Picturesque and noisy Catania is a city of a volcano. Dark, closed Etna, like a recalcitrant deity, looks at the revival that reigns in the city streets and serves as an eloquent symbol of the inherent quality of the inhabitants of Catania: their hard work. It was this quality that allowed the people to be repeatedly reborn from the ashes, like a newly appeared phoenix bird, without caring about earthquakes or wars. Therefore, the symbol of their city is so suitable for the inhabitants of Catania – an elephant, a strong and kind animal, and their patron saint – Agatha, a virgin and martyr, who was able to stop even the fury of Etna with the supernatural power of her veil.

According to ESHAOXING.INFO, Catania is a dark city built of black volcanic stone, and at the same time unusually sunny and bright, because the sun shines here 2528 hours a year: more than anywhere else in Italy. This is an ancient city that arose in the pre-Greek era, which, however, is sometimes almost indifferent to its history. So, the Greek theater looks almost forgotten at the end of a small street.

The city of Catania was founded in 729 BC. e.. Its name meant “hill”, and indeed, an acropolis was built on the hill where today the large Benedicite monastery is located. Over the years, temples, a hippodrome, a gymnasium, a mint and an odeon arose around the latter.

The history of the city was also determined by the whims of Etna, which brings life, but at the same time – death and destruction. So, in 1169, as a result of a strong earthquake, 15,000 people died, in 1669 lava reached the port and rushed into the sea, leaving behind only despair, in 1693 the entire city was swept off the face of the earth by an earthquake. Under the rubble, 16,000 people died. However, this last event had not only tragic consequences. The end of the 17th century was marked by the ardor of rapid restoration, the wonderful fruits of which still today are the pride of the city.

Attractions:

The Fountain of the Elephant, located in the center of the Piazza Duomo, is the work of Giovan Battista Vaccarini. It consists of a figure of an elephant made of volcanic stone from the ancient Roman era and an Egyptian granite stele with hieroglyphic inscriptions relating to the cult of the goddess Isis.

The cathedral, built at the turn of the 17th century, is the main architectural monument. Its Gothic façade, dating back to the early 20th century, was designed by Giovan Battista Basile. The interior of the cathedral consists of three naves and is decorated with frescoes by Giuseppe Schuti and Pietro Paolo Vasta.

The Cathedral of St. Agatha, built in 1078-1093 on the site of the Achilles Baths, retained three apses and a high transept from the era of construction.

In the castle of Ursino, built in 1239-1250. at the behest of Frederick II of Sweve, it currently houses the City Museum. This castle, once surrounded by the sea, was the residence of the Aragonese kings in the 16th century. In the 16th century, it was rebuilt in the Renaissance style, and at the time of the volcanic eruption in 1669, it was surrounded by lava, and therefore today it is on land.

The Roman theater had a diameter of about 87 m and could accommodate more than 7,000 spectators. It was built on the hillside where the Greek acropolis was located, and it is possible that it was originally built by the Greeks. The orchestra with a diameter of 29 meters with a floor is flooded by the waters of the Amenano River. Under today’s amphitheater there are traces of other spectator seats, but they all belong to the period of the Roman Empire.

The Odeon, recently opened to the public, was intended for choir rehearsals and competitions, and could accommodate 1,300 spectators. The space between the spectator seats and the outer wall was divided into 17 rooms, of which 16 have survived today. up to the modern Penninello street. The amphitheater could accommodate 16,000 spectators and had a height of 31 m.

The Bellini Theater, built by architects A. Skala and C. Sada in the classical style in the 2nd half of the 19th century, is dedicated to the great composer born in Catania. The interior of the theater is striking in its magnificence.

Official name: Italian Republic

State structure: republic. Head of State – President

Capital: Rome

Territory: 301.2 thousand square meters km

Geographical position: The country is located in the south of Europe. It occupies the Apennine Peninsula, the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, as well as many small islands. It borders: with France – in the west, with Austria and Switzerland – in the north, with Slovakia – in the northeast. It is washed by the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea – in the west, the Adriatic – in the east, the Mediterranean – in the south. See Countryvv for labor market in Italy.

The main rivers are the Po and the Tiber. Italy is predominantly a mountainous country: its north is occupied by the southern slopes of the Alps, where the highest peak in Europe Mont Blanc (4807 m) is located; to the south – the Padana plain, on the peninsula – the mountains of the Apennines (the highest point of the city of Korno is 2914 m).

There are two tiny states in Italy : the Vatican and the Republic of San Marino.

Climate: There are three climatic zones in Italy. In the mountainous regions (Alps and Apennines), winters are cold and summers are not hot. In the vicinity of Milan, the climate is moderately warm. In the rest of Italy, winters are quite mild, dry and hot summers are softened by a light sea breeze (its influence is most noticeable on the coast of the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Seas). In the south, in the mainland and on the islands, including Sicily, the climate is subtropical.

Population: 58050 thousand people (as of 1998)

Ethnic composition of the population: Italians – 98%, Friuli – 1.9%. In addition, 300,000 Austrians, 120,000 Albanians, 100,000 Slovenes, 90,000 French, 50,000 Jews, and others live in the country. The vast majority of the population professes Catholicism.

Official language: Italian. In hotels, restaurants, tourist centers, as a rule, you can explain yourself in English and French. German is understood in ski resorts and in the resorts of the northern Adriatic. Any, even the most awkward, attempts to communicate in Italian will be met with enthusiasm.

