Italian police announced on 11 February 2015 to have seized and recovered in Switzerland a genuine Leonardo Da Vinci oil painting. At first they refused to provide more details and only late in the day they unveiled their catch. They claimed to be sure of its authenticity because there was somebody willing to pay USD 100 million for it!
The delusion among the art expert was great when a crust derived from the cartoon kept at the Louvre – thought to represent Isabella D’Este – was shown.
Art expert and politician Vittorio Sgarbi as usual did not mince his words to describe it: “I am surprise that so much money was wasted on such police operation. This work is a rotten cabbage. The only valuable thing is, perhaps, the frame.”
The first indication that this picture is a fake lays the fact that it is on canvas and Leonardo never painted on canvas. True that the Benois Madonna at the Hermitage and the Virgin of the Rocks at the Louvre are on canvas, but this is because they were stripped from their original wooden base.
The cartoon of Isabella d’Este kept at the Louvre has been heavily retouched, certainly not by Leonardo, and copies of it are at Oxford and at the Uffizi in Florence. If this picture is truly old, then it may have been produced by one of the lesser disciples of Leonardo, like Salai, Boltraffio or some other obscure painters during the XVII century.
In March 2015 the Lhc (Large Hadron Collider) will be switched on again after a great upgrade. Having discovered the Higgs Boson (improperly nicknamed God’s particle) now all the top theoretical physicists will concentrate on this Tower of Babel of a machine to look into the Susy phenomenon concerning super symmetry.
Just a few physicists claim that the elusive Higgs bosons may not have been discovered at all. Their discovery was announced 2 years ago: with a Nobel Prize, awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson.
Some researchers at the University of Southern Denmark’s Centre for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology still dispute that while the Cern scientists did discover unique new particles, there’s no conclusive evidence of them being the Higgs bosons, as other particles could have created the same results.
“The current data is not precise enough to determine exactly what the particle is,” says university researcher Mads Toudal Frandsen. “It could be a number of other known particles.”
More study will be needed in the future even if we should add that the opinion of Dr. Frandsen is not taken seriously by the greatest part of his peers.
In 2008 I did publish with Mursia of Milan a work of science fiction, the title was Black Hole and it went out with some acclaim. Then the Lhc was damaged and it did stop for one year. Even if the book was released far too late the first edition sold in a month.
My book was based on the assumption that LHC getting at full power might destroy our planed by creating a microscopic black hole. Then the LHC was restarted and the Higgs Bosons were discovered and soon after it was halted again to carry out all the works indispensable to increase its smashing power to levels never seen before in the universe, a work which has now been completed. Will the Lhc destroy our planet and ourselves?
We don’t know, and we’ll not know even if that will really happen, because the Earth will evolve in a speck of dust in a fraction of a second: no cry, no agony, no desperation…we’ll all find ourselves in the other dimension we call the hereafter. That could be the Apocalypse of the Bible (ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψιςapocálypsis, from ἀπό and καλύπτω meaning “uncovering” that is a disclosure of knowledge) and that was indeed that was the very end in my science fiction book.
Just a few months ago the greatest living physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, reported claims which could be see similar to what I wrote in my book which, I repeat, was based only on fantasy, intuition and some superficial researches.
Here is what Hawking has declared to the Daily Mail:
The elusive ‘God particle’ discovered by scientists in 2012 has the potential to destroy the universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.
At very high energy levels, the Higgs boson could cause space and time suddenly collapse – and ‘we wouldn’t see it coming’, the former Cambridge professor of mathematics says.
The God particle, which gives shape and size to everything that exists, could cause a ‘catastrophic vacuum delay’ if scientists were to put it under extreme stress.
The God Particle could destabilise at high energy, threatening the universe, but the Cern particle accelerator is too slow to cause such a problem.
A disaster like this is very unlikely for the time being as physicists do not have a particle accelerator large enough create such an experiment, but Prof Hawking’s comments have excited scientists, the Sunday Times reported.
The theoretical physicist wrote his thoughts on the Higgs boson in the preface to a new book, Starmus, a collection of lectures by scientists and astronomers including Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Queen guitarist Brian May.
Prof Hawking wrote: ‘The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV).
‘This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light.
‘This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.’
WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE?
