepper 1 large onion, finely chopped 6 garlic cloves, minced 1/2 cup plain dried breadcrumbs 3/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving 8 ounces groumd beef 8 ounces ground dark meat turkey 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes 3/4 pound spaghetti Nutrition Info Per Serving Calories: 829 kcal Carbohydrates: 93 g Dietary Fiber: 7 g Fat: 29 g Protein: 47 g Sugars: 6 g Cooking Directions In a large bowl, whisk together egg, 1/4 cup water, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Stir in half the onion and half the garlic. Add breadcrumbs, cheese, beef, turkey, and 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning. Mix gently. Form into 16 balls. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add half the meatballs; brown on all sides, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon. Cook remaining meatballs in remaining tablespoon oil; remove meatballs. Add remaining onion; cook over medium-low until soft, about 5 minutes. Add remaining garlic and 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning; cook 30 seconds. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in tomatoes and 3/4 cup water. Return meatballs; cover, and simmer until cooked through, about 20 minutes. Remove meatballs. Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook spaghetti according to package direction until al dente. Drain; return to pot. Toss with sauce; serve meatballs on top, sprinkled with more cheese. Yield: 4 servings --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Recipes Caramelized Garlic and Shallot Pasta Ingredients 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 1/2 pounds shallots, sliced crosswise into 1/4-inch rings 1 cup peeled garlic cloves, large cloves halved lengthwise 2 teaspoons sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, plus more for water 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 cups Homemade Chicken Stock, or canned low-sodium chicken broth, skimmed of fat 13 ounces ruffle-shaped pasta Fresh basil leaves Parmigiano Reggiano cheese Nutrition Info Per Serving Calories: 407 kcal Carbohydrates: 73 g Dietary Fiber: 3 g Fat: 7 g Protein: 15 g Sugars: 7 g Cooking Directions Heat butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add shallots and garlic cloves, stirring to coat. Sprinkle with sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and the pepper, and stir to combine. Cook until very soft and golden, about 1 hour, adding water 2 tablespoons at a time if the pan seems dry. Using a slotted spoon, transfer garlic and shallots to a bowl, and set aside. Add chicken stock, and bring to a boil, using a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits from the pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is reduced by one quarter, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, return garlic and shallots to pan, and keep warm while cooking pasta. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add pasta, and cook until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain pasta, and return to saucepan. Stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, reserved garlic and shallots, and sauce. Cut basil leaves into thin strips. Divide the pasta and sauce among six serving bowls, and serve immediately garnished with basil and shaved Parmigiano Reggiano. Yield: 6 servings --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Provinces Province of ANCONA Region MARCHE The Province of Ancona extends from the coast of the Adriatic Sea west to the Apennines. Its population is mostly concentrated near the coast and the city of Ancona; other important towns are Castelfidardo, Chiaravalle, Fabriano, Falconara Marittima, Jesi, Loreto, Osimo, and Senigallia. The coastal area is mostly sandy beaches popular in summer; inland, the central portion is an area of farmland, producing red and white wines mainly of the Sangiovese, Montepulciano and Verdicchio varieties; the mountain zone is densely forested, and its most famous agricultural product is the black truffle. Info: Area: 1940 km² -- Population: about 440,000 inhabitants -- Zip/postal codes: 60010 - 60100 -- Phone Area Codes: 071, 0731, 0732 -- Car Plate: AN -- Communes: 49 communes -- Official Website: www.provincia.ancona.it The Comuni in the Province of Ancona Agugliano | Comune of Ancona | Comune of Arcevia | Comune of Barbara | Belvedere Ostrense | Camerano | Comune of Camerata Picena | Comune of Castel Colonna | Castelbellino | Castelfidardo | Comune of Castelleone Di Suasa | Castelplanio | Cerreto D'Esi | Chiaravalle | Corinaldo | Cupramontana | Comune of Fabriano | Falconara Marittima | Filottrano | Genga | Jesi | Comune of Loreto | Maiolati Spontini | Comune of Mergo | Monsano | Monte Roberto | Monte San Vito | Montecarotto | Montemarciano | Comune of Monterado | Comune of Morro D'Alba | Comune of Numana | Comune of Offagna | Osimo | Ostra | Ostra Vetere | Comune of Poggio San Marcello | Polverigi | Ripe | Comune of Rosora | San Marcello | Comune of San Paolo Di Jesi | Santa Maria Nuova | Sassoferrato | Senigallia | Serra De Conti | Serra San Quirico | Sirolo | Staffolo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Province of ASCOLI PICENO Region MARCHE The Province of Ascoli Piceno still includes the territories of the soon-to-be-established province of Fermo which will have a surface area of 860 sq km and include of 40 comuni, which will leave the Province of Ascoli Piceno with 33 comuni and a population of about 200,000. Info: Area: 2088 km² -- Population: about 380,000 inhabitants -- Zip/postal codes: 63010 - 63100 -- Phone Area Codes: 0736, 0735 -- Car Plate: AP -- Communes: 73 communes -- Official Website: www.provincia.ap.it The Comuni in the Province of Ascoli Piceno Acquasanta Terme | Comune of Acquaviva Picena | Comune of Altidona | Comune of Amandola | Comune of Appignano Del Tronto | Comune of Arquata Del Tronto | Comune of Ascoli Piceno | Comune of Belmonte Piceno | Comune of Campofilone | Comune of Carassai | Comune of Castel di Lama | Comune of Castignano | Comune of Castorano | Comune of Colli del Tronto | Comune of Comunanza | Comune of Cossignano | Comune of Cupra Marittima | Comune of Falerone | Comune of Fermo | Comune of Folignano | Comune of Force | Comune of Francavilla DEte | Comune of Grottammare | Comune of Grottazzolina | Comune of Lapedona | Comune of Magliano Di Tenna | Comune of Maltignano | Comune of Massa Fermana | Comune of Massignano | Comune of Monsampietro Morico | Comune of Monsampolo Del Tronto | Comune of Montalto Delle Marche | Comune of Montappone | Comune of Monte Giberto | Comune of Monte Rinaldo | Comune of Monte San Pietrangeli | Comune of Monte Urano | Comune of Monte Vidon Combatte | Comune of Monte Vidon Corrado | Comune of Montedinove | Comune of Montefalcone Appennino | Comune of Montefiore Dell'Aso | Comune of Montefortino | Comune of Montegallo | Comune of Montegiorgio | Comune of Montegranaro | Comune of Monteleone di Fermo | Comune of Montelparo | Comune of Montemonaco | Comune of Monteprandone | Comune of Monterubbiano | Comune of Montottone | Comune of Moresco | Comune of Offida | Comune of Ortezzano | Comune of Palmiano | Comune of Pedaso | Comune of Petritoli | Comune of Ponzano Di Fermo | Comune of Porto San Giorgio | Comune of Porto SantElpidio | Comune of Rapagnano | Comune of Ripatransone | Comune of Roccafluvione | Comune of Rotella | Comune of San Benedetto Del Tronto | Comune of Santa Vittoria In Matenano | Comune of SantElpidio A Mare | Comune of Servigliano | Comune of Smerillo | Comune of Spinetoli | Comune of Torre San Patrizio | Comune of Venarotta ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Province of MACERATA Region MARCHE The Province of Macerata consists of many small centers, with only 3 over 20,000 inhabitants. The territory extends from the Adriatic coast to the Parco Nazionale dei Monti Sibillini, with the mountainous areas covering over half the total surface, 21% being hills, and the rest a limited coastal area. The province includes also 2 protected areas, the Natural Reserves Abbadia di Fiastra and Torricchio. Info: Area: 2774 km² -- Population: about 310,000 inhabitants -- Zip/postal codes: 62010 - 62100 -- Phone Area Codes: 0733 - 0737 - 071 -- Car Plate: MC -- Communes: 57 communes -- Official Website: www.provincia.mc.it The Comuni in the Province of Macerata Comune of Acquacanina | Apiro | Appignano | Belforte Del Chienti | Comune of Bolognola | Caldarola | Camerino | Comune of Camporotondo Di Fiastrone | Castelraimondo | Comune of Castelsantangelo Sul Nera | Comune of Cessapalombo | Cingoli | Civitanova Marche | Comune of Colmurano | Corridonia | Esanatoglia | Comune of Fiastra | Comune of Fiordimonte | Fiuminata | Comune of Gagliole | Comune of Gualdo | Loro Piceno | Comune of Macerata | Matelica | Mogliano | Comune of Monte Cavallo | Monte San Giusto | Comune of Monte San Martino | Montecassiano | Montecosaro | Montefano | Montelupone | Morrovalle | Comune of Muccia | Penna San Giovanni | Petriolo | Pieve Torina | Comune of Pievebovigliana | Pioraco | Comune of Poggio San Vicino | Pollenza | Porto Recanati | Potenza Picena | Recanati | Comune of Ripe San Ginesio | San Ginesio | San Severino Marche | SantAngelo In Pontano | Sarnano | Comune of Sefro | Comune of Serrapetrona | Comune of Serravalle Di Chienti | Tolentino | Comune of Treia | Urbisaglia | Comune of Ussita | Visso ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Province of PESARO-URBINO Region MARCHE The Province of Pesaro-Urbino is the northernmost in the region of Marches, bordering Emilia Romagna in the north and the independent Republic of San Marino. Most of the population is concentrated in the towns of Pesaro and Fano. Info: Area: 2892 km² -- Population: about 360,000 inhabitants -- Zip/postal codes: 61100 Pesaro, 61029 Urbino, 61010-61049 rest of the province -- Phone Area Codes: 0721, 0722 -- Car Plate: previously PS, changing to PU -- Communes: 67 communes -- Official Website: www.provincia.pu.it The Comuni in the Province of Pesaro-Urbino Acqualagna | Comune of Apecchio | Auditore | Comune of Barchi | Comune of Belforte all'Isauro | Comune of Borgo Pace | Comune of Cagli | Cantiano | Carpegna | Cartoceto | Comune of Casteldelci | Colbordolo | Comune of Fano | Fermignano | Fossombrone | Fratte Rosa | Comune of Frontino | Comune of Frontone | Comune of Gabicce Mare | Gradara | Comune of Isola del Piano | Comune of Lunano | Macerata Feltria | Comune of Maiolo | Comune of Mercatello sul Metauro | Comune of Mercatino Conca | Mombaroccio | Mondavio | Mondolfo | Comune of Monte Cerignone | Monte Porzio | Montecalvo in Foglia | Comune of Monteciccardo | Montecopiolo | Montefelcino | Montegrimano | Montelabbate | Montemaggiore al Metauro | Novafeltria | Orciano di Pesaro | Comune of Peglio | Pennabilli | Pergola | Comune of Pesaro | Comune of Petriano | Comune of Piagge | Piandimeleto | Comune of Pietrarubbia | Piobbico | Saltara | San Costanzo | San Giorgio di Pesaro | San Leo | San Lorenzo in Campo | Sant'Agata Feltria | Sant'Angelo in Lizzola | Sant'Angelo in Vado | Sant'Ippolito | Sassocorvaro | Comune of Sassofeltrio | Comune of Serra Sant'Abbondio | Serrungarina | Comune of Talamello | Comune of Tavoleto | Tavullia | Urbania | Comune of Urbino ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Language Italian (Italiano, or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino. It is also widely spoken in Vatican City, although Latin is the official language. Standard Italian, adopted by the state after the unification of Italy, is based on Tuscan and is somewhat intermediate between Italo-Dalmatian languages of the South and Northern Italian dialects of the North. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian has retained the contrast between short and long consonants which existed in Latin. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Of the Romance languages, Italian is considered to be one of the closest resembling Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Romanian most closely preserves the noun declension system of Classical Latin, and Spanish the verb conjugation system (see Old Latin), while Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology. It is affectionately called il parlar gentile (the gentle language) by its speakers. History The history of the Italian language is long, but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (or more accurately, vernacular, as opposed to its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the first years of the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that others could all understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language and, thus, the dialect of Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were until recently thought of as city-states. The latter does now have considerable variety, however. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout the nation, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are the gemination of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases (e.g. va bene "all right": is pronounced [va ˈbːɛne] by a Roman, [va ˈbene] by a Milanese; a casa "at home": Roman [a ˈkːasa], Milanese [a ˈkaza]). In contrast to the dialects of northern Italy, southern Italian dialects were largely untouched by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy, mainly by bards from France, during the Middle Ages. Even in the case of Northern Italian dialects, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. (See La Spezia-Rimini Line.) The economic might and relative advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages), gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of 'Umanesimo (Humanism)' and the Rinascimento (Renaissance) made its volgare (dialect), or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The re-discovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century sparked a debate which raged throughout Italy concerning which criteria should be chosen to establish a modern Italian standard to be used as much as a literary as a spoken language. Scholars were divided into three factions: the purists, headed by Pietro Bembo who in his Gli Asolani claimed that the language might only be based on the great literary classics (notably, Petrarch, and Boccaccio but not Dante as Bembo believed that the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough as it used elements from other dialects), Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines who preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times, and the Courtesans like Baldassarre Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino who insisted that each local vernacular must contribute to the new standard. Eventually Bembo's ideas prevailed, the result being the publication of the first Italian dictionary in 1612 and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582-3), the official legislative body of the Italian language. Italian literature's first modern novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese 'in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the Preface to his 1840 edition. After unification a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home dialects ("ciao" is Venetian, "panettone" is Milanese etc.). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian History The Origins of the Name 'Italy' Where does the name 'Italy' come from and how did Italy get populated over time? In remote times, going back to the Bronze Age and dated between the 18th and 17th centuries B.C. there was the great maritime migration of the Arcadians from the Aegean towards Southern Italy. Guided by their mythical king Oenotro, these people were called Oenotrians. From their expansion and mixings with the local populations, and with some complicated integrations, derived the Ausonians (Ausones), the Chones, the Morgetes, of course, the Itali, and the Siculians. The Latins probably also descended from the Oenotrians, but instead were pushed a bit further North. It has been shown that between the 16th and the 15th centuries B.C. several populations speaking diverse Indoeuropean idioms had already penetrated in Italy. These populations represent the result of the overlapping and in many ways a blending of a first wave of Indoeuropea in Italy with an existing non-Indoeuropean sub-layer like that very ancient Iberian-Caucasian, who survived the presence, even in the Roman era both in Eastern Sardenia as well as Eastern Sicily, where one refers to the Sicanians, and like the Aegean-Asianic of the Pelasgic type. The Pelasgi were perhaps the first inhabitants of the Palatine, the hill on which Rome would later rise, and perhaps the very ancient town called "square Rome" is attributed to them. In addition, the ancient God of the Roman hill Janiculum, Janus, came from Tessalia. Although tradition attributes him Indoeuropean origins, some historians say he has Pelasgic origins, with his name coming from Inuus Pelasgic. Therefore the Central-Southern part of Italy outlines a scenario very similar to that verified previously in Greece, where the Pelasgi, an antique Mediterranean population who lived in Tessalia, the Peloponnesian, the Caria, and quite probably in Crete and Cyprus in addition to the many other small islands of the Aegean, overlapped or fused with their arrival the Indoeuropean Greeks. The Arcadi, originally from Peloponnesia, speaking an ancient Greek language, and therefore Indoeuropean, is the perfect example of this fusion between Indoeuropean people and pre-Indoeuropean populations, given that Peloponnesia is the region in which the Pelasgic presence lasted the longest. The Itali lived in the southern part of present-day Calabria, that is, within the "toe" of the boot called Italy. Their name came from Vitulus, meaning veal or calf, since the area was rich with bovine, and perhaps the Itali took the name symbolically since it identified them with their land. But in the times of the Magna Grecia, following the Greek colonization of the majority of their territory, the coastal regions were renamed Italoi, the Greek word for Vitulus. And so the name "Italoi" was inherited by the Romans upon conquering this territory which extended all the way down to the southernmost tip of the peninsula. Although for some time the land had been conquered by second-wave Indoeuropean populations such as a type of Sabellians called Bruttii. From this, the name "Italy" was extended by the Romans first to cover Southern Italy and later to include the entire peninsula. Many tales about contacts between the Aegean world and the Italic world make references to more recent migrations than the first Arcadian immigration, between the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. around the period of the Trojan war, in 1180 B.C. During that period, the late Bronze Age, almost half of the Italic peninsula was made up of migrants from various places within the Aegean-Anatolic area. This half consisted partly of people speaking Indoeuropean idioms, like Arcadians of Evandro, of whom the presence on the Roman hills of the Palatine would be dated to 60 years before the Trojan war or, like Ulysses' Achei and Enea's Trojans, immediately after the Trojan war. The other half was made up of Mediterranean populations very similar to the Pelasgi but not speaking proper Indoeuropean languages and identified as Maritime Populations, such as Sardens or Shardana, meaning Sardanioi, that is, the Sardinians, and the Trs or Tursa, meaning the Tyrosine, that is the Tyrrhenians who perhaps originally came from Lydia in Asia Minor or from the Aegean island of Lemno, from which the Etruscans or Tusci come. Source: Fabrizio Bianco (c) 2002, Inside Lazio; Ancient Italian Regions, "a brief introduction to the origins of the name 'Italy'. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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| In This Issue: |