Official holidays: January 1 – New Year, January 6 – Epiphany, April 25 – Liberation Day from fascism, May 1 – Labor Day, the first Sunday of June – Republic Proclamation Day, August 15 – Assumption, November 1 – All Saints Day, November 4 – National Unity Day, December 8 – Immaculate Conception, December 25 – Christmas, December 26 – St. Stephen’s Day. Holiday with variable date – Easter Monday.

Monetary unit: euro. Currency exchange can be done in banks, in a hotel (the exchange rate is not very favorable), at the airport. Easy to use credit cards.

Geographical position

Italy is located in southern Europe in the central Mediterranean. In the north, Italy borders on Switzerland and Austria, in the east – on Slovenia, in the northwest – on France and is washed by the waters of four seas – the Adriatic in the east, in the south – the Ionian, in the west – the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian. Italy owns the islands – Sicily, Sardinia, Elba and several small islands. The territory of the country stretches from north to south for more than 1100 km and consists of 23% of valleys (river and coastal), 35% of mountains (Alps and Apennines) and 42% of hills of various heights.

Two independent states are also located on the territory of the Apennine Peninsula: the Vatican and San Marino.

About 57.3 million people live in Italy; hence the population density of 195 people per sq. km. The most densely populated areas are Lombardy, Campania, Lazio, Sicily, Piedmont and Veneto.

History of Italy

1000 BC e. – Tribes of Ligurians, Etruscans, Italics, Latins, Sabines lived on the territory of the country.

754 BC e. – Founding of the city of Rome by the Latins.

290 BC e. – Rome subjugated the territory of Central Italy.

265 BC e. – victory over the Greek commander Pyrrhus (“Pyrrhic victory”) and the conquest of southern Italy by Rome.

264-241 BC e. – I Punic War with Carthage. Rome received the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.

216 BC e. – During the II Punic War, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal crossed the Alps and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Romans at the Battle of Cannae.

202 BC e. – Hannibal’s army was defeated by the Roman commander Scipio in the battle of Zama. Rome received the territory of Spain.

168 BC e. The Romans conquered the Balkan Peninsula.

158 BC e. – the expansion of the power of Rome to Asia Minor and Syria.

149-146 BC e. – III Punic War, which ended with the complete destruction of Carthage.

88-79 years BC e. Sulla’s dictatorship.

73-71 years BC e. – slave uprising led by Spartacus.

58-51 years BC. – Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul (modern France).

49-45 years BC e. – civil war and the victory of Julius Caesar. The decisive battle with Pompey was won at Pharsalae in 48 BC. e.

44 BC e. – the murder in Rome of J. Caesar.

31 BC e. – the defeat of the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra by Octavian at Cape Actions.

30 BC e – accession to Rome of Egypt. Octavian becomes Emperor Augustus and Rome becomes an empire.

Beginning of the 1st century – Roman conquest of Palestine and Judea.

43 – The Romans captured Britain.

106 – Rome subjugated the Dacians (modern Romania).

395 – division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern (Byzantium).

410 – for the first time, the barbarians took and sacked Rome (the Visigoths, led by King Alaric).

455 – sack of Rome by vandals, destruction of many works of art.

476 – the leader of the Germanic tribes Odoacer overthrew the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus. Rome ceases to be the capital of the world.

488 – The Ostrogoths invaded Italy and founded their kingdom here.

554 – Byzantium established its rule in Italy.

774 – Italy is conquered by the Frankish emperor Charlemagne.

962 – campaigns in Italy of the German king Otto I. Formation of the Holy Roman Empire.

12th century – The Normans captured southern Italy and Sicily, forming the Kingdom of Sicily.

1559 – The Spaniards took possession of Sardinia and northern Italy.

1714 – the territory of northern Italy came under the rule of Austria.

1720 – formation of the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont).

1796-1814 – Napoleon’s reign over Italy.

1799 – Suvorov’s Italian campaign.

1860 – J. Garibaldi’s expedition to the south of the country and the liberation of Sicily from the Austrians.

1861 – Formation of a unified Italian kingdom under the scepter of the King of Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel II.

1866 expulsion of the Austrians from Venice.

1915 entry into World War I on the side of the Entente.

1919 – under a peace treaty, Italy received South Tyrol and Istria with the city of Trieste. The beginning of the fascist movement B. Mussolini.

1922 – “march on Rome” of the Italian fascists. Mussolini becomes prime minister (actually dictator of Italy).

1929 – Lateran agreements with the pope on the formation in the territory of Rome of the papal state of the Vatican.

1939 – “Steel Pact” about an alliance with Nazi Germany. Intervention of Italian troops in Albania.

1940 – Italy’s entry into World War II.

1943 – landing of Anglo-American troops in Sicily. Italy withdraws from the war by signing an armistice agreement. Entry into the country of German troops.

1945 – Mussolini’s execution and the end of the war in Italy.

1947 – As a result of a referendum, Italy is proclaimed a republic. Under the peace treaty, the country lost all colonies and territories in the Balkans. The city of Trieste is allocated to the free zone of the OO N.

1949 – Italy joins NATO.

1964 – reunification of the city of Trieste with the Italian Republic.

1983-1986 – active actions of the Italian government against the “Red Brigades” and the mafia.