The Higgs boson was a key missing piece in the jigsaw for physicists in trying to understand how the universe works.
Scientists believe that a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, an invisible energy field, called the Higgs field, formed.
This has been described as a kind of ‘cosmic treacle’ across the universe. As particles passed through it, they picked up mass, giving them size and shape and allowing them to form the atoms that make up you, everything around you and everything in the universe.
This was the theory proposed in 1964 by former grammar school boy Professor Higgs that has now been confirmed.
Without the Higgs field particles would simply whizz around space in the same way as light does.
A boson is a type of sub-atomic particle. Every energy field has a specific particle that governs its interaction with what’s around it.
The professor did add sarcastically, however, that such an event is unlikely in the near future.
He said: ‘A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.’
Professor John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at Cern, said: ‘One thing should be made clear. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) did not cause this problem, and collisions at the LHC could not trigger the instability, because their energies are far too low.’
Particle accelerators make subatomic particles travel at greater and greater speeds as they are pumped with more energy before smashing them together.
Scientists do this to try and spot tiny fragments of particles which fly off, and it is how the Higgs boson was discovered at the Cern LHC in Switzerland in 2012.
In that experiment, physicists noticed unexpected debris from the collisions that fitted with what British scientist Peter Higgs had predicted in the early 1960s.
The Higgs boson particle is thought to be part of the mechanism that gives matter its mass, but scientists do not fully understand it yet.
He was born February 1, 1935 in Milan and graduated from Milan Polytechnic – Faculty of Architecture in 1959. His professors were Ernesto Rogers and Gio Ponti then he worked at the Design of the Rinascente, with Augusto Morello.
Then he began his private practice in the early 1960s. He had since collected prices and awards all over the world. To crown his early achievements, in 1987, he had the honour of organizing a personal retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of New York, showing 25 of his works: including Olivetti business machines as well as furniture for B&B and Cassina – such as the famous “Cab” chair – and the innovative office chairs designed for Vitra which has since been produced in thousands of units.
(the Nuvola by Bellini)
From 1963 to 1991 he was chief designer for Olivetti. And then for 5 years he was an automobile design with Renault, Fiat and Lancia while designing lamps which masterpieces for Artemide, Erco and Flos, which are still collected with avidity by people who know their value as works of art.
Starting from the ‘80s, Mario Bellini had been increasingly successful in the field of urban architecture in Europe, Japan, the United States, Australia and the Arab Emirates. Here are some of his main projects: Museum of Islamic Arts at Louvre Museum, Paris, 2005-2012; Museum of the City of Bologna, Italy, 2004-2012; Urban redevelopment “Verona Forum”, Verona, Italy, 2004–2011; Refurbishment of the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, 2007–2011; National Gallery of Victoria extension and redevelopment, Melbourne, Australia, 1996–2003; Essen International Fair Extension, Germany, 1998–2001; Natuzzi Americas Headquarters, High Point, North Carolina, USA, 1996–1998; Arsoa Co./Cosmetics- Headquarters, Yamanashi, Japan, 1996–1998; New fair district of the Milan Trade Fair, 1987–1997; Risonare Vivre Club Complex, Kobuchizawa, Japan, 1989–1992; Tokyo Design Centre, Tokyo, Japan, 1988–1992; Yokohama Business Park, Yokohama, Japan, 1987–1991; Villa Erba Exhibition and Congress Centre, Cernobbio (Como), 1986–1990; Thermoelectric power plant of Cassano d’Adda-Office building, 1985–1990; New Museum of the city of Berlin, Germany, 2008.
(Bellini’s Veil at the Louvre)
Mario Bellini is also very active in China and due to him is the redevelopment of the City Centre of Tianjin, completed in 2003 and he has now on the drawing board the creation of an ecological city. An Italian journalist asked him which is his greatest regret, and he said:
“An open wound: Turin, the public library. I feel sorry for it. In 2002 I won with my project and then I discovered that there was no money for the building. It was set to be the largest public library of Italy, a crystal tower, 2 theatres, and conference halls. They were telling me that was all right and I had to wait but then I discovered that they had sold the land to build a shopping centre. I am still hoping for it but I would like to invite the people of Turin to question such decision about shelving such a project which was so much admired. A library is better than another shopping centre. I would like to add that I have been regularly paid for it but I have received a great slight on my image as an architect.”