| Issue # 1, January 2008 |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Famous Italians Leonardo da Vinci Self-portrait in red chalk, circa 1512 to 1515. Birth name: Leonardo di Ser Piero Born: April 15, 1452(1452-04-15) Vinci, Florence, in present-day Italy Died: May 2, 1519 (aged 67) Amboise, Indre-et-Loire, in present-day France Nationality: Italian Field: Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences Movement: High Renaissance Famous works: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath; a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, spending his final years in France at the home given to him by King François I. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" or universal genius, a man whose seemingly infinite curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. It is primarily as a painter that Leonardo was and is renowned. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper occupy unique positions as the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also iconic. Perhaps fifteen paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo. As an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics. Biography Early life, 1452–1466 Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night" in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence, and lived for his first five years in the nearby hamlet of Anchiano. He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant. There is some evidence that Caterina may have been a slave from the Middle East, but many experts question this evidence. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci." Little is known about his early life, which has been the subject of historical conjecture by Vasari and others. At the age of five, he went to live in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci, where his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but unfortunately died young. Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley, 1473 - UffiziLeonardo was later to record only two incidents of his childhood. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face. The second incident occurred while he was exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and recorded his emotions at being, on one hand, terrified that some great monster might lurk there and on the other, driven by curiosity to find out what was inside. Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells the story of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow which he gave to the peasant. Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476 The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, by Verrocchio and LeonardoIn 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. The workshop of this renowned master was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Among the painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop and also to become famous, were Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. In a Quattrocento workshop such as Verrocchio's, artists were regarded primarily as craftsmen and only the master such as Verrocchio had social standing. The products of a workshop included decorated tournament shields, painted dowry chests, christening platters, votive plaques, small portraits, and devotional pictures. Major commissions included altarpieces for churches and commemorative statues. The largest commissions were fresco cycles for chapels, such as those created by Ghirlandaio and his workshop in the Tornabuoni Chapel, and large statues such as the equestrian statues of Gattemelata by Donatello and Bartolomeo Colleoni by Verrocchio. As an apprentice, Leonardo would have been trained in all the countless skills that were employed in a traditional workshop. Although many craftsmen specialised in tasks such as frame-making, gilding and bronze casting, Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the obvious artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling. According to tradition, Leonardo posed for Verrocchio's David. Bargello Museum, Florence.Although Verrocchio appears to have run an efficient and prolific workshop, he was primarily a goldsmith and metalworker. Most of the painted production of his workshop was done by his employees, and few paintings can be ascertained as coming from his hand. On one of those, according to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated. The painting is the Baptism of Christ. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.[9] This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint. The landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bears witness to the hand of Leonardo. The other creation of Verrocchio’s which is pertinent to the young Leonardo is the bronze statue of David, now in the Bargello Museum, which according to tradition is a portrait of the apprentice, Leonardo. If this is the case, then in the figure of David we see Leonardo as a thin muscular boy, quite different to the rounded androgynous figure made by Verrocchio’s teacher, Donatello and with which it is often compared. It is also suggested that the Archangel Michael in Verrocchio's Tobias and the Angel is a portrait of Leonardo. There are few records from this period of Leonardo's life. One is his earliest known dated work, a drawing done in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him. Professional life, 1476–1513 This important commission was interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.It is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481. Court records of 1476 show that, with three other young men, he was charged with sodomy, of which charges all were acquitted. From this date there is no record of his work or even his whereabouts until 1478. In 1478 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard and in 1481 by the Monks at Scopeto for The Adoration of the Magi. In 1482 Leonardo, who Vasari tells us was a most talented musician, created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici was so impressed with this that he decided to send both the lyre and its maker to Milan, in order to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint. Between 1482 and 1499, when Louis XII of France occupied Milan, much of Leonardo’s work was in that city. It was here that he was commissioned to paint two of his most famous works, the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina as among his dependants in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the detailed list of expenditure on her funeral suggests that she was his mother rather than a servant girl. For Ludovico, he worked on many different projects which included the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico’s predecessor. Leonardo modelled a huge horse in clay, which became known as the "Gran Cavallo". It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello’s statue of Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio’s Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not in the least unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed, and Leonardo was making detailed plans for its casting. Michelangelo rudely implied that he was unable to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion under Charles VIII. The French returned to invade Milan in 1499 under Louis XII and the invading French used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice. In Venice he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack. Returning to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival". In 1502 Leonardo entered the services of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on 18th October 1503 and spent two years involved in designing and painting a great mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina. In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist’s will, Michelangelo’s statue of David. In 1506 he returned to Milan, which was in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries had driven out the French. Many of Leonardo’s most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione.[m] However, he did not stay in Milan for long, as his father died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was living in his own house in Milan, in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila. Old age Clos Lucé in France, where Leonardo died in 1519.From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In October 1515, François I of France recaptured Milan. On 19th December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francois I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna. It was for Francois that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé[o] next to the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi. Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo’s head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, has been shown to be legend rather than fact. Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak of good stuff with a fur edge. saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher." Relationships and influences Florence — Leonardo's artistic and social background Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio’s master, the great sculptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni. Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, Masaccio whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion and Ghiberti whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks. Massaccio's depiction of the naked and distraught Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden created a powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of light and shade which was to be developed in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to be influential in the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist. A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in tempera or glazed terracotta by the workshops of Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific della Robbia family. Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the The Madonna with a carnation and The Benois Madonna followed this tradition while showing indiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Leonardo was the contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici. Botticelli was a particular favourite of the family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran large workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence. These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed. In 1476, during the time of Leonardo’s association with Verrocchio’s workshop, Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing the Portinari Altarpiece and the new painterly techniques from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where the leading painter, Giovanni Bellini adopted the technique of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice. Like the two contemporary architects, Bramante and Sangallo, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally-planned churches, a number of which appearing in his journals, as both plans and views, although none were ever to be realised. Lorenzo de' Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de' Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio.Leonardo’ s political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo’s age. With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism, Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment. Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was 23 when Michelangelo was born and 31 when Raphael was born. The short- lived Raphael died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years. Assistants and pupils Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, known as il Salaino ("The little devil") or Salai, was described by Giorgio Vasari as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which Leonardo greatly delighted." Il Salaino entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of ten. The relationship was not an easy one. A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy’s misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton. "The "Little Devil" had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on apparel, among which were twenty-four pairs of shoes. Nevertheless, Leonardo’s notebooks during their early years contain many pictures of the handsome, curly-haired adolescent. Salai remained his companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years. In 1506, Leonardo took as a pupil Count Francesco Melzi, the fifteen-year-old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Melzi became Leonardo's life companion, and is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and Salai, and was with him until his death.[8] Salai, however, left France in 1518 and returned to Milan, where he built a house in portion of the vineyard owned by Leonardo and eventually bequeathed to him. In 1525 he died violently, either murdered or as the result of a duel. Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting", his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515 he painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, known as Monna Vanna. Salai owned the Mona Lisa at the time of his death in 1525 and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, which was an exceptionally high value for a small panel portrait. Personal life Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned in their fields or for their influence on history. These included the mathematician Luca Pacioli with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s and Cesare Borgia, in whose service he spent the years 1502 and 1503. During that time he also met Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom later he was to develop a close friendship. Also among his friends were Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for Isabella d'Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait, now lost. Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. Within his own lifetime his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari attracted the curiosity of others. Many authors have speculated on various aspects of Leonardo's personality. His sexuality has often been the subject of study, analysis and speculation. This trend began in the mid 16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud. Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of drawings. There has also been speculation that da Vinci was a hermaphrodite. Painting Despite the recent awareness and admiration of Leonardo as a scientist and inventor, for the better part of four hundred years his enormous fame rested on his achievements as a painter and on a handful of works, either authenticated or attributed to him that have been regarded as among the supreme masterpieces ever created. These paintings are famous for a variety of qualities which have been much imitated by students and discussed at great length by connoisseurs and critics. Among the qualities that make Leonardo’s work unique are the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone. All these qualities come together in his most famous painted works, the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the Virgin of the Rocks. Early works Annunciation (1475–1480) — Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete work.Leonardo’s early works begin with the Baptism of Christ painted in conjunction with Verrocchio. Two other paintings appear to date from his time at the workshop, both of which are Annunciations. One is small, 59 cms long and only 14 cms high. It is a “predella” to go at the base of a larger composition, in this case a painting by Lorenzo di Credi from which it has become separated. The other is a much larger work, 217 cm long. In both these Annunciations, Leonardo has used a formal arrangement, such as in Fra Angelico’s two well known pictures of the same subject, of the Virgin Mary sitting or kneeling to the right of the picture, approached from the left by an angel in profile, with rich flowing garment, raised wings and bearing a lily. Although previously attributed to Ghirlandaio, the larger work is now almost universally attributed to Leonardo. In the smaller picture Mary averts her eyes and folds her hands in a gesture that symbolised submission to God’s will. In the larger picture, however, Mary is not in the least submissive. The beautiful girl, interrupted in her reading by this unexpected messenger, puts a finger in her bible to mark the place and raises her hand in a formal gesture of greeting or surprise. This calm young woman appears to accept her role as the Mother of God not with resignation but with confidence. In this painting the young Leonardo presents the Humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity’s role in God’s incarnation. Paintings of the 1480s In the 1480s Leonardo received two very important commissions, and commenced another work which was also of ground-breaking importance in terms of composition. Unfortunately two of the three were never finished and the third took so long that it was subject to lengthy negotiations over completion and payment. One of these paintings is that of St. Jerome in the Wilderness. Bortolon associates this picture with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, and the signs of melancholy in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die." Although the painting is barely begun the composition can be seen and it is very unusual.[r] Jerome, as a penitent, occupies the middle of the picture, set on a slight diagonal and viewed somewhat from above. His kneeling form takes on a trapezoid shape, with one arm stretched to the outer edge of the painting and his gaze looking in the opposite direction. J. Wasserman points out the link between this painting and Leonardo's anatomical studies. Across the foreground sprawls his symbol, a great lion whose body and tail make a double spiral across the base of the picture space. The other remarkable feature is the sketchy landscape of craggy rocks against which the figure is silhouetted. Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, possibly 1505–1508, demonstrates Leonardo's interest in nature.The daring display of figure composition, the landscape elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, (see above [Magi]) a commission from the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto. It is a very complex composition about 250 cm square. Leonardo did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear perspective of the ruined classical architecture which makes part of the backdrop to the scene. But in 1482 Leonardo went off to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de’ Medici in order to win favour with Ludovico il Moro and the painting was abandoned. The third important work of this period is the Virgin of the Rocks which was commissioned in Milan for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The painting, to be done with the assistance of the de Predis brothers, was to fill a large complex altarpiece, already constructed. Leonardo chose to paint an apocryphal moment of the infancy of Christ when the Infant John the Baptist, in protection of an angel, met the Holy Family on the road to Egypt. In this scene, as painted by Leonardo, John recognizes and worships Jesus as the Christ. The painting demonstrates an eerie beauty as the graceful figures kneel in adoration around the infant Christ in a wild landscape of tumbling rock and whirling water. While the painting is quite large, about 200 x 120 cms, it is not nearly as complex as the painting ordered by the monks of St Donato, having only four figures rather than about 50 and a rocky landscape rather than architectural details. The painting was eventually finished; in fact, two versions of the painting were finished, one which remained at the chapel of the Confraternity and the other which Leonardo carried away to France. But the Brothers did not get their painting, or the de Predis their payment, until the next century. Paintings of the 1490s Leonardo's most famous painting of the 1490s is The Last Supper, also painted in Milan. The painting represents the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples before his capture and death. It shows specifically the moment when Jesus has said “one of you will betray me.” Leonardo tells the story of the consternation that this statement caused to the twelve followers of Jesus. The novelist Matteo Bandello observed Leonardo at work and wrote that some days he would paint from dawn till dusk without stopping to eat, and then not paint for three or four days at a time.This, according to Vasari, was beyond the comprehension of the prior, who hounded him until Leonardo ask Ludovico to intervene. Vasari describes how Leonardo, troubled over his ability to adequately depict the faces of Christ and the traitor Judas, told the Duke that he might be obliged to use the prior as his model. The Last Supper (1498) — Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy. When finished, the painting was acclaimed as a masterpiece of design and characterisation. But the painting deteriorated rapidly so that within a hundred years it was described by one viewer as "completely ruined". Leonardo, instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in a surface which was subject to mold and to flaking. Despite this, the painting has remained one of the most reproduced works of art, countless copies being made in every medium from carpets to cameos. Paintings of the 1500s Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507) — Louvre, Paris, France. Among the works created by Leonardo in the 1500s is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or “la Gioconda”, the laughing one. The painting is famous, in particular, for the elusive smile on the woman’s face, its mysterious quality brought about perhaps by the fact that the artist has subtly shadowed the corners of the mouth and eyes so that the exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which the work is renowned came to be called “sfumato” or Leonardo’s smoke. Vasari, who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that "the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original". Other characteristics found in this work are the unadorned dress, in which the eyes and hands have no competition from other details, the dramatic landscape background in which the