There is still a feudal nobility, partly of ancient origin, especially in the south, even more of recent origin, for the purchase of fiefdoms, for princely diplomas, especially in northern and central Italy. It is a Spanish nobility, sumptuous, all taken by the desire to excel in public even if in private it feels the pang of misery, far from offices or from the care of heritage and from any interest, “asleep in the pleasures of a happy life”, as the Vico. By now it also withdraws from the militia and loses what had been its main function. All in all, a class that is running out and crumbling: debts, partial alienation of the fiefdoms and therefore splitting of the fiefdoms themselves, ruinous judicial disputes between the feudatories with the communities or with the royal or ducal or grand-ducal chamber, confiscation of fiefdoms, etc. Always continued to manufacture some of this feudal nobility; but the more it grows in number, the more it is devalued in terms of quality. Next to, or further down, there is an urban patriciate, born from the mercantile activities, professions, legates, etc., of free or more recently formed cities. Although there were patricians invested with fiefdoms and feudatories admitted to the patriciate and ambitious to enter it by virtue of the authority it procured in city affairs, both classes also kept themselves distinct and in a position of antagonism. The aristocracy, large and small, prevailed in court offices and in the administration of communities: indeed it almost monopolized the administrations, and constituted a closed circle, with a tendency to die out like all closed circles. The bourgeoisie of business, commerce, of the bank, of the textile or metallurgical industries. Elsewhere it is argued, albeit with a more restricted Italian or regional market.

According to Thefreegeography, urban life has lost its old fervor everywhere. There are no more wars between city and city: but everywhere, the bell tower is standing more than ever: rivalry, pride of precedence, the effort of the minor ones to adapt to the major ones in terms of titles, quarrels for the distribution of the tax globally assigned to the province or to the kingdom, for military quarters, etc. And sometimes it seems that the ambition of cities is exhausted in obtaining a distinction, which is as a title of nobility for private families. And like the cities, so the minor constituted bodies, the merchant and artisan guilds, the brotherhoods, etc. The tendency of all organisms and groups to close in on themselves is always alive: indeed, in the stagnation of so many activities, of the vital lymphs, it manifests itself more visibly. Every city, feudal or royal, it has or wants to have its own physiognomy, by virtue of privileges solicited for itself. The common dependence almost seems to be an incentive to particularism. The 100 baronies are also strangers to each other. The few bourgeoisie is divided into hostile groups, even within the same city, divided and subdivided into a myriad of guilds competing with each other in the mercantile and productive classes. Between aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the bridges are almost broken, with great contempt for this and its activities. Between aristocracy and bourgeoisie on one side, plebs on the other, a very deep well. And even the plebs, in the very sphere of the same state, do not have equally connections and awareness of unity. The rural one is divided, as divided the fiefdoms. There is nothing in common between the rural plebs and those of the cities that have a favorable regime: and the economy of the former is not a little subordinated to the needs of the latter, that is, to the need for cheap bread. A compact mass of plebs is only in Naples, which came here from every part of the Kingdom but soon unified in its Neapolitan character and well identified and detached from the very province from which it came. In short, a fragmentary society, more perhaps than before, due to the action of governments who prefer to dissolve rather than strengthen the organic nuclei, and financially speculate on the love of distinguishing titles, due to the weaker pace of Italian life , of the diminished wealth, of the diminished work, of the immobilization of many capitals in luxury works, of the deviation towards purely feneratized investments, poor in social effects, sterile or almost from a political point of view.

In short, the signs of stagnation, more visible and certain than those of progress. The bad effects of all those events that have greatly changed the face of Europe since the end of the 15th century are fully felt: discovery of new countries outside the circle of action of Italian cities and states, displacement of old traffic routes , the formation of new centers of economic life in competition with the previous ones, foreign domination and, moreover, of a nation in decline. And let us also think, if we like, of a relaxation of the old energies and the old spirit of initiative, which once gave half of Italy a fast pace of life, a rapid circulation of social elements, their unity despite the heated contrasts. Or rather: those external circumstances had produced,

However, it can be admitted that the Italian of the seventeenth century, the Italian of the Spanish domination and of the Counter-Reformation, the average Italian living in Italy, has less of this energy and spirit of initiative, less creative force. This is also visible in the whole of intellectual activity, as well as in political and economic activity. The great poetry and the great art and the vigorous speculation of the previous age have fallen. Political thought and historiography have not kept the promises of the time of the politicians and historians of the ‘100. In the physical and natural sciences themselves, the first impetus was followed by a certain languor, the tendency to limit oneself to mere experimentalism and pure observation, cataloging, collection of scientific facts and materials. This gives us reason for the lesser appreciation that began to be made, outside of Italy, of Italian science and culture, although the influence of Italian physical and natural studies in Europe is considerable, there is a great echo of the studies and discoveries in the field of physiology and medicine and astronomy even between the 17th and 18th centuries. The homage he continued to give to Italy was more to its past than to its present. The Italian abroad had, after all, a shorter stature than in the previous age, although the intelligence and dexterity and versatility typical of his lineage continued to manifest in him, which reached a high degree in the Renaissance age. Of course, the judgment on Italians tends to get worse abroad. We speak of Italy as the country of Machiavellianism, in the interpretation that Machiavelli gave especially the Protestant countries, but also Catholic countries where they wanted to react to influences of Italian culture. The Italy of brigandage also appears, the Italy of dolce far niente, Italy all pomp and festivals and carnival. This negative judgment is undue, who looks at so many serious manifestations of Italian life even then, who looks at the substance of Italian life itself. And Milton, having returned to England after a few months’ residence in Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice (1638), proclaimed to his fellow citizens that he had always believed on his own, but now having known from direct experience, that Italy was not already, as they believed, an asylum for troublemakers but a hotel of humanity and civil knowledge. But that negative judgment on the Italy of knowledge and on moral Italy reflected, albeit distorting them either by too superficial observation and intelligence of Italian things, or by a nationalistic spirit.