(The library that never was, Bellini’s project for the city of Turin)
I remember the words of an historian lamenting the progressive degradation of the society in which he was living in during the late Roman Empire: “In our schools the singers have taken the place of the masters of rhetoric. Libraries are shut forever, like tombs.”
The same thing seems to be happening in Hong Kong, with the sad demise of Dymocks IFC Mall, an Australian bookseller, which shut all operations in Hong Kong on January 25. But I suspect that the root cause of it lays not in the general degradation of the mores of our society and the barbarians pressing on the northerly border of the Empire. The root cause of such phenomenon is, in my opinion, the growing cost of the rent which has become simply unaffordable for any normal bookshops’ operations. In order to survive all booksellers have to transfer the price of the rent on the books they sell but the final result will be that their customers will order them online at a much reduced price. Online booksellers, like the Book Depository, which ship books by air without charging anything for the delivery cost, are having field days in Hong Kong.
A secondary reason may be the growing popularity of the eBooks, which are handy and cheap but they fulfil only one of the three key reasons why we feel so attracted by books: that is the utilitarian part only, not the aesthetic nor the often neglected part which we call ‘the long term investment’. We buy a book because we are curious about its content but also because we love it as an object and as an investment. If it is an hardback, first edition and signed by the author it may fetch a considerable amount of money in a matter of years. If you want, say a first edition of Casino Royale signed by Ian Fleming, you have to be ready to pay close to 50,000 USD dollars to get a good copy of it. If Fleming’s first novel was issued as a eBook, well, forget it! EBooks can offer to us just a few hours of fleeting entertainment but they are certainly not an investment and they do not embellish our library, transforming the hovels in which we live into a philosophers’ cave. EBooks do not give us all the tactile and aesthetically pleasing feeling which we get when holding real books made of fine paper into our hands.
When waking up early in the morning, because of some fleeting troubling thoughts which are visiting us during the sleep and we walk into our library, then we’ll feel suddenly content and serene because of the magic impression of earing our books whispering. Indeed books are a balm for our souls.
Macaron are marching out of Paris and are invading the world! They were a rare sight until a few years ago but they are since ubiquitous and even in Hong Kong they are seen in café and confectionery shops. We spotted them in great numbers in Italy as well as in Japan and Korea and if strong countermeasures will not be taken in a few years they might even replace the famed moon-cakes from the desk of world-savvy Chinese families. Macaron are predominantly a French confection and there has been much debate about the origin of the original recipe. They are basically a sweet meringue-based confection made with egg white, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring, in French pastel colours. Then macaron is commonly filled with ganache, buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two biscuits (cookies).
The name sounds clearly Italian, where it is widely used as maccheroni to call the oldest type of pasta created in Naples, a kind probably older than the spaghetti. We do believe that they could be traced back to the arrival of Catherine de’ Medici’s in France, on marrying King Henry II in 1533. Catherine brought several things to France like the art of making perfumes, taking her personal perfume-maker, a man called Renato with her, as well as the fashion of using fans. Reports sent to Isabella D’Este only a few years before Maria de’ Medici’s arrival described French noble-ladies as: “Rather filthy, but with pretty faces and quite available to be kisses and being touched.”
It was not until the 1830s that macaron began to be served two-by-two with the addition of jams, liqueurs, and spices. The macaron as it is known today, composed of two almond meringue discs filled with a layer of buttercream, jam, or ganache filling, was originally called the “Gerbet” or the “Paris macaron.” Pierre Desfontaines of the French pâtisserie Ladurée has sometimes been credited with such creation but another baker, Claude Gerbet, also claims to be the inventor.
The term macaroon was used in 18th-century England, where rich young hipsters sported outlandish styles characterized by certain over-the-top clothing with very tall powdered wigs and tiny caps on top. “Englishman Italianate, devil incarnate!” as they said. They were called the macaroons because on their travels to France and Italy were they acquired a taste for what was perceived as continental, hence the derogative nickname given to what was perceived as foreign. In the United States the name took another turn , and if you’ve ever heard the song “Yankee Doodle,” you will know what we mean. The chorus mocks a dishevelled “Yankee” soldier whose attempt to look sharp and well-dressed was to “stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni.”
