Seeing a paint brush on the floor, the emperor reached down to retrieve it and presented it to the painter. Had Charles bestowed a golden scepter upon Titian, the honor would have been no greater. Artists were still viewed as artisans by most of the nobility of Europe. In sullying his royal hands with a tool of Titian’s trade, Charles paid him the ultimate compliment.

This article is filed under Art, Biography, Books, Italy, Non-Fiction Reviews.

There is a common refrain among academics and law enforcement officials who have studied the Italian Mafia, arguably the best known and in many ways the seed group for all other crime syndicates. To understand the Mafia, they say, you first have to understand Sicily.

This article is filed under 100 Greatest Gangster Films, Italy, Movies, Movies & TV.

The Venetians during the Renaissance were a confident and resilient people. Even as their dominions were threatened by the Turks and global trade routes shifted away from the Mediterranean Sea, they found the inner resources to cope with these challenges. You have only to look at the magnificent portraits from the Accademia Carrara at the Metropolitan Museum to understand why the Republic of Venice lasted until Napoleon’s invasion in 1798.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Italy.

Considering how “casual” the work is in its approach, you could, I suppose, call it a mere glimpse into the turmoil and tragedies that overcame Naples. Yet, in some ways, this technique proves far more vibrant than the traditional presentations of historical events which most of us have experienced in the course of our schooling. Not to say Taylor hasn’t studied his subject or done his extensive research.

This article is filed under Books, Italy, Non-Fiction Reviews.

“The Sicilians,” the agent said, “are very serious about what they do.” We see a lot of that in Mafioso, director Alberto Lattuada’s dark comedy that says so much about both the criminal organization and the fascinating island of Sicily that gave birth to it. In a 2010 article in the Daily Beast, Martin Scorsese listed the film as one of the 15 gangster movies that had the most profound effect on him as a writer and director. He cited Mafioso as “one of the best films ever made about Sicily.”

This article is filed under 100 Greatest Gangster Films, Italy, Movies, Movies & TV.

Perhaps, the best way of approaching Conrad’s book is to regard it primarily as a meditation on creativity. As with opera itself, where passion and empathy lead, intellectual appreciation will follow. The key insight of this fine book is easy enough to grasp. In an age of strutting nationalism, both Verdi and Wagner gave the world music that ultimately transcends the limits of borders or political ideology, regardless of how subsequent regimes used it.

This article is filed under Biography, Books, Germany, Italy, Music, Non-Fiction Reviews, Opera.

More importantly, the good-for-you, vitamin-enriched Renaissance we know today is itself a fairly recent, and largely American, historical construction.

This article is filed under After Image, Art, History, Italy.

Carthage, however, was not merely conquered by Rome. As the title of Miles’ book asserts, Carthage was destroyed. In three brutal wars, Carthage’s military power was annihilated by the legions of the Roman Republic. The city was ransacked and burned, down to its foundations. The people of Carthage were massacred or enslaved. The literature of the city was put to the torch. Not a stone was left upon a stone.

This article is filed under Africa, Books, History, Italy, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews.

Yet in Federico’s town, pools are pumped and wells are closed. They remove centuries old trees in the square and install a serpent-shaped fountain; they provide more jobs as the spa complex grows, at the same time bulldozing vineyards and cobblestone streets. Federico’s response is extreme but at the sight of his parched land perhaps understandable. He goes guerrilla.

This article is filed under Books, Fiction Reviews, Italy.

The shepherds look up in bewilderment at the announcing angel whose golden halo, rose-pink robes, and orangey-bronze wings seem to glow. Surely, this is what a supernatural visitation should look like. And yet the effect of nocturnal shadow shows the painter to be as interested in earthly experiences as heavenly ones – here already is the keenly observational eye of the Renaissance.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Italy.

In his most serious brawl, about which the documents provide an entirely new account, Caravaggio killed a man. The brawl, like a Los Angeles fight between rival gangs, had been planned ahead of time with eight participants, whose names are now known.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Italy.

The Tea and Coffee Piazza sets, produced in limited editions of ninety-nine, with three artist’s proofs, were a critical success. The project served to introduce Michael Graves to the Alessi “stable,” while traveling exhibits informed museum patrons on the ways that high art and industrial design could form working partnerships. Mendini’s original conception was vindicated.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Design, Italy.

Pistoletto first gained prominence in the world of art in the early 1960′s with his Quadri Specchianti. These “mirror paintings” positioned life-sized and astonishingly lifelike images of people on highly polished sheets of stainless steel.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Italy.

Chaos and Classicism tells the story of good intentions that went terribly wrong. After the carnage of trench warfare, sensitive spirits in Europe craved artistic depictions of beautiful bodies, unscathed by shrapnel, and timeless, uncluttered architecture inspired by the Greek and Roman past. Yet, it was not long before this craving for life-affirming art was transformed into the soulless ideology of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and Hitler’s Third Reich.

This article is filed under Art, Art & Design, Germany, Italy.

A startling achievement in a first novel, the work seems to have already touched a chord since it has taken Italy and Europe by storm and sold copies in the millions. It was undertaken by a young Italian physicist at age 27, who tells a haunting story. Better yet, he’s a natural, adept with characterization, knowing how to captivate and hold his readers.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Italy, Mathematics.