In short, almost all those states and even those dynasties, from the most to the least, are in decline, both absolutely and with regard to the times and the path made by others; also those who, in the phase of the first formation, had carried out a serious and beneficial action of government, fulfilled the necessary tasks, perfected the administration, etc. are also in decline. Everywhere, relaxation of activity and energy. And everyone knows how in this time vigilance and resistance in the face of the Church and her prerogatives were not a little relaxed; in the face of the endless phalanx of religious orders, monasteries, brotherhoods, people dedicated to real or fictitious clerical life, all claiming “freedom”, that is, exemption from any burden; in front of the big dead man reconstituted as perhaps not even in the 9th and 10th centuries, even though the reasons which at the time had allowed her to carry out a social action that were not infertile had almost disappeared. Everyone knows that, disarmed of the big political functions, the barony, where it was still powerful and treacherous, as in the kingdom of Naples, then lacked almost every ability to restrain the spirit of oppression and robbery towards the vassals, prune the forest of minute privileges which were the consideration for fidelity, to bring the cities and lands they still held back into the direct administration of the state. Indeed, just as the custom of selling offices, titles, privileges spread, so did fiefdoms of cities and lands. In the mid-1600s, almost all the cities of the South were in fiefdoms. Everyone knows that the fiscal system of the principles worsened more or less everywhere, in relation to the growing needs of a policy which was often imposed by extrinsic circumstances, and to the increase of privileged groups and relative decrease in taxable income, and to the disruption of the assets of princely families, to the pomp of the courts. The irregularity and arbitrariness of the fiscal burdens also increased, even though the prince’s advantage did not increase due to the very imperfect methods of collection, to be almost all duties and gabelles contracted out or granted as a guarantee to creditors: what made the tribute. Finally, everyone knows how the communities were ruined, impoverished by redemptions, often stripped of public goods by the barons, scarce of fiscal resources for the exemptions of the richest, laden with debts, deserted by the inhabitants; how brigandage flourished or flourished in the State of the Church, in certain parts of Tuscany, in Abruzzo, in Campania, in Calabria. The awareness of these evils in governments was not always lacking. And not even any good intentions to cure them: ferocious justice against bandits, laws to protect communities from baronial usurpations, and to restore self-administration to them, etc. But who took care of its observance? Governments were once again entangled in the web of special interests: a net which they themselves disrupted with one hand, reconstituted with the other, as an expedient of government. The tasks or interference and interventions of the state have grown more than the tools of action have been perfected: hence the arbitrary, oppressive nature of the action itself and, at the same time, its scarce effectiveness. It can also be added: those Italian states increasingly inadequate to the times, by default organic or created every day more by the new state life of Europe. Or, because they were too small and prevented from growing, they morally collapsed and became corrupted by necessity; or, being, like the dominion of Spain, the dominion of a decaying nation and foreign dominion, they too were aimed, like the papal one, more outside than inside, they too were solicitous of interests that too transcended the provinces Italians subject to them. And it is doubtful that we can identify or, at least, the Neapolitans and Sicilians could and were willing to identify the defense of the Spanish monarchy, the defense of the dynastic interests of the Habsburgs, with the defense of their possessions and honor and freedom. Hence the failure of any moral foundation of that government in Italy; the concrete awareness that it was foreign to Italy.

According to Remzfamily, those states were also resentful of the general conditions of the Italian economy. Which was going through a phase that here is of real and definitive decline, there it is stagnation with more or less temporary characteristics, elsewhere it presents itself as a tiring crisis of transformation, as an effort to adapt the economy to new and less favorable general conditions . The ocean trade had not just supplanted the Mediterranean trade. Italian traders and industrialists felt the impoverishment of the Turkish market: without counting the competition of others, since Greeks, Levantines, Jews of Spanish origin, transplanted to the Levant, had become very active. The wars of religion, especially of the Thirty Years, were impoverishing Germany, which was responsible for not a small part of the trade of northern Italy, with the damage especially of Venice which saw its position deteriorate even further compared to Genoa, closer to the new traffic routes and to the towns of the new wealth. Different circumstances, but equal in effect: the industrial progress of England and that of France, which entered, after the beginning of the century. XV and after the restoration of the monarchical force, in the mercantile phase, with encouragement of all kinds to the old and new peasant industries. Thus a large part of the French clientele, and also of other countries close to France and of the peninsula itself, was taken away from the Lombard and Venetian industries. The Italian colonies in the Netherlands are in full decline, indeed dissolving, and only the various activities of individuals remain certain. Lyon, Marseille, Paris are no longer Italian banking centers. The Genoese themselves are withdrawing from Spain and many of them prefer investments in the Italian mountains or public debts, especially in Rome. Also in Italy, a banking crisis, which between the 16th and 17th centuries sent a huge number of credit institutions to the air in Florence, Venice, Genoa and elsewhere. Therefore, dispersion of capital, mistrust, tendency to hoard, stagnation rather than lack of money, very difficult credit conditions, usury. Therefore, the more sluggish life of the bourgeoisie, the slower rise of social elements to take the place of those who have disappeared, the lowering of the credit and prestige and self-awareness of the bourgeoisie, the trading activity not worthy of the noble man, the classes tending to accentuate detachment and isolation from each other.