I posted some time ago an article on the mysterious and very learned Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli (1856 – 1936) Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau between 1899 and 1919.
Yesterday I was flipping through the pages of the book Russia on the Pacific and the Siberian Railway London, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1899 written by Zanoni Volpicelli using the pseudonym of Vladimir. He used such pseudonym, I believe, to hide the fact that he was a diplomat and to avoid a confusion of roles. Before being the Italian diplomatic representative in Hong Kong he had worked for the Italian Embassy in Seoul, Korea and for the Chinese Imperial Government. On the last page of this book I found out that under “By The SameAuthor” there is The China-Japan War, again under the name of Vladimir, also a work by Zanoni Volpicelli of which I was already aware and then, another book entitled The Philippine Islands. An Historical, Geographical, Social, and Commercial Sketch of the Philippine Archipelago.
The author this time is a John Foreman F.R.G.S. The acronym F.R.G.S stands for Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and we know that Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli in fact was a member. There are reasons to suspect that indeed John Foreman is another of the pen names he was using, not only because his British editor declares it to be so but also because of other points which I am going to explain.
This book on the Philippines was extremely successful and went through several editions, not only in London but also in New York and then in Shanghai, where it was published by the refined publishers Kelly & Walsh in 1899. Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli before moving to Nagasaki – where he died in 1936 – had lived in Shanghai for several years.
The first London edition was dated 1890, then a second together with the one in New York are dated 1899 and 1903. Then a new one in London with T. Fisher and Unwind was published in 1906 together with the last Shanghai edition always with Kelly & Walsh.
A photo of John Foreman (see below) looks very close to another photo shot by Ah Fong in Hong Kong – where Zanoni Volpicelli is seen wearing a pit helmet – and was then transformed into a print to be then published on an Italian magazine.
Zanoni Volpicelli should have spent quite some time touring the Philippines – if he really was John Foreman – to collect data and pictures and not only he was fluent in Chinese, Korean , Japanese and Russian but certainly also in Spanish. I have found also a translation in English of a famous farewell message Ultimo Adios by Philippine’s National Hero José Rizal (1861 – 1896) who was shot by the Spanish and translated by ‘Bray – Volpicelli’ a clear sign that he knew Spanish and he had a direct interest in Philippines’s affairs.
Noticing the presence of an autographed copy by John Foreman on sale in Italy I have written to the bookshop and the reply seems to point to the existence of a John Foreman, unless Zanoni Volpicelli was so afraid that revealing his true identity would have compromised his position as Consul of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau. The book is dedicated on December 1903 to President Leopoldo Giuliani of Barga and it is signed as ‘John Foreman’. Leopoldo Giuliani a native of Barga was a friend of the poet Giovanni Pascoli and in his youth had emigrated to Great Britain setting up several successful bakery shops but he went back to Barga on retirement.
In Italy Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli is unknown and no biography is yet available on him. Perhaps it is about time to write one because his life reads like a novel.
It all started with an innocent post on B39 about the similarities between the church of Saint Paul of Macau with a mysterious sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci kept at Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia – please, search my blog and your will find 4 articles worth reading on Leonardo Da Vinci.
That article caught the attention of Ricardo Pinto, the maverick owner of the Portuguese newspaper Ponto Final, which is published in Macau.
In the interview, which was run three weeks ago, I had mentioned a book on Leonardo which I have nearly completed. That article was read by Raquel Carvalho, a Portuguese speaking reporter with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and she did an interview with me which was printed on November 23rd on the South China Morning Post. Then an Italian article on the blog of Dino Messina ‘La Nostra Storia’ on Corriere della Sera added fuel to the fire.
From there it was picked up by the Daily Mail in Great Britain and soon after the floodgates were shut wide open: The Telegraph, Le Figaro, Liberation, Pravda, Die Zeit, Il Messaggero, several South American, Australian, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani and Chinese newspapers run the same story. Bloggers in China and Taiwan had field days, particularly on December 3rd, with 4.5 million openings and 180.000 comments.
Tomorrow morning 5 December I’ll be at the BBC with Rico Hizon, broadcasting from Singapore, I have received an offer for documentary from Australia.
