Archive for 'Important People'

Troubled, gifted and dramatic, Caravaggio is as intriguing as his groundbreaking work. The great Baroque artist was lost to history for a while but was incredibly famous in his own lifetime and is now considered one of the greatest artists of his age once more. While he was born in Milan and spent his relatively short life all over the country (a portion of it on the run), Rome remains one of the best places to see his work. Despite his controversial life, the Church was a big supporter and important patron throughout his career and, as such, much of his work still exists in Rome. Just find a holiday rental in Rome and seek out these examples.

1. Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c.1593

Located in in the Galleria Borghese, this work dates to when Caravaggio was newly arrived in Rome. The model was his friend, the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti, who was around 16 years old at the time. A kind of genre painting, it displays Caravaggio's ability to paint everything from flesh and hair to fabric and fruit.

Columbanus, known as San Columbano, in Italy, was an Irish saint who was active in the Frankish Empire, establishing monasteries throughout what is now France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, in the 6th and 7th centuries.

The best known are: St. Gall in Switzerland, Disibodenberg in the Rhine Palatinate, St. Paul's at Besançon, Lure and Cusance in the Diocese of Besançon, Beze in the Diocese of Langres, Remiremont Abbey and Moyenmoutier Abbey in the Diocese of Toul, Fosses-la-Ville in the Diocese of Liège, Mont-St-Michel at Peronne, Ebersmunster in Lower Alsace, St. Martin at Cologne.

Finally, he moved on to Italy, where, at Bobbio, he established a great monastic centre. He worked to convert the Arian Lombards and restore unity with the Bishop of Rome. It was here that he spent the last years of his life, leaving a corpus of writings that shaped the monastic culture of the Middle Ages.

Italy is well-known as a Catholic nation and, due to its long history of Catholicism, has given rise to a large number of saints. With so many saints, not everyone can be patron saint of obvious causes which has lead to the creation of some rather strange ones including a Patron Saint of Cranky Children (St Sebastian). One of the most unusual is, perhaps, St Clare of Assisi. Assisi has had a long history of religious affiliations, with St Francis being intimately connected to the area, but another saint hailing from the town is St Clare, Patron Saint of Television. You read that right, television. Why not find a vacation rental in Umbria and spend a day in the city of Assisi, learning all about this strange saint?

Andrea Palladio was born in 1508 in Padua, then was part of the island filled lagoon of Venice. Stay in a lovely holiday villa in Veneto where you can easily visit the birthplace of this genius!

From a young age he worked as a stonecutter’s apprentice and then an assistant of a stonecutting workshop in Vicenza until he was thirty years old. This early experience with understanding how stone can be wielded and shaped played a major role in Palladio’s later career.

His life changed dramatically when he was employed by a poet and scholar called Gian Giorgio Trissino to help redesign and reconstruct the Villa Cricoli.

Born in 1678 in Venice, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi went on to become one of the world’s greatest Baroque composers. Before his classical music career he was actually a priest, ordained in 1703!

Vivaldi left the priesthood several years later because of physical ailments according to him. Stay in a beautiful villa rental in Veneto where you can easily explore where Vivaldi was born and raised.

Some speculate that he only pursued the life of a priest to obtain a free education which was the only option for poor families at the time.