We are at a standstill, in the history of the Italian states, like a river that stagnates in the middle of its course. The Spanish monarchy is worn out as a great world empire and as an Italian power, despite the props it still had in Italy. Those in Italy who abhorred wars, those who saw in the great king essentially the Catholic king, bulwark of religion, stood for the preservation of Spain. The tiny surviving states that felt threatened by the larger ones, the opponents of the Savoy, relied on Spain. The nobility, in general, Spanishized. Even the Neapolitan and Sicilian plebs invoked the protection of the distant king, on whose lands the sun never set. Those who feared the French, for the “volubility, insatiability, lightness of that nation”, as Pope Urban VIII himself said, who also solidarized with the French against the Habsburgs, was attached to the Spaniards. Indeed, the reborn French invasion in the first half of the century revived some branches of the Spanish crown in Italy: Venice itself approached it after the 1930s. But these were static supports, without development and without tomorrow. They were old conservation interests, they were aspirations to quiet do not move . Anyway, not Spain’s own strength. This decline of Spain, as military and financial resources, as prestige and credit, did not escape the contemporary Italians, who drew fears or hopes from it. The wars of Piedmont had deeply wounded it, even without major defeats and losses. The great Spanish machine was deteriorating, the disproportion between the financial resources diminishing, and the great politics to which Spain felt obliged by its traditions of power and prestige, resulted in increasing taxation and exploitation of the subjects, without the consideration. useful features. In short, that government had become a bad government, oppressive and, at the same time, slothful and impotent.

Like Spain, according to Mysteryaround, the independent states of the peninsula were in various crises. Not only the small states of the Po valley, the Farnese one of Parma and Piacenza, the Este one of Modena, the Gonzaga one of Mantua and Monferrato, living every day more of anachronistic life, in the clash of large states, they tiny states, without their own weapons , now without money to hire, without authority to make good use of the mercenaries, with no concrete goals on which to really bet. Not only, I say, the small states; but also the relatively large ones. The duchy of Piedmont, ruled by a woman, torn by dynastic discord and civil war, mastered by the French almost like a century before, stopped on the path of civil progress and Italian reputation on which Emanuele Filiberto had put it and Carlo Emanuele. The republic of Venice is better and worse. Yes, he defends his last Levant possessions with his nails and teeth; in this defense he shows energy, pride, patriotism and military vigor. And it is known how, in the long war in Candia, his admirals found their old aggressive spirit almost in front of Constantinople. However, this activity was maintained with increasing effort and inadequacy for the purposes it aimed at: therefore little less than sterile. All of Europe began to appear on those seas and there was no reason to keep those distant possessions, born and raised for the purposes of trade and navigation. In any case, tired in the East, Venice was no longer able to follow the events of the peninsula,

Worse is for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany which with Francesco I has already lost not a little of what it had gained with Cosimo I, and with Cosimo II what it had gained a little with the energetic Ferdinando I. Ferdinando II (1626-70) he tried to restore some order: but he sold the warships to the king of France and canceled the navy, that is, any possibility of making any policy in the Mediterranean. Worse with the State of the Church, which has, yes, confiscated Ferrara and then Urbino, but every day sees its organic defects worsen, due to its character as a mere instrument or of family interests or universal and transcendent interests that it had assumed. . The administration also lacks that energy that some great popes had explained in the 1500s under the assault of either Venetian or French or Spanish threats or in the ardor of the Counter-Reformation. The papacy as such is again falling from that high position it had enjoyed then. Once the Protestant danger has been curbed, many lost positions have been regained, that sense of mortal threat which had tightened so much of catholicity around its head, with a renewed spirit of dedication, and almost given birth to a new medieval theocracy, we are now at the beginning. of a new descent. With the advance of the seventeenth century, that kind of political-religious internationality of the Catholic world – and also of the Protestant one – which was formed in the midst of the religious wars and of which the pope was the natural leader, ends. Now, Political cadres distinct from religious cadres are reconstituted, believers return citizens and subjects, absolutism is strengthened at the expense of the Church and the papacy as well. The values ​​of the faith take second place or are clearly distinguished from the others, when we see not only a Richelieu and a Mazarin, but also an Urban VIII, who also in their states fought the Huguenots and pursued heretics, allied with Lutherans or indulged politically to them. We can see the passage to another age that will be of purely political and economic struggles, as already the century. XV and XVI, the religious parenthesis closed. Now, all this has a negative effect on the moral position of the papacy; and the moral position of the papacy is reflected in the efficiency of the temporal prince and on the state of the Church. Of which, already at the end of the 16th century, the Venetian speaker Paruta had sketched a very obscure picture. In the seventeenth century, it worsened in terms of internal order, economic prosperity and military capacity. Rome is always a great political center: but of intrigue rather than of conclusive industriousness. Agents of Italian and foreign princes who seek kinship with papal families, trustees of Neapolitan barons, secret informants of every large and small court, adventurers, smoke sellers, etc., are based in Rome.

According to Iamhigher, Pietro Cavallini from Rome achieved heroic grace and objective beauty with the relief due to a refined chiaroscuro, with a broad and dignified gesture, with the composition no longer merely frontal. Cimabue, Florentine, more daring, more dramatic, impressed the human passion more deeply: the  Crucifixion that he painted in Assisi looks like a struggle of giants, carried by a wind of despair. And he was intolerant of any linear scheme: his face of St. Francis has broken lines and planes, no longer obedient to a tradition, pervaded by impressionism. Even when in his Madonnas he is in search of grace, the monumental and the heroic prevail. Younger, Duccio di Buoninsegna from Siena is closer to Byzantine art, less popular, more refined, and possesses all the charms of color. Inspired by the sky, the images of him arise like lilies, delicate, harmonious, created with the ingenuity of a child, even when they are enveloped in all the riches of the East. With the contrast of tones he manages to create very solid volumes in the images; yet their grace is so great that it makes them appear ghosts.