Well, now speaking about my book I can say that is nearly ready and that I have a sort of agreement with a Chinese publisher, not yet finalized, and I’ll have to translated it from English into Chinese but I am still looking for a serious publisher in Great Britain, or the USA and Australia. If you are interested in it, please, just send me an email and I’ll consider it.
6 December. I have received an offer from a serious English publisher…
Un grande attore come Tino Carraro (1910 – 1995) mi fece innamorare della “Tempesta” di William Shakespeare; era il 1977 e interpretava Prospero al Teatro Lirico di Via Larga a Milano. La regia minimalista era firmata da Giorgio Strehler. Ricordo la grande emozione provata quando Carraro recitò il monologo d’addio al suo mondo incantato. In molti hanno letto in questo finale la diretta voce di William Shakespeare che si congeda dagli spettatori e ripone per sempre la propria bacchetta magica. A quel tempo mi interessavo di Girolamo Cardano (1501 – 1576?) e notai delle similitudini fra i due personaggi. La curiosità aumentò quando scoprii che un’opera perduta di Shakespeare era intitolata ‘Cardenio’ anche se pare che quel curioso nome sia da collegarsi al Don Chisciotte di Cervantes.
La “Tempesta” fu presumibilmente scritta nel 1610 – 11 ma in passato non ebbe quel grande successo di cui ormai gode. Fu solo a partire dall’Ottocento, con il movimento romantico, che crebbe in popolarità e oggi, assieme a ‘Giulietta e Romeo’, ‘Amleto’ e al ‘Sogno di una notte di mezza estate’, è una delle opere di Shakespeare più amate e rappresentate, senza contare gli adattamenti cinematografici e operistici.
Il personaggio principale della commedia, Prospero, Duca di Milano, è un uomo giusto e studioso, tradito dal fratello che in combutta con Alonso, re di Napoli, lo esiliano su di un’isola. Prospero non è interessato ai maneggi politici ma ai libri, soprattutto a quelli di magia. Dopo essersi vendicato, sfruttando le sue arti magiche, Prospero si ritira, offrendo un futuro radioso alla sua amatissima figlia, Miranda.
In questa commedia entrano in gioco vari elementi, molti libri, storie e racconti, magistralmente uniti e adattati in un nuovo canovaccio. Sono palesi i riferimenti a il ‘Naufragio’ opera di Erasmo da Rotterdam, del 1525. In evidenza anche il ‘De Orbe Novo’ di Pietro Martire d’Anghiera e le ‘Metamorfosi’ d’Ovidio, dal quale Shakespeare trae il discorso di rinuncia di Medea, recitato da Prospero. Forte vi è anche l’influenza di Montaigne. Questo è certamente dovuto al fatto che l’editore, o per meglio dire l’arrangiatore occulto delle opere di Shakespeare, fu sicuramente John Florio, il primo traduttore degli ‘Essays’ di Montaigne dal francese all’inglese. La raccolta delle commedie di Shakespeare venne stampata in un’edizione in folio nel 1623 con il titolo di ‘Mr William Shakespeare Comedies, Histories & Tragedies’ e, trattandosi di una impresa molto costosa, gli editori John Heminges e Henry Condell cercarono un letterato capace di correggere e arrangiare quelli che dovevano essere solo dei confusi e sgrammaticati spartiti. Per quanto riguarda la Gran Bretagna quello fu l’evento editoriale del secolo e certamente una fatica d’Ercole per John Florio. Ne vennero stampate 800 copie e oggi se ne conservano 233. L’ultima è stata scoperta la scorsa settimana a St. Omer, nel nord della Francia. E’ un libro preziosissimo: l’ultima copia battuta da Christie’s nel 2006 fu aggiudicata per 6,8 milioni di dollari e per avere quest’ultima – se verrà messa in vendita – si dovranno sborsare più di 20 milioni di dollari.
