Gentile, Giovanni, 1875-1944, Italian philosopher and educator. He taught philosophy in several Italian universities and for many years contributed to the magazine of Benedetto Croce. In 1920 he founded the Giornale critico della filosofia italiana. An early supporter of the Fascist movement, he has been called the philosopher of Fascism. In 1922 he was made a senator and until 1924 was minister of public instruction. While in this office he reformed the structure of public education. He also directed the work of the new Enciclopedia italiana. Gentile's philosophy, called actual idealism, is a form of neo-Hegelian idealism and was developed in Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro (1916, tr. The Theory of Mind as Pure Act, 1922).

Diodati, Giovanni, 1576-1649, Swiss Calvinist scholar and theologian, of a family of Italian Protestant refugees. He succeeded (1609) Theodore Beza as professor of theology at Geneva. Diodati served (1618) as a deputy to the Synod of Dort, and was chosen to assist in compiling the canons. He is chiefly known for his translation of the Bible into Italian.

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Conte, 1463-94, Italian philosopher and humanist. To many in the age of the Renaissance, Pico was the ideal man, whose physical beauty reflected his inner harmony. He appears in Il Cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglione. In 1484 he went to Florence where he soon became one of the most active members of Lorenzo de'Medici's Platonic Academy and the chief exponent of Italian Neoplatonism. His studies in Hebrew led to the composition of his celebrated 900 theses on a reconciliation of Christianity with Platonic philosophy. In 1487 he was forced to recant 13 propositions, and his clash with Pope Innocent VIII led to his arrest (1488) at Lyons. Although attacked by the church, Pico's theses were an important symbol of the Renaissance blending of Christian and Greek ideas. Lorenzo invited him back to Florence, where he remained until his death, becoming a follower of Girolamo Savonarola. In his Oration on the Dignity of Man (c.1487) he proclaimed that individuals face no limits to their development except those that are self-imposed. His other works include Heptaplus, a mystical account of the creation; De ante et uno; and an unfinished attack on astrology. Sir Thomas More's Life of John Picus, Earl of Mirandula is a translation of the biography by Pico's nephew, Giovanni Francesco (1890).

Pontano, Giovanni, 1426-1503, Italian poet, historian, and statesman, who used also the Latin form Jovianus Pontanus. He was protected by Alfonso of Aragón, who made him his chancellor of Naples (1447) and later his secretary. Pontano personally surrendered Naples to the French invaders. A noted humanist, he discovered Donatus' commentary on Vergil. His verse, in Latin, is notable for its grace, harmony, variety of subject matter, and natural expression of sentiment. He is thought to have greatly influenced Erasmus.

Gronchi, Giovanni, 1887-1978, Italian political leader. He entered parliament in 1919 as a member of the new Popular party. When Benito Mussolini seized power in 1922 and formed a coalition ministry, Gronchi became undersecretary for industry and commerce. He joined the opposition a few months later and was soon forced to retire from political life. After Mussolini's downfall, he helped to found the Christian Democratic party and served (1944-46) as minister for commerce, industry, and labor. He was later (1948-55) speaker of the chamber of deputies and served as president of Italy from 1955 to 1962.

Guareschi, Giovanni, 1908-68, Italian journalist and novelist. Guareschi edited a humorous weekly before World War II and in 1945 helped to found the popular weekly Candido. A master of warm but satirical humor, he is best known as author of The Little World of Don Camillo (tr. 1950) and its sequels, tales of a village priest's struggles with the local Communists.

Lanfranco, Giovanni, 1582-1647, Italian painter. Lanfranco is considered one of the foremost artists of the High Baroque. He was trained by the Carracci and worked primarily in Rome and Naples, where he executed numerous decorative plans for churches and palaces. Lanfranco greatly extended the scope of the illusionism that he had studied in the works of Correggio and the Carracci. His remarkable trompe l'oeil designs, characterized by piercing shafts of light illuminating boldly foreshortened, cloud-borne figures that recede into infinite celestial distances, were endlessly imitated throughout Europe. Among his greatest works are the ceiling of the Casino Borghese (1616) and the dome of San Andrea della Valle (1621-25), both in Rome, and the magnificent ceiling of the Chapel of San Gennaro in Naples Cathedral (1641). The brilliant, translucent quality of his later works is displayed by his apse painting for San Carlo ai Catinari (Rome, 1646), his last work.