Beyond the individual personalities, one feels in the painting of the late thirteenth century a greatness, a detachment from the earth, a language that seems of God, an accent of the absolute, for which the concept of the sublime becomes necessary. So that when Giotto appears immediately after, we feel that he is more ours, richer in artistic possibilities, more varied, but, at the same time, that the first greatness has disappeared, like a lost paradise. No more radiant lights, but few colors, sober richness more chiaroscuro, more relief, more form; one sees less, and since everything is limited, precise, solid, one understands more. No longer shy, aware of its central function in the world, the human figure attracts all the artist’s attention, finds a new architecture in itself, builds the scene itself. His poetry is no longer that of a liturgical hymn: is Dante’s poetry. As in Dante, the ideal power of the past is preserved in Giotto, while the doors are opened in search of reality. He is a conscious integrator of idealism and realism: his idealism allows him to feel reality with an immediacy that is not found later; and his realism allows him to bring God to earth, and to make him walk among men, instead of confining him to the top of the apses, as he used to before. Its shape is not only plastic, but also all accentuated by constructive lines; its color is new, bold, intense, but it has value above all as a way of accentuating the shape. Of his pupils, the only one who has carried out the tendencies of the master to free himself from formal limits is Maso, who paints by hints with surprising magic.

In Siena, while Giotto was making such an upheaval, people continued to dream. We abandoned ourselves to color, to wavy lines, to objective graces, to the magnificence of the oriental courts. But the color became more lively than before, the wavy lines more varied and moving, the more human graces, the more probable magnificences; and if, as in Petrarch, Simone Martini’s Lauras are in paradise, in that paradise one is softly reclining, and to get there one has not traveled the harsh path of Giotto.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti starts from the Sienese tradition of refined color, beautiful lines, a youthful feminine image, and reaches a new plastic power and a suggestion of luministic color agreement. Even in his dramatic compositions, the sense of objective beauty is so full that it becomes a calming catharsis. More impulsive, Pietro Lorenzetti possesses the qualities of his brother Ambrogio, except for the height of the dream, and reaches an intensity of dramatic expression, unknown to all, except Giovanni Pisano. The relationship between painting and feeling was then so immediate that even Simone Martini’s idyllic line could become an exceptional instrument of drama, under Barna’s brush. Then the world gets smaller. The Sienese continue to dream through colors that have become bright by habit, within lines more and more beautiful in their undulation, but sometimes calligraphic. The Rimini people, who were the first, outside of Tuscany, to feel Giotto’s art, try to infuse Byzantine warmth into Giotto’s schemes. The Modenese, the Bolognese, the Milanese, the Padovani always find new and ingenious agreements between the Florentine and Sienese traditions. The Venetians, more loyal to the Byzantine tradition, attempted a solution of the relationship between the Byzantine and the Gothic tastes, without Sienese influence, and yet in a way somewhat parallel to that of Siena. In Florence, Andrea Orcagna and, following Florence, in Pisa, Antonio Veneziano and Francesco Traini are interested in reality with that unscrupulousness that is Boccaccio’s. Divinity has already disappeared from their psychological content, and nevertheless remains in the ideal of form,

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the miniature flourished, which in Bologna boasted the work of Oderisi da Gubbio and Franco Bolognese; the wood carving with the Sienese statues of the Annunciation, and the ivory one with Giovanni Pisano and the Embriaci in Venice. In the goldsmith’s art, Siena, mother of elegance, counts Ugolino di Vieri, famous author of the corporal of Orvieto; Pistoia remembers Leonardo di ser Giovanni, who had a capital part in the altar robbed of the statuettes by Vanni Fucci in the “sacristy of beautiful furnishings”, and then began the dossal of San Giovanni in Florence. In the art of iron, Siena gave admirable essays, among others those of Conte di Lello in the gates or grates of Orvieto. In the enamels, Venice imitated the Byzantines, especially in the Pala d’oro, and Assisi applied them to the stained glass windows of San Francesco, laughing like flowery meadows, and he glazed the terracotta heads on a blue background, within a row of rhombuses, in the gallery of the lower church, near the Circles monument. The silk drapes were woven, in imitation of those of the East, in the Palermo workshops set up by Ruggiero II.

The bronze was fused in the seals, of which a large collection of matrices is in Rome, in the Palazzo di Venezia, and the gold in the coins, of which the Augustals of Frederick II were examples, worthy of ancient times, and, at the end of the fourteenth century, the half shield of the Carraresi Francesco I and Francesco Novello, who in Padua, the first seat of Humanism, renewed the Roman imperial coins of Commodus and Septimius Severus.

According to Holidaysort, Arnolfo had in Rome a numerous series of admirers in the Cosmati, who slavishly repeated the learned forms. Instead, in Pisa itself, in Florence and Siena, the art of Giovanni Pisano found free continuation.

Andrea Pisano, the first obscure goldsmith, who soon became famous for the commission he had in 1330 of the first door of the Baptistery of Florence, when he was already old, shows in the bronze bas-reliefs of the door, representing the history of the Baptist, that he had fully assimilated the Gothic style, to be the master of the movement; and it tends to make the story simpler and clearer, reducing the crowd, which filled Giovanni’s bas-reliefs, to a few clearly defined groups, taking care, more than its predecessors, the unity, the connection between the scenes. The proportion of the figures, within the spaces closed by jagged frames of lobes and angles, is correct, in perfect balance; the shapes, elegant and refined in modeling, are turned with goldsmith’s art despite their size: San Giovannino child in the desert, Salomè, with short curly hair and flowing tunic like that of Fra Angelico’s angels, they remain among the most exquisite examples of grace in fourteenth-century sculpture. No sculptor preceded Andrea Pisano in this fundamental reform of the composition; but a painter, Giotto. Proof of this is the beginning of marble bas-reliefs that Giotto himself made for the bell tower of S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, among which theThe art of navigation , with figures of boatmen bent over the oars, eyes fixed on the expanse of the waters, the  Theatrica  with the charioteer studied by the ancient and with panting horses, Agriculture  with the effort of the men who guide the plow and oxen pulling with great force on the hard earth.