Il padre di John Florio si chiamava Michelangelo e fu un intellettuale, scrittore e avventuriero fiorentino. Ebreo, divenne monaco cattolico e poi predicatore protestante colmo di zelo. Finì in galera a Roma ma riuscì a riparare a Venezia e poi in Inghilterra, dove si fece apprezzare. Con l’ascesa al trono di Mary Tudor fu costretto a darsi alla fuga, finendo in Svizzera, dove morì nel 1567. Suo figlio John ritornò in Inghilterra, conobbe Giordano Bruno e si distinse nel mondo letterario inglese e vi morì, in abietta povertà, nel 1625
Girolamo Cardano, matematico, astrologo, medico e filosofo era e resta più celebre in Gran Bretagna che in Italia. La sua fama è dovuta al fatto che nel 1552 venne convocato a Edimburgo dall’Arcivescovo di Sant’Andrea, John Hamilton (1512 – 1571), che soffriva d’asma. Sulla via del ritorno fece sosta a Londra, ospite di John Checke, il dotto tutore del re. Le voci della straordinaria guarigione dell’alto prelato lo avevano preceduto e Cheke gli fissò un’udienza con il giovane re Edoardo VI (1537-1553). I due si parlarono usando il greco, il latino e l’italiano, discutendo di astronomia e di storia. La pubblicazione da parte di Cardano, nel 1545, della ‘Artis Magnae’ una pietra miliare nella storia dell’algebra e del ‘De Subtilitate’ nel 1550, la prima enciclopedia tascabile, usciti entrambi a Norimberga presso Johannes Petreius – editore anche di Copernico, Erasmo e Stifel – avevano fatto di Cardano lo scienziato più celebre al mondo. Il giovane monarca appariva già infetto dalla tubercolosi che l’anno successivo lo uccise ma alla sua corte, dietro alle quinte, si muovevano potenti personaggi che preparavano la successione. Venne chiesto a Cardano di presentare un oroscopo del giovane ed egli pronosticò una vita lunga e piena di successi, anche se ricevette pressioni contrarie.
Girolamo Cardano passò come una cometa nel cielo di Londra, rischiarandoli e le notizie delle sue disavventure personali e poi della morte raggiunsero la capitale inglese, aumentando l’alone di mistero che lo circondava. La persecuzione subita dalla Chiesa cattolica lo trasformò in una figura eroica, un po’ come Galileo dopo che incontrò John Milton, il quale lo descrisse come un prigioniero dei preti che lo guardavano a vista.
John Florio, non solo Shakespeare, conoscevano Girolamo Cardano e i suoi libri. Alcuni finirono all’Indice ma altri vennero ristampati nei primi decenni del Seicento, soprattutto in Francia. La sua ‘Opera Omnia’ in 10 volumi in folio uscì proprio a Lione nel 1663.
Una prova della sua perdurante popolarità può essere vista nel fatto che un’edizione in inglese del suo ‘De Consolatione’ uscì nel 1576 sotto al titolo di ‘Cardanus Comforte’ ed è proprio questo il libro che Amleto tiene in mano quando recita il suo celeberrimo monologo ‘Essere o non essere?’.
Un altro sintomo della sua celebrità è il fatto che la più completa e rigorosa biografia mai scritta su di lui la si deve a Thomas Morley. Uscì in due volumi nel 1854 a Londra e, incredibilmente, non è mai stata tradotta e pubblicata in Italia, dove ci siamo sempre accontentati di biografie dozzinali e incomplete.
Ecco quali sono i punti di contatto fra Cardano e Prospero, a parte la loro ‘milanesitudine’. Sia Cardano che Prospero hanno uno spirititello al proprio servizio. Cardano racconta nella sua autobiografia di averlo ereditato dal padre, Fazio Cardano e spesso udiva grugniti dietro di sé e puzza di zolfo. Entrambi sono esperti di magia e di astrologia. Entrambi vengono gettati in prigione e poi costretti all’esilio. Sia Prospero che Cardano sono amanti dei libri ma alla fine rinunciano a quelli che trattano di magia e di astrologia. Vengono ambedue traditi da persone delle quali si erano fidati. Il primogenito di Girolamo Cardano, Giambattista, venne attanagliato e decapitato a Milano nel 1560 su ordine del senato milanese, dopo che, sotto tortura, aveva confessato di aver avvelenato la moglie e i suoceri. Cardano tentò disperatamente di salvarlo ma non ci riuscì e quasi impazzì per il dolore. Riuscì a dimenticarlo solo tenendo uno smeraldo sotto alla propria lingua.
