Famous Italians Through History
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BY FR. JAMES LENTINI, NATIONAL SECRETARY Andrea Amati (1500–1577) A violin-maker from Cremona, Anrea Amati, laid the basis of modern violin-making. His grandson, Niccolo, had Antonio Stadivari, the inventor of the Stradivarius, as a pupil. Nicola ceased being actively involved in violin manufacturing by the end of 1670, and the business of violin-making passed to his son Hieronymus.
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) Commonly known as Dante, this Italian poet greatly influenced generations of poets and authors throughout the centuries, such as Byron, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Blake. He was the author of La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), an allegory of life and God as revealed to a pilgrim, translated into 59 different languages since 1400. It is written in terza rima, a three-line rhyme scheme of his own invention and tells the story of a man who endures the torment of Hell (Inferno) and Purgatory (Purgatorio) in his quest to reach Paradise (Paradiso).
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) St. Tommaso of Aquino was a medieval Catholic priest who greatly influenced thinking and teaching in philosophy. His Summa Theologica has been published in 1,317 editions in 24 different languages since 1463. His writings gave rise to several schools and periods of thomism, an encompassing synthesis of philosophy, theology and the sciences of man.
Eugenio Barsanti (1821–1864) Eugenio Barsanti, together with Felice Matteuci, developed the first internal combustion engine driven by gas. Their engine was never used as a commercial device, but, as it was more economical than the previous versions, it led to groundbreaking improvements in later developments of the gas engine.
Cesare Beccaria (Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria) (1738–1794) Beccaria was one of the first to criticize the barbarism and ad hoc nature of 18th century criminal justice. He is the founding father of a classical school of criminology and most criminal systems in democratic countries are directly or indirectly based upon the recommendations in his work On Crimes and Punishments.
Giambattista Beccaria (1716 –1781) Giambattista Beccaria discovered the light sensitivity of silver chloride, which was a very important development in the area of photography. Beccaria did much, by both experiment and exposition, to spread a knowledge of the
electrical researches of Benjamin Franklin, of whose research he was a strong supporter.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Boccaccio counts as an important figure in the development of a European humanist literature and influenced a large range of scholars and thinkers across genre and period. His Decameron has been translated into 49 different languages since 1380. It is believed to have influenced Geoffrey Chaucer and his famous book of the Canterbury Tales.
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) Known for his architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design, Brunelleschi is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, a feat of engineering still studied today. He also developed the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Commonly known as Michelangelo, this Renaissance painter and sculptor famously sculpted the image of David, and the Pieta. Though more steeped in sculpture than painting, he painted the glorious ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City-State at St. Peter’s Basilica.
Giovanni Caboto (1450 – c. 1500) Commonly called John Cabot, this Venetian navigator explored the coast of Newfoundland under the commission of Henry VII of England in 1497. His discovery made him the first European to land in North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the 11th century.
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) An important philosopher of the late Renaissance, Camanella’s best-known work is the utopian treatise La città del Sole (The City of the Sun). He spent 27 years imprisoned in Neapolitan castles (1599–1626), where he used his time to take on the task of providing a new foundation for the entire encyclopedia of knowledge.
Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Cardano was an Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer and gambler. Today, he is still well known for his achievements in algebra. He made the first systematic use of negative numbers in Europe, promoted the solutions for the cubic and quartic equations, and acknowledged the existence of imaginary numbers.
Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) In 1906, Giosuè Carducci became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. Although his reputation rests primarily on his poetry, he also produced a large body of prose, which fill some 20 volumes.
Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) Enrico Caruso was a famous Italian tenor who sang at the major opera houses of Europe and North and South America, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.
Giovanni Caselli (1815–1891) Caselli invented the pan-telegraph, an ancestor of the fax, which became the first commercial application of the fax, established in 1865. For political and commercial reasons his invention was not further implemented until it was ‘re-discovered’ by Japanese inventors and developers and gave rise to a widespread public use of the fax through telecom lines.
Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who acquired world-wide fame because of his minute and lengthy autobiography. His vivid portrayal of 16th century Rome and Florence, in which drama and wit abound, is of great historical value. It was translated into German by Goethe. Cellini’s became famous throughout Europe for his work in precious metals.
Francesco Cirio (1836–1900) Cirio was the first to develop the concept of preserving vegetables in cans in 1856. This Italian businessman is credited with developing the “appertization technique”— a method of processing vegetables that leads to them being canned. Cirio also worked to help the agricultural development of Southern Italy.
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator from the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of Castile, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization, which foreshadowed general European colonization of the “New World.”
This page sponsored by Anthony M. Carfaro, Sr., Beta Omicron ’65, Youngstown State University.
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KLEOS-The Magazine of Alpha Phi Delta, November 2020
www.APD.org