world seems to be in a state of flux, the subdued colouring and the extremely smooth nature of the painterly technique, employing oils, but laid on much like tempera and blended on the surface so that the brushstrokes are indistinguishable. Vasari expressed the opinion that the manner of painting would make even "the most confident master...despair and lose heart." The perfect state of preservation and the fact that there is no sign of repair or overpainting is extremely rare in a panel painting of this date. In the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (see below [StAnne]) the composition again picks up the theme of figures in a landscape which Wasserman describes as "breathtakingly beautiful" and harks back to the St Jerome picture with the figure set at an oblique angle. What makes this painting unusual is that there are two obliquely-set figures superimposed. Mary is seated on the knee of her mother, St Anne. She leans forward to restrain the Christ Child as he plays roughly with a lamb, the sign of his own impending sacrifice. This painting, which was copied many times, was to influence Michelangelo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto, and through them Pontormo and Correggio. The trends in composition were adopted in particular by the Venetian painters Tintoretto and Veronese. Drawings Leonardo was not a prolific painter, but he was a most prolific draftsman, keeping journals full of small sketches and detailed drawings recording all manner of things that took his attention. As well as the journals there exist many studies for paintings, some of which can be identified as preparatory to particular works such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper. His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail. The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, LondonAmong his famous drawings are the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of the human body, the Head of an Angel, for The Virgin of the Rocks in the Louvre, a botanical study of Star of Bethlehem and a large drawing (160×100 cm) in black chalk on coloured paper of the The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London. This drawing employs the subtle sfumato technique of shading, in the manner of the Mona Lisa. It is thought that Leonardo never made a painting from it, the closest similarity being to The Virgin and Child with St. Anne in the Louvre. Other drawings of interest include numerous studies generally referred to as "caricatures" because, although exaggerated, they appear to be based upon observation of live models. Vasari relates that if Leonardo saw a person with an interesting face he would follow them around all day observing them. There are numerous studies of beautiful young men, often associated with Salai, with the rare and much admired facial feature, the so-called "Grecian profile". These faces are often contrasted with that of a warrior. Salai is often depicted in fancy-dress costume. Leonardo is known to have designed sets for pageants with which these may be associated. Other, often meticulous, drawings show studies of drapery. A marked development in Leonardo's ability to draw drapery occurred in his early works. Another often- reproduced drawing is a macabre sketch that was done by Leonardo in Florence in 1479 showing the body of Bernado Baroncelli, hanged in connection with the murder of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo de'Medici, in the Pazzi Conspiracy. With dispassionate integrity Leonardo has registered in neat mirror writing the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing when he died. Leonardo as observer, scientist and inventor The Vitruvian Man (c.1485) Accademia, Venice, Italy. Journals Renaissance humanism saw no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science). These notes were made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him. The journals are mostly written in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left. A page from Leonardo's journal showing his study of a foetus in the womb (c.1510) Royal Library, Windsor CastleHis notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of details and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirl pools, war machines, helicopters and architecture. These notebooks—originally loose papers of different types and sizes, distributed by friends after his death—have found their way into major collections such as the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan which holds the twelve-volume Codex Atlanticus, and British Library in London which has put a selection from its notebook BL Arundel MS 263 on the web. The Codex Leicester is the only major scientific work of Leonardo's in private hands. It is owned by Bill Gates, and is displayed once a year in different cities around the world. Leonardo's journals appear to have been intended for publication because many of the sheets have a form and order that would facilitate this. In many cases a single topic, for example, the heart or the human foetus, is covered in detail in both words and pictures, on a single sheet. Why they were not published within Leonardo's lifetime is unknown. Scientific studies Rhombicuboctahedron as published in Pacioli's Divina Proportione.Leonardo's approach to science was an observational one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanation. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, contemporary scholars mostly ignored Leonardo the scientist, although he did teach himself Latin. In the 1490s he studied mathematics under Luca Pacioli and prepared a series of drawings of regular solids in a skeletal form to be engraved as plates for Pacioli's book Divina Proportione, published in 1509. It appears that from the content of his journals he was planning a series of treatises to be published on a variety of subjects. A coherent treatise on anatomy was said to have been observed during a visit by Cardinal Louis D'Aragon's secretary in 1517. Aspects of his work on the studies of anatomy, light and the landscape were assembled for publication by his pupil Francesco Melzi and eventually published as Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci in France and Italy in 1651, and Germany in 1724, with engravings based upon drawings by the Classical painter Nicholas Poussin. According to Arasse, the treatise, which in France went into sixty two editions in fifty years, caused Leonardo to be seen as "the precursor of French academic thought on art." Anatomy Anatomical study of the arm, (c.1510)Leonardo's formal training in the anatomy of the human body began with his apprenticeship to Andrea del Verrocchio, his teacher insisting that all his pupils learn anatomy. As an artist, he quickly became master of topographic anatomy, drawing many studies of muscles, tendons and other visible anatomical features. As a successful artist, he was given permission to dissect human corpses at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later at hospitals in Milan and Rome. From 1510 to 1511 he collaborated in his studies with the doctor Marcantonio della Torre and together they prepared a theoretical work on anatomy for which Leonardo made more than 200 drawings. It was published only in 1680 (161 years after his death) under the heading Treatise on painting. Leonardo drew many studies of the human skeleton and its parts, as well as muscles and sinews, the heart and vascular system, the sex organs, and other internal organs. He made one of the first scientific drawings of a fetus in utero. As an artist, Leonardo closely observed and recorded the effects of age and of human emotion on the physiology, studying in particular the effects of rage. He also drew many models among those who had significant facial deformities or signs of illness. He also studied and drew the anatomy of many other animals as well. He dissected cows, birds, monkeys, bears, and frogs, comparing in his drawings their anatomical structure with that of humans. He also made a number of studies of horses. A design for a flying machine, (c.1488) Institut de France, Paris Engineering and inventions During his lifetime Leonardo was valued as an engineer. In a letter to Ludovico il Moro he claimed to be able to create all sorts of machines both for the protection of a city and for siege. When he fled to Venice in 1499 he found employment as an engineer and devised a system of moveable barricades to protect the city from attack. He also had a scheme for diverting the flow of the Arno River in order to flood Pisa. His journals include a vast number of inventions, both practical and impractical. They include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells and a steam cannon. In 1502, Leonardo produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II of Istanbul. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosporus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. On 17 May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge to span the Golden Horn. For much of his life, Leonardo was fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, producing many studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a light hang glider. Of these, most were impractical, but the hang glider has been successfully constructed and demonstrated. Leonardo the legend Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy, and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists" written about thirty years after Leonardo's death, described him as having talents that "transcended nature". The interest in Leonardo has never slackened. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing and writers, like Vasari, continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in. Statue of Leonardo da Vinci at the Uffizi, FlorenceGiorgio Vasari, in his "Lives of the Artists", in its enlarged edition of 1568 introduces his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words: In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease. The continued admiration that Leonardo commanded from painters, critics and historians is reflected in many other written tributes. Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano ("The Courtier"), wrote in 1528: "… Another of the greatest painters in this world looks down on this art in which he is unequalled …" while the biographer known as "Anonimo Gaddiano" wrote, c. 1540: "His genius was so rare and universal that it can be said that nature worked a miracle on his behalf …" The 19th century brought a particular admiration for Leonardo's genius, causing H. Fuseli to write in 1801: "Such was the dawn of modern art, when Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour that distanced former excellence: made up of all the elements that constitute the essence of genius …" This is echoed by A. E. Rio who wrote in 1861: "He towered above all other artists through the strength and the nobility of his talents." By the 19th century, the scope of Leonardo's notebooks was known, as well as his paintings. H. Taine wrote in 1866: "There may not be in the world an example of another genius so universal, so incapable of fulfilment, so full of yearning for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far ahead of his own century and the following centuries." The famous art historian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1896: "Leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: Nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. Whether it be the cross section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values." The interest in Leonardo's genius has continued unabated; experts study and translate his writings, analyse his paintings using scientific techniques, argue over attributions and search for works which have been recorded but never found. Liana Bortolon, writing in 1967, says: "Because of the multiplicity of interests that spurred him to pursue every field of knowledge, … Leonardo can be considered, quite rightly, to have been the universal genius par excellence, and with all the disquieting overtones inherent in that term. Man is as uncomfortable today, faced with a genius, as he was in the 16th century. Five centuries have passed, yet we still view Leonardo with awe." List of paintings The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510) The Madonna of the Carnation, (1478–1480) Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1475) Lady with an Ermine (1488–90) None of Leonardo's paintings are signed. Certain works still in existence are cited by Vasari or are referred to in contracts. All notes in this section are drawn from the analysis of opinions of various scholars by Angela Ottino della Chiesa. Entirely by Leonardo The Last Supper (1498)—Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/1507)—Louvre, Paris, France Adoration of the Magi unfinished painting (1481)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (c. 1510)—Louvre, Paris, France Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris, considered by most historians to be the earlier of two versions and to therefore date from 1483–1486. The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist large drawing (c. 1499–1500)—National Gallery, London, UK. St. Jerome in the Wilderness, (c.1480), Vatican, unfinished painting. Leonardo with other hands The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Cited by Vasari as by Verrocchio, with the angel on the left-hand side by Leonardo.[9] It is generally considered that Leonardo also painted the background landscape and the torso of Christ. One of Leornardo's earliest extant works. Virgin of the Rocks, National Gallery, London, generally accepted as postdating the version in the Louvre, possibly 1505– 1508, with collaboration of de Predis and perhaps others. Accepted attributions Annunciation (1475–1480)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Generally thought to be the earliest extant work entirely by Leonardo. The Benois Madonna (1478–1480)—Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Madonna of the Carnation, (1478–1480) Alte Pinakothek, Munich. St. John the Baptist (c. 1514)—Louvre, Paris, France. Attribution dependent upon each other These two paintings are almost certainly by the same artist, generally accepted to be Leonardo, but not without critics. Ginevra de' Benci (c. 1475)—National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States. Lady with an Ermine (1488–1490)—Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland. Disputed Of the following paintings, the first two are cited by Angela Ottino della Chiesa as having more general acceptance than the others. All have been claimed at some time to be Leonardos. La belle Ferronière (1495–1498)—Louvre, Paris, France Portrait of a Musician (c. 1490)—Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy Madonna Litta (1490–91)—Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia, thought perhaps to be by Marco d'Oggiono Madonna of the Yarnwinder 1501. Three versions exist, apparently by different hands, perhaps copies of a lost work that is described by Leonardo. The Dreyfus Madonna, previously attributed to Verrocchio or Lorenzo di Credi. The anatomy of the Christ Child is so poor as to discourage firm attribution by most critics while some believe that it is a work of Leonardo's youth.[ag] Bacchus (or St. John in the Wilderness) (1515)—Louvre, Paris, France, is generally considered to be a workshop copy of a drawing. Recent attribution The Holy Infants Embracing c. 1486–1490 several versions in private collections. Madonna and Child with St Joseph, Borghese Gallery, previously attributed to Fra Bartolomeo. Mary Magdalene, recently attributed as a Leonardo by Carlo Pedretti. Previously regarded as the work of Giampietrino who painted a number of similar Magdalenes. Christ Carrying the Cross, date unknown, private collection. Attribution by Carlo Pedretti. Known only as a copy Leda and the Swan (1508)—(Only copies survive—best-known example in Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy. Another is in Wilton House, England.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |









| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Companies Ferrari Ferrari S.p.A. Founded: 1947 Founder: Enzo Ferrari Headquarters: Maranello, Italy Luca di Montezemolo, Chairman and President Amedeo Felisa, CEO Giancarlo Coppa CFO Jean Todt Former CEO Industry: Automotive Parent: Fiat S.p.A. Official Website: www.ferrariworld.com Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello and Modena, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street legal vehicles in 1947 as Ferrari S.p.A.. Throughout its history, the company has been noted for its continued participation in racing, especially in Formula One, where it has largely enjoyed great success, especially during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, late 1990s, and 2000s. After years of financial struggles, Enzo Ferrari sold the company's sports car division to the Fiat group in 1969 to ensure continued financial backing. Enzo Ferrari retained control of the racing division until his death in 1988 at the age of 90. Earlier that year he had overseen the launch of the Ferrari F40; the last new Ferrari to be launched before his death. Ferrari also has an internally managed merchandising line that licenses many products bearing the Ferrari brand, including eyewear, pens, pencils, perfume, clothing, high-tech bicycles, cell phones, and even laptop computers. Financial Times named Ferrari number one on its 2007 list of the 100 Best Workplaces in Europe. History of Ferrari 1929–1946 Enzo Ferrari never intended to produce road cars when he formed Scuderia Ferrari (literally "Ferrari Stable", usually used to mean "Team Ferrari", it is correctly pronounced "skoo deh REE ah") in 1929 as a sponsor for amateur drivers headquartered in Modena. Ferrari prepared and successfully raced various drivers in Alfa Romeo cars until 1938, when he was officially hired by Alfa to head their racing department. In 1940, Alfa Romeo was absorbed by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini as part of the Axis Powers' war effort. Enzo Ferrari's division was small enough to be unaffected by this. Because he was prohibited by contract from racing for four years, the Scuderia briefly became Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which ostensibly produced machine tools and aircraft accessories. Also known as SEFAC (Scuderia Enzo Ferrari Auto Corse), Ferrari did in fact produce one race car, the Tipo 815, in the non-competition period. It was the first actual Ferrari car (it debuted at the 1940 Mille Miglia), but due to World War II it saw little competition. In 1943 the Ferrari factory moved to Maranello, where it has remained ever since. The factory was bombed by the Allies in 1944 and rebuilt in 1946 when the war ended, and included a works for road car production. Until Il Commendatore's death, this would remain little more than a source of funding for his first love, racing. 1947–present 1952 Ferrari Barchetta 212/225 1962 Ferrari 330 LM Berlinetta The first Ferrari road car was the 1947 125 S, powered by a 1.5 L V12 engine; Enzo Ferrari reluctantly built and sold his automobiles to fund the Scuderia. While his beautiful and fast cars quickly gained a reputation for excellence, Enzo maintained a famous distaste for his customers, most of whom he felt were buying his cars for the prestige and not the performance. Ferrari road cars, noted for styling by design houses like Pininfarina, have long been one of the ultimate accessories for the wealthy. Other design houses that have done work for Ferrari over the years include Scaglietti, Bertone, Touring, Ghia, and Vignale. In 2005, four universities were granted the opportunity to design the next vehicle line-up for Ferrari in a student competition named 'Ferrari Concepts of the Myth'. Twenty winners were allowed to show off their concepts in a ¼ scale model and present their work to the board at Ferrari to allow for three winners to have the chance to work in the Ferrari design studio at Maranello. As of 2007, the Fiat Group owns 85% of Ferrari, Mubadala 5%, and Enzo's son Piero 10%. Fiat has shelved plans for an IPO because Fiat Auto has now returned to profitability, thus removing pressure from the group. Luca di Montezemolo was a former CEO of Ferrari, until handing over duties to former Ferrari Formula 1 chief Jean Todt. Jean Todt resigned from the CEO position as of March 2008, but will remain on the board and continue to participate in the Ferrari organization. He was replaced by Amedeo Felisa. In late 2007, construction began on the theme park Ferrari World in the United Arab Emirates, the first theme park based on and utilizing the Ferrari brand. Racing Scuderia Ferrari Ferrari's true passion, despite his extensive road car business, was auto racing. His Scuderia started as an independent sponsor for drivers in various cars, but soon became the Alfa Romeo in-house racing team. After Ferrari's departure from Alfa, he began to design and produce cars of his own. The Ferrari team first appeared on the scene after the end of World War II. Sports car racing A Ferrari 312PB during the team's final year in the World Sportscar Championship In 1949, Luigi Chinetti drove a 166M to Ferrari's first win in motorsports, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ferrari went on to dominate the early years of the World Sportscar Championship which was created in 1953, winning the Manufacturers Championship seven out of its first nine years. When the championship changed formats in 1962, Ferrari earned championships in at least one class until 1966, then again in 1968. Ferrari would win one final championship in 1972 before Enzo decided to leave sports car racing and concentrate Scuderia Ferrari solely on Formula One. During Ferrari's seasons of the World Sportscar Championship, they also gained more wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the factory team earning their first in 1954. Another win would come in 1958 before they began a streak of five straight wins from 1960 to 1964. Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team (NART) would take Ferrari's final victory at Le Mans in 1965. Although Scuderia Ferrari no longer participated in sports cars after 1973, they have occasionally built various successful sports cars for privateers. These include the 512BB/LM in the 1970s, the 333 SP which won the IMSA GT Championship in the 1990s, and currently the F430 GT2 and GT3 which are currently winning championships in their respective classes. Formula One Scuderia Ferrari won its most recent Formula One title in 2007, with Kimi Räikkönen The Scuderia joined the Formula One World Championship in the first year of its existence, 1950. José Froilán González gave the team its first victory at the 1951 British Grand Prix. Alberto Ascari gave Ferrari its first Drivers Championship a year later. Ferrari is the oldest team left in the championship, not to mention the most successful: the team holds nearly every Formula One record. As of 2007, the team's records include 15 World Drivers Championship titles (1952, 1953, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1975, 1977, 1979, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2007) 15 World Constructors Championship titles (1961, 1964, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2007), 201 Grand Prix victories, 4753.27 points, 603 podium finishes, 195 pole positions, 12,489 laps led, and 205 fastest laps in 758 Grands Prix contested. Notable Ferrari drivers include Tazio Nuvolari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Luigi Chinetti, Alberto Ascari, Wolfgang von Trips, Phil Hill, Olivier Gendebien, Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins, John Surtees, Lorenzo Bandini, Ludovico Scarfiotti, Jacky Ickx, Mario Andretti, Niki Lauda, Carlos Reutemann, Jody Scheckter, Gilles Villeneuve, Didier Pironi, Michele Alboreto, Gerhard Berger, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Jean Alesi, Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen, and Felipe Massa. The Scuderia Ferrari drivers for the 2006 F1 season were Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa. At the end of the 2006 season the team courted controversy by continuing to allow Marlboro to sponsor them after they, along with the other F1 teams, made a promise to end sponsorship deals with tobacco manufacturers. A five year deal worth a reported $500 million was agreed.[citation needed] The drivers competing in 2007 were Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen. Räikkönen went on to win the drivers championship, with Massa finishing 4th. A1 Grand Prix On October 11 2007, it was announced that Ferrari will power all A1 Grand Prix cars from the 2008-09 season. The "Cavallino Rampante" The famous symbol of the Ferrari race team is a black prancing stallion on a yellow shield, usually with the letters S F (for Scuderia Ferrari), with three stripes of green, white and red (the Italian national colors) at the top. The road cars have a rectangular badge on the hood and this race logo on the side. On June 17, 1923, Enzo Ferrari won a race at the Savio track in Ravenna where he met the Countess Paolina, mother of Count Francesco Baracca, an ace of the Italian air force and national hero of World War I, who used to paint a horse on the side of his planes. The Countess asked Enzo to use this horse on his cars, suggesting that it would bring him good luck. The original "prancing horse" on Baracca's airplane was painted in red on a white cloud-like shape, but Ferrari chose to have the horse in black (as it had been painted as a sign of grief on Baracca's squadron planes after the pilot was killed in action) and he added a canary yellow background as this is the color of the city of Modena, his birthplace. The Ferrari horse was, from the very beginning, markedly different from the Baracca horse in most details, the most noticeable being the tail that in the original Baracca version was pointing downward. Ferrari has used the cavallino rampante on official company stationery since 1929. Since the Spa 24 Hours of July 9, 1932, the cavallino rampante has been used on Alfa Romeos raced by Scuderia Ferrari. A similar black horse on a yellow shield is the Coat of Arms of the German city of Stuttgart. This horse motif comes from the origins of the city's name: it comes from Stutengarten, an ancient form of the modern German word Gestüt, which translates into English as stud farm and into Italian as scuderia. Stuttgart is the home of Porsche, which also uses the Stuttgart sign in its corporate logo, centred in the emblem of the state of Württemberg. Fabio Taglioni used the cavallino rampante on his Ducati motorbikes, as Taglioni was born at Lugo di Romagna like Baracca, and his father too was a military pilot during WWI (even if not part of Baracca's squadron, as is mistakenly reported). As Ferrari's fame grew, Ducati abandoned the horse- perhaps the result of a private agreement between the two companies. The cavallino rampante is now a trademark of Ferrari. However, other companies use similar logos: Avanti, an Austrian company operating over 100 filling stations, uses a prancing horse logo which is nearly identical to Ferrari's. Many aspects of the cover design of the third Jamiroquai album, Travelling Without Moving, as well as the single Virtual Insanity and some single promos pay homage to the Ferrari logo. Rosso Corsa Since the 1920s, Italian race cars of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and later Ferrari and Abarth were (and often still are) painted in "race red" (Rosso Corsa). This was the customary national racing color of Italy, as recommended between the World Wars by the organizations that later would become the FIA. In that scheme, French cars like Bugatti were blue, German like Audi, BMW, and Porsche white (since 1934 also Silver Arrows), and British such as BRM green, for instance. Curiously, Ferrari won the 1964 World championship with John Surtees by competing the last two races in cars painted white and blue, as these were not entered by the Italian factory themselves, but the U.S.-based NART team. This was done as a protest concerning arguments between Ferrari and the Italian Racing Authorities regarding the homologation of a new mid-engined Ferrari race car. List of models Until the early 1980s, Ferrari followed a three-number naming scheme based on engine displacement: V6 and V8 models used the total displacement (in decilitres) for the first two digits and the number of cylinders as the third. Thus, the 206 was a 2.0 L V6 powered vehicle, while the 348 used a 3.4 L V8, although, for the F355, the last digit refers to 5 valves per cylinder. Upon introduction of the 360 Modena, the digits for V8 models (which now carried a name as well as a number) refer only to total engine displacement. The numerical indication aspect of this name has carried on to the current V8 model, the F430. V12 models used the displacement (in cubic centimetres) of one cylinder. Therefore, the famed 365 Daytona had a 4390 cc V12. However, some newer V12-engined Ferraris, such as the 599, have three-number designations that refer only to total engine displacement. Flat 12 (boxer) models used the displacement in litres. Therefore, the 512BB was five litre flat 12 (a Berlinetta Boxer, in this case). However, the original Berlinetta Boxer was the 365 GT4 BB, which was named in a similar manner to the V12 models. Some models, such as the 1980 Mondial and the 1984 Testarossa did not follow a three-number naming scheme. Ferrari 612 Scaglietti Sessanta Edition Most Ferraris were also given designations referring to their body style. In general, the following conventions were used: M ("Modificata"), placed at the end of a model's number, denotes a modified version of its predecessor and not a complete evolution (see F512M and 575M Maranello). GTB models are closed Berlinettas, or coupes. GTS in older models, are open Spyders (spelt "y"), or convertibles (see 365GTS4); however, in more recent models, this suffix is used for targa top models (see Dino 246GTS, and F355 GTS; the exception being the 348 TS, which is the only targa named differently). The convertible models now use the suffix "Spider" (spelt "i") (see F355 Spider, and 360 Spider). This naming system can be confusing, as some entirely different vehicles used the same engine type and body style. Many Ferraris also had other names affixed (like Daytona) to identify them further. Many such names are actually not official factory names. The Daytona name commemorates Ferrari's triple success in the February 1967 24 Hours of Daytona with the 330P4. Only in the 1973 Daytona 24 Hours, a 365 GTB4 model run by NART, who raced Ferrari's in America) ran second, behind a Porsche 911. The various Dino models were named for Enzo's son, Dino Ferrari, and are not formally Ferraris, though are to all intents and purposes considered so. In the mid 1990s, Ferrari added the letter "F" to the beginning of all models (a practice abandoned after the F512M and F355, but adopted again with the F430). Road models The Ferrari Club of America's parking lot at the 2005 United States Grand Prix Sports cars Ferrari's first models were sports/racing cars quite different from the grand touring models that followed. See below for a complete list. 2-seat Gran Turismo Ferrari quickly moved into the Gran Turismo market, and the bulk of the company's sales remain in this area. 1949 166 Inter, 1950 195 Inter, 1951 212 Inter, 1951 342 America, 1953 375 MM, 1953 250 Europa, 1953 375 America, 1954 250 Europa GT, 1956 410 Superamerica, 1956-1963 250 GT Europa/Boano/Ellena/Pininfarina Coupe/Lusso, 1957-1960 250 GT Berlinetta/Cabriolet/California Spyder/SWB, 1960 400 Superamerica, 1964-1968 275, 1964-1965 275 GTB Coupe, 1964-1965 275 GTS Spyder, 1966-1968 275 GTB/4, 1964 500 Superfast, 1964 330, 1966 330 GTC Coupe, 1966 330 GTS Spyder, 1966 365 California, 1968 365, 1968-1969 365 GTC Coupe, 1969-1970 365 GTS Spyder, 1968-1973 365 Daytona, 1968 365 GTB/4 Coupe, 1968 365 GTS/4 Spyder, 1996-2001 550 Maranello, 1996-2001 550 Maranello, 2001 550 Barchetta, 2002-2006 575M Maranello, 2002-2006 575M Maranello, 2005 575M Superamerica, 2007 599 GTB Fiorano. Mid-engine V6/V8 328 GTS Targa The Dino was the first mid-engined Ferrari. This layout would go on to be used in most Ferraris of the 1980s and 1990s. V6 and V8 Ferrari models make up well over half of the marque's total production. 