It was therefore Andrea Pisano who said the new word in sculpture after that of Giovanni. And he was continued by Andrea Orcagna of Florence (1328-1368), architect, sculptor, painter, poet, who made Andrea’s fomie graver, more constructive, deeper, in the tabernacle of Orsanmichele in Florence (1359), where the realism of the following century is already present. He does not pile up the figures, on the contrary he seems to be afraid of pressing them into the narrow spaces; affirms his tendency to simplify the compositions, to amplify the forms, giving fullness to the faces, breadth to the mantles. The mimicry of the figures is more lively than that of Andrea Pisano: the lips and hands become speaking in the relief with the announcement of death to the Virgin ; the look of the  Solertia, who points his finger to his lips as a sign of silence, is open and lively in contrast to the deep, humble, fearful one of  Virginity . Orcagna is not a restless spirit who always tries new things; he is a hardworking, practical and hardworking teacher. In representing a solemn scene, such as that of the Assumption, he remembered that he was not only a sculptor, but also a mosaicist, to obtain the most vivid and dazzling effects with the background of blue enamel scattered with stars. And with the virtue of an architect he arranged bas-reliefs and mosaics in the tabernacle, admirable for the harmony of the parts, for the noble elegance of the whole, for the majesty assumed by the Gothic style. The angels venerate Mary, playing, singing in ecstasy; and above the pillars of the lantern, along the friezes, on the cusps, the prophets, the patriarchs and the blessed sing praises. Between the glitter of the mosaics, the brightness of the marbles and the splendor of the gold the sacred song rises. The stars twinkle along the twisted columns, in the brocades, in the stoles, in the fringes; the firmament shines on the canopy.

Outside of Florence, Gothicism continues to reign in sculpture, intent on refining the typical forms of Giovanni Pisano. Nino, son of Andrea, limits himself to studying the graceful smile of his Madonnas. He is the main auctioneer of the Pisan style in sculpture, for the diffusion that his statuettes of the Madonna had and also for the construction, in Venice, of the monument to Doge Marco Cornaro.

Giovanni di Balduccio, another Pisan, brought models to the masters of Campione and Como with the monuments of Sarzana and Genoa, and with the ark of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan, from which the other of Sant’Agostino in Pavia derives.

While Giovanni’s Pisan followers conquered the north, his Sienese followers conquered the south of Italy. Tino di Camaino senese works in Pisa, Siena, Florence, Naples, finding his best expression in the bas-reliefs with the life of St. Catherine in St. Clare of this city, where the naive grace of the recommendation makes one forget the superficial structure plastic; Lorenzo Maitani, among the subtle embroidery of the circumvented clusters of vine leaves, carries fragile bas-reliefs from the Old and New Testaments on the front of the Orvieto cathedral; Goro di Gregorio in Messina, Agostino and Agnolo di Ventura, Gano and many others spread the Pisan style throughout Italy when it was already reformed in Florence.

Through the work of Veronese marble workers, and above all of the Venetians Iacobello and Pier Paolo delle Masegne, the second half of the fourteenth century reveals a new, rough and uncomfortable activity, but a sincere researcher of reality; and in Lombardy, through the work of Giovannino de ‘Grassi, painter and illuminator, rather than sculptor, sculpture also intensifies the realistic character, and tends to lead the tortuosity of Gothic ornamentation to paroxysm. Many works dating back to the beginning of the fifteenth century are linked to these fourteenth-century forms, in S. Petronio in Bologna, in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, in the cathedral of Milan, in Naples with the Baboccio, in Florence itself with the retards.

A little later than architecture and sculpture, since the first half of the thirteenth century, Italian painting, which was popular and not courtly painting, presents itself to us with a particular grandeur. The  S. _ Francis by Bonaventura Berlinghieri, who dates back to 1235, has its own perfection. Rigid, hieratic, tormented by asceticism, the image towers over the cases of the saint’s life, painted on the sides: thus the divine overhangs the relativity of human life. And it is no coincidence that what is perhaps the oldest pictorial masterpiece in Italy speaks in the name of St. Francis. Religious life in Italy reached a creative height in the thirteenth century that has never returned. The names of St. Francis and St. Thomas, the very participation of St. Dominic in Italian life, are the most obvious indicators of that religiosity. We felt God, we thought God, we acted in the name of God. God participated in every economic, political, moral, intellectual, artistic act of the life of Italy. The passions, so intense as to leave us astonished, seemed inspired by God, whether they led to battles or directed the brushes. The models might have been Byzantine, but those works that looked like copies, full of a new content of popular religiosity, were independent of the models as works of art. Each one found, beyond the models, his own God.

In sculpture, Pisa reigns. While the Pisan Baptistery is garlanded with statues and jagged marble cusps, the Camposanto welcomes the remains of men into the land transported from Calvary, the cathedral raises its superb forehead near the bows tower. The sculptors run from Pisa to Lucca to decorate the beautiful San Martino; they run to Perugia to sculpt the fountain where the voices of virtues, liberal arts, the Bible and history resound among the jets; the prophets, the sibyls, Plato and Aristotle rush to Siena to erect the prophets, the sibyls, Plato, and Aristotle, who, in ecstasy or in the fury of inspiration, announce the coming of the Word or the eternal truth to the faithful. Italy was conquered with chisels by Nicola d’Apulia and his school.

