Romantic Soul of Italy ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Artists Francesco Hayez was born in Venice in 1791 and died in Milan in 1882, after a life that spanned almost the entire nineteenth-century transformation of Italy. He began his career when…
Storyteller of the Decameron ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, probably in or near Florence, into a world in which merchants, bankers, clerics, nobles, and ambitious city republics were transforming medieval Italy. He would become…
The Mind Behind The Prince ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 into a republic famous for its art, wealth, factional rivalries, and political danger. Few names in history have acquired an adjective as…
Master of Masks and Identity ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Luigi Pirandello was born in 1867 near Agrigento, Sicily, and became one of the most radical dramatists and storytellers of modern Europe. His world is full of mirrors, masks, unstable…
The Voice of The Betrothed ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan in 1785 and became one of the central figures of modern Italian literature. His masterpiece, I Promessi Sposi – The Betrothed – is more…
The Scholar of Signs and Mysteries ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria, in Piedmont, in 1932, and grew into one of the rare intellectuals who could move with equal confidence between medieval theology, comic books,…
The Inventor of Invisible Worlds ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Italo Calvino was born in 1923 in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba, where his Italian parents were working as scientists. His father, Mario, was an agronomist and botanist; his mother,…
Witness of Memory and Conscience ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919 into a Jewish Italian family and grew up in a city shaped by industry, science, engineering, and a strong tradition of civic…
A Powerful Voice of Italian Literature ItalyStories.com — Great Italian Writers Elsa Morante was born in Rome in 1912 and became one of the most powerful, independent, and difficult-to-classify voices in twentieth-century Italian literature. Her novels are large in emotion…
The Harsh Soul of Sicily ItalyStories.com Giovanni Verga was born in Catania in 1840, into a landowning Sicilian family, and became the writer who gave modern Italian literature one of its most severe and unforgettable visions of human life. His…