1968-1974 Dino, 1968-1969 Dino 206 GT, 1969-1974 246GT Berlinetta, or Coupe, 1972-1974 246GTS (targa top) Spyder, 1975-1989 208/308/328 GTB/GTS, 1975-1977 308 GTB (GRP), 1977-1979 308 GTB and GTS, 1980-1981 208 GTB & GTS, 1980- 1981 308 GTBi & GTSi, 1982-1985 208 GTB/GTS Turbo, 1982-1985 308 GTB/GTS Quattrovalvole, 1986-1989 328 GTB & GTS, 1986 208 GTB/GTS Turbo, 1989-1994 348, 1989-1993 348 TB & TS, 1993-1994 348 GTB, GTS & Spider, 1994-1999 F355, 1994-1999 F355 Berlinetta & GTS, 1995-1999 F355 Spider, 1995 F355 Challenge, 1998-1999 355 F1, 1999-2004 360, 1999- 2004 360 Modena & Spider, 2003-2004 360 Challenge Stradale, 2005 F430, 2005 F430 & F430 Spider, 2007 430 Scuderia. Mid-engine 2+2 Bertone-bodied Dino 308 GT4 For a time, Ferrari built 2+2 versions of its mid-engined V8 cars. Although they looked quite different from their 2-seat counterparts, both the GT4 and Mondial were closely related to the 308 GTB. 1974-1980 208/308 GT4, 1974-1975 Dino 308 GT4, 1976-1980 308 GT4, 1975-1980 208 GT4, 1980-1993 Mondial, 1980-1981 Mondial 8, 1982-1985 Mondial QV (Quattrovalvole) Coupe, 1983-1985 Mondial QV Cabriolet, 1985-1989 3.2 Mondial Copue & 3.2 Mondial Cabriolet, 1989-1993 Mondial T Coupe & Mondial T Cabriolet. Front-engine 2+2 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti The company has also produced front-engined 2+2 cars, culminating in the current 612 Scaglietti. 1960-1963 250, 1960-1963 250 GT/E 2+2, 1964-1967 330, 1964-1965 330 GT 2+2, 1965-1967 330 GT 2+2 Mk II, 1967-1971 365, 1967-1971 365 GT 2+2, 1968-1973 365 Daytona, 1971-1972 365 GTC/4, 1972-1976 365 GT4 2+2, 1976-1989 400 & 412, 1976 400 Automatic, 1979 400i, 1985 412, 1992-2003 456 & 456 M, 1992-1997 456 GT & GTA Coupe, 1998-2003 456 M GT & M GTA Coupe, 2004 612 Scaglietti. Mid-engine 12-cylinder Ferrari entered the mid-engined 12-cylinder fray with the Berlinetta Boxer in 1973. The later Testarossa remains one of the most famous Ferraris. 1973-1984 Berlinetta Boxer, 1973-1976 365 GT4 BB, 1976-1981 512 BB, 1981-1984 512i BB, 1984-1996 Testarossa, 1984- 1992 Testarossa, 1992-1994 512 TR, 1994-1996 F512 M. Supercars Enzo Ferrari The company's loftiest efforts have been in the supercar market. 1962-1964 250 GTO, 1984-1985 288 GTO, 1987-1992 F40, 1995-1997 F50, 1996 F50 GT, 2003-2005 Enzo, 2006 FXX. Competition models Current 2008 F2008, 2007 599 GTB Fiorano, 2006-2008 Ferrari F430, 2006 F430 GT, 2006 F430 Pista, 2006 FXX. Past 1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa Sports cars 1940 AAC 815, 1947 125 Sport, 1947 159 Sport, 1948 166 S/SC/MM, 1950 195 S, 1951 bang-bus, 1951 340 America, 1951 212 Export, 1952 225 S, 1952 250 S, 1952 340 Mexico, 1953 250 MM, 1953 Ferrari-Abarth 166 MM/53, 1953 625 TF, 1953 735 S, 1953 500 Mondial, 1953 340 MM, 1953 375 MM, 1954 750 Monza, 1954 250 Monza, 1954 375 Plus, 1955 118 LM, 1955 121 LM, 1955 410 S, 1955 857 S, 1956 500 TR, 1956 290 MM, 1956 290 S, 1956 860 Monza, 1956 625 LM, 1957 500 TRC, 1957 315 S, 1957 335 S, 1957 250 Testa Rossa, 1960 250 TR60/61, 1962 250 GTO, 1963 330 LM Berlinetta, 1963 P/LM series, 1963 250 P, 1964 250 LM, 1964 330 P, 1965 330 P2, 1966 330 P3, 1967 330 P4, 1967 412 P, 1969 Ferrari 212 E "Montagna", 1969 312 P, 1969 512 S and 512 M, 1971 312 PB, 1994 333 SP, 1995 F50 GT, 2005 FXX. Formula 1 1948 125 F1, 1950 275 F1, 1950 340 F1, 1950 375 F1, 1954 553 F1, 1954 625 F1, 1955 555 F1, 1955 Ferrari-Lancia D50, 1957 801 F1, 1958 412 MI, 1958 246 F1, 1959 256 F1, 1961 156 F1, 1964 158 F1, 1964 512 F1, 1966 312 F1, 1970 312 B, 1971 312 B2, 1973 312 B3, 1975 312 T, 1976 312 T2, 1978 312 T3, 1979 312 T4, 1980 312 T5, 1981 126 C, 1982 126 C2, 1983 126 C3, 1984 126 C4, 1985 156/85, 1986 F1/86, 1987 F1/87, 1988 F1/88, 1989 F1 640, 1990 F1 641, 1991 F1 642, 1991 F1 643, 1992 F 92 A, 1993 F 93 A, 1994 412 T1/T1B, 1995 412 T2, 1996 F 310, 1997 F 310 B, 1998 F 300, 1999 F 399, 2000 F1-2000, 2001 F2001, 2002 F2002, 2003 F2003-GA, 2004 F2004, 2005 F2005, 2006 248 F1, 2007 F2007. Formula 2 1948 125 F2, 1951 500 F2, 1953 553 F2, 1957 Dino 156 F2, 1967 Dino 166 F2. Concept Models 1968 Ferrari P5, 1969 Ferrari Pininfarina 512S Berlinetta Speciale, 1970 Ferrari Pininfarina Modulo, 1989 Ferrari Mythos, 2005 Ferrari GG50, 2006 Ferrari P4/5, 2006 Ferrari Zagato 575 GTZ. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Italian Products Pasta Boy with Spaghetti by Julius Moser, c.1808 Pasta is an Italian food made from a dough using flour, water and/or eggs. The dough is shaped and can be stored. Pasta is boiled prior to consumption. There are many variations of shapes and ingredients that are all called pasta. A few examples include spaghetti (solid cylinders), macaroni (tubes or hollow cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagna (sheets). Pasta can also denote dishes in which pasta products are the primary ingredient, served with sauce or seasonings. The word comes from Italian pasta which shares its origins with "paste", meaning "dough", "pasta", or "pastry" as in "small cake". Ingredients There are many ingredients that can be used to make pasta dough. They range from a simple flour and water mixture, to those that call for the addition of eggs, spices and cheeses, or even squid ink to the dough. Under Italian law, dry pasta can only be made from durum wheat semolina flour. This flour has a yellow tinge in color. Italian pasta is traditionally cooked al dente (Italian: "to the teeth", meaning not too soft). Abroad, dry pasta is frequently made from other types of flour (such as farina), but this yields a softer product, which cannot be cooked al dente. Particular varieties of pasta may also use other grains and/or milling methods to make the flour. Some pasta varieties, such as Pizzoccheri, are made from buckwheat flour. Various types of fresh pasta include eggs (pasta all'uovo). Gnocchi are often listed among pasta dishes, although they are quite different in ingredients (mainly milled potatoes). Preparation Pasta can be made by hand but is more commonly made with special tools or machines. Extrusion tools force ingredients through holes in a plate known as a die. Lamination tools squeeze ingredients through rollers into sheets of a particular thickness, which are then cut by slitters. History Making pasta; illustration from an edition of Tacuinum Sanitatis, Europe, 15th century. Though the Chinese were eating noodles as long ago as 2000 BC (this is known thanks to the discovery of a well- preserved bowl of noodles over 4000 years old), the familiar legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China is just that—a legend[citation needed], whose origins lie not in Polo's Travels, but in the newsletter of the National Macaroni Manufacturers Association. The works of the 2nd century CE Greek physician Galen mention itrion, homogenous compounds made up of flour and water. The Jerusalem Talmud records that itrium, a kind of boiled dough, was common in Palestine from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD A dictionary compiled by the 9th century Syrian physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali defines itriyya as stringlike pasta shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking, a recognizable ancestor of modern-day dried pasta. Lasagne One form of itrion with a long history is laganum (plural lagana), which in Latin refers to a thin sheet of dough.In the 1st century BC work of Horace, lagana were fine sheets of dough which were fried and were an everyday food. Writing in the 2nd century Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana: very fine sheets of a dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, then flavored with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of several layers of rolled- out dough alternating with meat stuffing and baked in an oven, a recognizable ancestor of modern-day Lasagna. Some have attributed the innovation of dried pasta, in the form of long thin noodles we use today (spaghetti) to the Arabs who populated Southern Italy (i.e. Sicily) around the 12th Century. Prior to this, Italians are said to have eaten their pasta freshly made (pasta fresca) in a gnocchi like form. Accompaniments Pesto Cavatappi Common pasta sauces in Northern Italy include pesto and ragù alla bolognese; in Central Italy, simple tomato sauce, amatriciana and carbonara, and in Southern Italy, spicy tomato, garlic, and olive oil based sauces, often paired with fresh vegetables or seafood. Varieties include puttanesca, pasta alla norma (tomatoes, eggplant and fresh or baked cheese), pasta con le sarde (fresh sardines, pine nuts, fennel and olive oil), spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino (litterally with garlic, (olive) oil and hot chili peppers). Fettuccine Alfredo, with butter and cheese, and spaghetti with tomato sauce with or without ground meat or meatballs are popular Italian-style dishes in the United States. As pasta is introduced elsewhere in the world, it has been incorporated into a number of local cuisines that may have significantly different ways of preparations from those of its country of origin. In Hong Kong, the local Chinese has adopted pasta, primarily spaghetti and macaroni, as an ingredient in the Hong Kong-style Western cuisine. In the territory's Cha chaan tengs, pasta, most commonly macaroni, is cooked in water, and served in broth with ham or frankfurter sausages, peas, black mushrooms, and optionally eggs reminiscent of noodle soup dishes. This is often a course for breakfast or light lunch fare. The method often involves cooking the pasta well beyond the al dente stage and washing the starches off the pasta after cooking, measures frowned upon in Italy or in Hong Kong's more authentic Italian eateries. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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