Il secondogenito di Cardano, Aldo, divenne un delinquente e tentò più volte di rubare e assaltare il padre. Gli restava una figlia soltanto, proprio come Prospero, che ebbe nome Clara. Solo un’analisi della sterminata produzione cardanica e il possibile rinvenimento di battute e concetti presenti nella “Tempesta” – ricerca che non è ancora stata intrapresa – potrebbe portare a scoprire altri punti di contatto fra i due.
Angelo Paratico
Pubblicato sul Blog la Nostra Storia di Dino Messina, Corriere della Sera, il 27.11.2014.
When I wrote the historical introduction of the book ‘Five Hundred Years of Italians in Hong Kong and Macau’ [[http://www.angeloparatico.com/books.html#ad-image-8]] I missed an important figure: Felice (Felix) Beato. A great photographer and a great adventurer in Asia. Mine was a serious mistake, considering that on my library was sitting Anna Lacoste’s wonderful photographic biography Felice Beato. A Photographer on the Easter Road Getty Publications, 2010, but I don’t know why I never thought of putting him my book. Perhaps it was because I had mentally classified Beato as a Anglo-Italian not Italian. I will try now with this blog to make amendments, using the few sketchy notes available.
Felice Beato was born in Venice, Italy in 1832. Two years later his father moved his family to the Island of Corfu, which was then a British protectorate and then they became British citizens. In 1844 they all moved to Istanbul. Felice’s sister, Leonilda Maria, will marry there the Scottish photographer and engraver James Robertson who opened a shop in the Pera district and he subsequently took Felice and his brother Antonio as his partners. After a trip to Paris, Felice Beato became interested in the new art of photography and when the Crimean war was declared, between 1853 and 1854 by the allied powers of Britain, France and Piedmont against Russia, he went there to shoot photographs at Sebastopol and Balaklava.
In 1856 Felice Beato, Antonio and Roberson are in Malta and then in London.
In 1857 the trio departs to the Holy Land to shoot pictures and then moved to cover the end of the Indian Mutiny, shooting the bloody theaters of war in Lucknow, Cawnpore and Delhi. Their pictures were then published on British magazines and books.
In 1860 Felice Beato is in Hong Kong and then follows Sir James Hope Grant who is leading an attack to Beijing. There is a legend saying that Beato missed the most important picture of his life, showing the British forces commander Lord Elgin and his French counterpart standing in front of the conquered Forbidden City. The picture, because of not enough light, did not turn out.
In 1862 he is Yokohama where he starts business with Charles Wirgman. In 1864 he narrowly escapes death; he had a breakfast with two British officers who then invited him to follow them on an excursion. Beato, out of laziness, declined and the two men ended up cut to piece by two anti-foreign ronin who were later captured and executed. Beato made a fortune with his pictures but then he loses everything speculating in real estate. In 1871 he visited Korea and when he returns back in Japan he is involved in several controversies: he is accused of stealing furniture from a hotel, then three Europeans vandalize his shop for unknown reasons and again he loses all his money in the silver exchange market and goes bankrupt. While he is often satirized by the Punch magazine, Japanese section, for he must have been a colorful character. In 1884 he leaves Yokohama, penniless and moves to Sudan where he covers the Anglo-Sudanese war.
In 1886 he is back in London where he gives a talk at the Geographic Society about his photographic techniques. In 1887 he set up a photographic shop in Rangoon, Burma and in 1889 he is in Mandalay, where again set up a new photographic studio. In 1898 he starts to sell also antiques to visiting Europeans and he appears in travelogues of European travellers. In 1902 he leaves Burma and travels back to Europe. His brother Antonio dies in 1906 in Luxor where he was running a photographic studio. It was thought that Felice Beato had died in Burma but his death certificate was discovered in 2009 in Florence and since then we know that he had died there, on January 29, 1909, aged 77.
An original albumen silver print by Felice Beato today will cost from 5,000 to 10,000 USD if it is already know variant but much much more if it is an unpublished images. We can say that to own one of such pictures by Beato is the dream of each antique pictures collector keen on the Far East.
Beato’s specialty were panoramic views made with several shots lined up one after the other and pictures of war, with dead bodies still warm – even if it has been noted that he never took picture of dead European troopers, but only of natives; a mark of the Darwinian colonialist mentality – and then reached great artistic level employing Japanese artisans to hand-color his black and white shots.
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