“It is easy to guess the exotic in the life of Palermo: it is poured here in the air, hot and humid; it catches the eye at every step in the outlandish and lush vegetation. P. Muratov “Images of Italy” The main city of Sicily, its capital Palermo is the soul, history and heart of…
Tag: Italy
Italy Painting Part III
The figural world of G. Dova (1925) is also bitter and fantastic, whose surrealist ancestry is evident in the invention of an angular, lanceolate fauna and flora, as if to signify the disjointed and dispersed limbs of man (sources in Picasso and in Ernst, and in Kafka’s anguish). And here we can mention, although very…
Italy Painting Part II
While F. Gentilini (1909) deepens a narrative interwoven with popular candor and cultural references, both of fourteenth-century painting (of which he also aspires to dry surfaces, such as frescoes) and of contemporary art, by means of delightful montages, T. Scialoja (1914) and G. Turcato (1912), originally also part of the Roman school, in its expressionistic…
Italy Painting Part I
As of 1960, the creative itinerary of the protagonists of the events of art in Italy in the first half of the century could be considered concluded for some time, with some rare exceptions; and of the cultural inheritance, obviously very composite, that those masters left, the most lively and stimulating part, towards the new…
The Kingdom of Italy – New Problems and New Tasks Part IV
A different policy followed, after the rapid death of Di Rudinì, Giovanni Giolitti, former minister with Crispi and alien to audacity and excesses. But his attempt to remove the danger from the social question by letting the peasant exasperation caused by poverty vent, failed. The serious conflicts in Sicily, caused by the workers’ Fasci , frightened conservatives and bourgeois,…
The Kingdom of Italy – New Problems and New Tasks Part III
Political life is still poor, without great ideals, and the echo of local, particular interests is still too much, but the law of 1877 begins the fight against the national scourge of illiteracy and imposes the gratuitousness and obligatory nature of popular education; the other of 1882 modifies the conditions for exercising the right to vote…
The Kingdom of Italy – New Problems and New Tasks Part II
The Left found Italy still isolated internationally, still unsettled by the European repercussions of its dissent with the Vatican, overestimated in its effects and in its importance, but such as to provide weapons or pretexts to any possible adversary: to France, to Austria, even to the Germany of the Lutheran Bismarck. Nor were the memories of…
The Kingdom of Italy – New Problems and New Tasks Part I
Not even the conquest of Rome eliminated, therefore, the intrusive or threatening internal and international difficulties. The modest tone and aridity of national life displeased those who had deluded themselves of a ready return to the greatness and majesty of Italy, unable to recognize that this Italy was new, and its ways new and its goals…
Emperors and Popes in Front of the Communes and the Norman Kingdom Part IV
In 1189, according to Shoefrantics, William of Sicily died and Frederick the emperor in 1190: Henry VI immediately turned to pick the now ripe Sicilian fruit. There was an anti-German party there, as there had been an anti-French one, at the time of the regent Margaret. Vivo was the spirit of independence, in Sicilians and Normans, now Sicilianized. And…
Emperors and Popes in Front of the Communes and the Norman Kingdom Part III
However, the lowering of the empire and the kingdom meant the green light left to the political energies of the country, free development of city life and city state. Italy, the Italy of the kingdom, was about to become “indomitable and wild”. Political unity was moving away, the spontaneous creative activity of the Italian nation was reinvigorated…
Emperors and Popes in Front of the Communes and the Norman Kingdom Part II
There was then a very open break with Alexander III, after an anti-pope, Victor IV, confirmed in Pavia in a council convened by the emperor, proclaimed Alexander a schismatic and the emperor banned him. Alexander replied to the imperial ban with excommunication and moved to France to seek enemies of the German Caesar. A coalition was formed…
Emperors and Popes in Front of the Communes and the Norman Kingdom Part I
Against the municipality of Rome and the king of Sicily, Eugene III and Adriano IV popes found an ally in Frederick I of Swabia, who, having met in Constance with the legates of Eugene III, swore help against those enemies and made a commitment to go to Rome to receive the imperial crown. And Frederick kept…
The Italian States in the Current of the Counter-reform Part IV
In short, a certain vigor of restored governments; certain aspiration to greatness; a certain will and effort to give territorial completeness to the state; certain surviving fighting ardor of these principles. In addition to Emanuele Filiberto, Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, his great opponent, is extremely inclined to the militia. Indeed, he passed from France to Spain precisely to have a greater…
The Italian States in the Current of the Counter-reform Part III
According to Justinshoes, the traits of this prince are those of a beautifully tempered personality, full of balance and momentum. In him, a spirit of command and inflexible will, love of the land of him and a feeling of public good. He listened to everyone, but resolved by himself: a common trait of these principles who felt…
The Italian States in the Current of the Counter-reform Part II
He used people from every part of the territory and extended the right of Florentine citizenship, that is the exercise of state offices, to many Pisan, Arezzo, Pistoia, Prato, Volterra, Cortonese, Sangeminianese families, etc. By issuing rules for the whole territory or making those of the metropolis compulsory or by imposing provisions of Roman law as…
The Italian States in the Current of the Counter-reform Part I
According to Healthvv, the age of the Counter-Reformation was also an age of restoration and state establishment, in the form and by means of princely absolutism and centralization of powers. What occurs in the government of the Church, with the powerful subsidy of religious orders, also occurs in the government of the Italian states, both of…
The Finances of Italy from 1914 Part IV
To face the economic crisis it was first of all necessary to prevent the lira from being overwhelmed by the international monetary upheavals and for this reason an attempt was made to strengthen the gold reserves more and more so as to constitute only with them the normal coverage of circulation; indeed a policy already followed…
The Finances of Italy from 1914 Part III
Nor should it be surprising that the revaluation movement began even before the effect of the new financial measures could be produced (November 6, the day on which the issuance of the Littorio loan was authorized, which served to consolidate 15 billion Treasury bills, the exchange rate with the dollar had already dropped to 23.44), since…
The Finances of Italy from 1914 Part II
Strong budget deficit (7.9, 17.4 and 15.8 billion respectively in the financial years 1919-20, 1920-21 and 1921-22), both for the gradual exhaustion of war taxes, for the inadequate increase in revenue of ordinary taxes and for the many tax evasions, both for the difficulty of containing public expenses and for the huge deficits of the…
The Finances of Italy from 1914 Part I
According to Fashionissupreme, the beginning of the world war caught Italy in a situation of undoubted inferiority compared to other nations. In fact, it had not yet fully recovered from the losses suffered as a result of the Calabrian-Sicilian earthquake and the Libyan war (about 6 billion) and it had also missed that period of economic…