IDENTICAL AIMS,DIFFERENT WAYS

IDENTICAL HEARTS,DIFFERENT FEELINGS

COMENIUS PROJECT 2009/2011

2° Circolo Didattico “San Francesco d’Assisi”

Santeramo in Colle - Bari

NATIONAL PERSONALITIES WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE EUROPEAN CULTURE

LEONARDO DA VINCI

He was an Italian polymath: painter, scientist, and inventor, just to name some of his talents.Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention.He is perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

Birth name Leonardo di Ser Piero

BornApril 15, 1452Vinci, Florence,Italy

DiedMay 2, 1519 (aged 67)Amboise, Touraine, France

Nationality Italian

FieldMany and diverse fields arts and sciences

Movement High Renaissance

WorksMona Lisa, The last supper, The Vitruvian man

LA GIOCONDA

Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda ) is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, during the Renaissance. The work is on display at the Louvre museum in Paris under the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Arguably, it is the most famous and iconic painting in the world.The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose facial expression is frequently described as enigmatic, as though the subject is hiding a secret.

L’UOMO VITRUVIANO

The Vitruvian Man, stored in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man.

L’ULTIMA CENA

The Last Supper , representing the last meal Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles and disciples before his death, was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. It is a mural painting in Milan created for Duke Ludovico Sforza and his Duchess Beatrice d’Este.

MICHELANGELO

Birth nameMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

Born6 March 1475near Arezzo, Tuscany

Died18 February 1564 (aged 88)Rome, Italy

Nationality Italian

Fieldsculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry

Movement High Renaissance

WorksDavid, The Creation of Adam, Pietà

He is one the greatest artists of all time. As an artist he was unmatched, the creator of works of sublime beauty that express the full breadth of the human condition.Michelangelo’s output in every field during his long life was prodigious: he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.

DAVID

The Statue of David, completed by Michelangelo in 1504, is one of the most renowned works of the Renaissance. It was placed in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence.Created out of a marble block from the quarries at Carrara that had already been worked on by an earlier hand, it definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination.

LA CAPPELLA SISTINA

Michelangelo, under the patronage of pope Julius II, painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.He was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles against a starry sky, but now contains over 300 figures and had at its center nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's Creation of the Earth; God's Creation of Humankind and their fall from God's grace. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

LA PIETA’

In 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned Michelangelo one of his most famous works, the Pietà. The contemporary opinion about this work was summarized by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh“.

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

BornJune 22, 1805 (1805-06-22)Genoa, Ligurian Republic, now Italy

DiedMarch 10, 1872 (aged 66)Pisa, Italy

ProfessionPolitical activist, politician and journalist

Giuseppe Mazzini was a political revolutionary and one of the most influential among the prophets of democratic nationalism. In 1831 he organized a new political society called “La giovine Italia” (Young Italy). The group's motto was God and the People, and its basic principle was uniting the various states and kingdoms of the peninsula into a single republic as the only true foundation of Italian liberty.

GIUSEPPE MARCONI

Born25 April 1874(1874-04-25)Palazzo Marescalchi, Bologna, Italy

Died20 July 1937 (aged 63)Rome, Italy

Known for Radio

Notable awards Nobel Prize for Physics (1909)

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, best known for his development of a radio telegraph system. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy“ and was ennobled in 1924 as Marchese Marconi.

GIUSEPPEGARIBALDI

Date of birth: July 4, 1807

Place of birth: Nice, First french Empire

Date of death: June 2, 1882 (aged 74)

Place of death: Caprera, Kingdom of Italy

Movement: Il Risorgimento (Unification of Italy)

Major organizations: La Giovine Italia ("Young Italy")Carbonari

Major monuments:

Garibaldi Memorial, Staten Island, New YorkGaribaldi Monument in Taganrog, RussiaA bust of Garibaldi outside the entrance to the old Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.Monumento a Giuseppe Garibaldi,Buenos Aires, Argentina A statue of Garibaldi pointing at the Vatican City on Janiculum in Rome, Italy

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari (Italian patriot revolutionaries), and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. He has been dubbed the "Hero of the Two Worlds" in tribute to his military expeditions in both South America and Europe. He is considered an Italian national hero.

MARIA MONTESSORI

Maria Montessori was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. She worked in the fields of psychiatry, education and anthropology. She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a "blank slate" waiting to be written upon.She avocated in this sense a most natural and life-supporting environment, which should adapt itself to children’s own needs.

Born 1870Chiaravalle (Ancona), Italy

Died1952Noordwijk, Olanda

Known for

She developed revolutionary teaching techniques by observing the way children learn.

Notable awards Two nomination for Nobel Peace Prize

GIUSEPPE VERDI

Birth name Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi

Born10 Ottobre 1813Roncole di Busseto

(Parma)

Died 27 Gennaio 1901Milano

Nationality Italian

Field music

WorksLa Traviata, Aida, Nabucco, Rigoletto, Don Carlos

Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera.He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. Although his work was sometimes criticized for using a generally diatonic rather than a chromatic musical idiom, and for having a tendency toward melodrama, Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard repertoire a century and a half after their composition and are still performed nowadays in opera houses throughout the world.

DANTE ALIGHIERI

Bornmid-May to mid-June 1265Firenze

DiedSeptember 14, 1321 (aged about 56)Ravenna

Occupation Statesman, poet, language theorist

Nationality Italian

Dante is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language.Beatrice, the poetic love of his life, plays an extremely important role in his poetry. Dante attributed all the heavenly virtues to her soul and imagined, in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, that she was his guardian angel who alternately berated and encouraged him on his search for salvation. He was one of the first authors to write in the vernacular Tuscan, rather than Latin, and thus had a defining effect on what Italian is today.

RAFFAELLO

Birth name Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

BornMarch 28, 1483 or April 6, 1483Urbino, Marche

DiedApril 6, 1520 (aged 37)Rome, Italy

Nationality Italian

Field Painting and architecture

Movement High Renaissance

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Raphael's work was luminous in atmosphere, rich and clear in colour, harmonious in movement, sculpturally three-dimensional, and perfectly balanced in composition.