According to Globalsciencellc, Nicola (born in the early 1200s and died around 1280) marks the transition period between the Romanesque and the modern ages. Educated by the artists who worked for Frederick II in Puglia, he brings to Tuscany, Lucca, Prato, Pisa, Siena, Umbria, Perugia, the great classical art of the Apulian ambois and castles, and applies it to depict entire cycles of traditional Christian scenes. The pulpit of Pisa, more than all the other works, in which the collaboration of the followers takes over, gives us the knowledge of the art of Nicola d’Apulia, Roman for amplitude of forms, for classic drapery, for the great quiet of the orderly and massive compositions, still subject, like Romanesque sculpture, to the slavery of architecture. The forms, with their imposing structure,

In the art of Nicola’s son, Giovanni (circa 1250-circa 1320), the effects of movement succeed those of august composure; sculpture emancipates itself from the slavery of architectural plans; the gothic whirlwind overwhelms the agitated crowd of statues. Not Nicola d’Apulia, but Giovanni opens the new era of Italian sculpture. Already in Nicola the tendency to enrich the sculptural effect is announced progressively. In the pulpit of the cathedral of Pisa, the decoration is entirely subordinate to the architectural structure: the reliefs in leveled masses, despite the powerful construction of the form, are inserted in a methodical order within the rectangular mirrors of the polygonal parapet, and bundles of columns, three to three, they strengthen each vertex; the imperatorial figures of virtues reinforce the pillars of the arches, and the trefoil arches retain the full center. The first appearance of the pointed arch is in the pulpit of Siena, where Giovanni works for the first time next to his father, performing three bas-reliefs: the Crucifixion , the  Elected , the  Reprobate, in which new life erupts with sudden rebellion. The angels of John, in a corner of the pulpit, stormy, with cheeks swollen like those of the winds, launch the blasts of an advent of new art in the Gothic temple. Profound difference between the art of the two masters, which appears even more evident in the spring of Perugia, where from the polygonal compact and smooth tub, strengthened at the top by heavy bundles of columns, marked, in its massive grandeur, in the style of Nicola, lever the second, agile and broken; and from the second, with a faster leap, the bronze basin: smooth flower corolla into which the magnificent knot of nymphs and griffins plunges; nothing more than the art of Nicola, in this living flower born from the ardent imagination of Giovanni.

The Gothic triumphs with the pulpit of Pistoia in the lanceolate acuteness of the arches, in the cry of the statues, which no longer sit in the chair on the capitals of the columns, nor do they slowly recline within the corner of the pendentives, but give the idea of ​​agitation from below. Faci for the enthusiasm of the movements, the rapid volute of the heads raised above the bodies, gathered in long tunics with sliding bundles of folds. Finally, in the pulpit of Pisa, destroyed by a fire, now rebuilt in the cathedral, the sculptural vegetation rises and descends along the increasingly broken walls, tightening, suffocating, hiding the skeleton of the building. A people of statues form the pedestals of the pulpit; the lions roar out among those forests of convulsive, frail figures, dominated by nerves, burned with fever: the double crowns of leaves on the capitals rotate in the wind in convulsions of flame; and the images of the bas-reliefs, dry, restless, passionate, erupt from the parapet, free in space, overwhelming the architecture; Nicola’s smooth and compact rock creaks, crumbles, breaks down into fantastic shapes. The sculptural forms free themselves from architectural slavery; they conquer space, reflecting, in the painful and feverish contortions, the fatigue of the struggle that led them to liberation.

The concept of independence of sculpture from architecture, greater in Giovanni’s Gothic than in French Gothic, informs the free sculptural vegetation that nestles between the edges of the facade of the cathedral of Siena: lions and dragons, and trampling horses, pushed out of the marble walls, cutting the wind that upsets the bristly manes. Next to that people of unleashed monsters, a people of seers – prophets, sibyls, ancient philosophers – dominate the crowd, shouting to the wind the truths of science and faith.

Not only Giovanni belonged to Nicola’s school. In addition to the mediocre Fra Guglielmo da Pisa, executor of part of the ark of S. Domenico in Bologna and of a pulpit in Pistoia, the noble spreader of the art of Nicola in Rome, Perugia, Florence, Arnolfo di Cambio ( 1232-1301), more faithful than Giovanni to the master, further away from Gothic impulses, tending to refine the forms of Nicola d’Apulia with Tuscan grace. He enriches his works with mosaic decoration, used in Rome by the Cosmati; it brings to art a profoundly Tuscan sense of measure, crystalline regularity of form in full Gothic period, virtuosity of marble processing, love of minute and subtle proportions, of marble sharpness. In the ciborium of Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Italian tendency to regulate the impetus of vertical lines by means of the brake of horizontal dividers, the Italian tendency to squaring, which characterizes our Gothic style in the face of the Gothic style of France, finds its full expression. Giovanni’s feverish life stops in the statuettes that adorn Arnolfo’s food and sepulchres, small and precious, with thinly stretched drapes, inert, almost fossilized bodies. Abstract, petrified and vague are the physiognomies of Arnolfian faces, with silent protruding eyes, without gaze; outlined with rare elegance the thin paper folds of the garments; stares at her small, ribbon-like hands. Refined marble worker, Arnolfo does not care to transfuse life into sculptures, satisfied with formal elegance, with the nobility of frozen forms, of subtle and profound measure.