Pascoli, Giovanni, 1855-1912, Italian poet. Pascoli's childhood was marked by a series of tragedies: the deaths of his parents and of five of his brothers and sisters. A radical in his student days at the Univ. of Bologna, he was subdued by imprisonment (1879) for his political activities. After completing his studies he taught classics, succeeding Giosuè Carducci as professor of literature at Bologna in 1905. His tender poetry, written in pastoral style, won him international fame; many verses were inspired by memories of his family. Also seeing his mission as the chronicling of Italy's glory, he wrote of historical and patriotic subjects, earning D'Annunzio's epithet "the last son of Vergil." His works include Carmina (in Latin, 1914); the more mystical Myricae (1891-1903); and the patriotic Odi e inni (1906). Pascoli remains one of Italy's best-loved poets. He was also an essayist of distinction.

Berchet, Giovanni, 1783-1851, Italian patriot and poet. He conspired to free Lombardy from Austria and was exiled. He wrote stirring patriotic ballads of a romantic type and rhymed romances, such as Giulia and Matilde.

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-75, Italian poet and storyteller, author of the Decameron. Born in Paris, the illegitimate son of a Tuscan merchant and a French woman, he was educated at Certaldo and Naples by his father, who wanted him to take up commerce and law. In Naples he met (1336) the woman (dubiously identified as Maria d'Aquino, illegitimate daughter of King Robert) whom he was to immortalize in prose and verse as Fiammetta. She is reputed to have introduced him at court and to have urged him to write (c.1340) his early Filocolo, a long vernacular prose romance. Other early works include the poem Filostrato, which infused the legendary story of Troilus and Cressida with the atmosphere of Neapolitan court life; the Teseide, a poem in the style of the Aeneid; the psychological romance La Fiammetta (written c.1344); the pastoral Ninfale d'Ameto; and the allegorical Amorosa visione, imitative of Dante.

Boccaccio was recalled to Florence in 1341, and there he met (1350) the great poet Petrarch, who became a lifelong friend. Emulating Petrarch, he became a Latin and Greek scholar and worked vigorously to reintroduce Greek works. In his middle years Boccaccio wrote (1348-53) his great secular classic, the Decameron, a collection of 100 witty and occasionally licentious tales set against the somber background of the Black Death. The tales treat a wide variety of characters and events and brilliantly reveal humanity as sensual, tender, cruel, weak, self-seeking, and ludicrous. With the Decameron the courtly themes of medieval literature began to give way to the voice and mores of early modern society. Boccaccio achieved stylistic mastery in the Decameron, which became a model for later efforts toward a distinctively Italian style. After completing the tales, Boccaccio experienced a severe emotional crisis, during which he wrote the satire Corbaccio, a savage attack on the female sex.

In the next years there followed several works in Latin, the language of high culture. These included Bucolicum carmen [pastoral songs], the huge De casibus virorem illustrium and De mulieribus claris (the first biographies of famous men, the second of famous women), the mythological treatise De genealogiis, and the geographical dictionary De montibus. Boccaccio's old age was troubled by poverty and ill health, but his activity continued. He was commissioned (1371) by the commune of Certaldo to read daily from his beloved Dante, and in 1373 in Florence he began the lectures which became his famous Commento on the Inferno. There are several translations of the Decameron and also many anthologies and collections of particular stories in translation.

Boldini, Giovanni, 1842-1931, Italian portrait painter. Having worked in Florence and London, he reached his peak of creativity and success in Paris, painting romantic vignettes and portraits. His works are distinguished by the bravura of the brushwork. A portrait of Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, with Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill is in the Metropolitan Museum.

Bologna, Giovanni, or Giambologna, 1524-1608, Flemish sculptor, whose real name was Jean Bologne or Boulogne. Though born in Douai, France, he trained in Flanders. He is identified chiefly with the Italian Renaissance as one of its greatest sculptors. He lived briefly in Rome before moving to Florence. His masterpiece, Flying Mercury, is in the Bargello, Florence. The Rape of the Sabines (Florence), with its spiraling forms and multiple viewpoints, is one of the finest examples of mannerist sculpture. This work exerted a profound influence on later art. Among his other works are the equestrian statues in Florence of the Medicis, one of Ferdinand I (see Browning's poem "The Statue and the Bust") and another of Cosimo I; two fountains in the Boboli Gardens, Florence; the bronze doors of the cathedral in Pisa; a Neptune fountain in Bologna; and the colossal statue Apennines at Pratolino. There are two of Giambologna's elegant statuettes of the Evangelists in the Metropolitan Museum and one at the museum of the Univ. of Kansas.

Paisiello, Giovanni, 1740-1816, Italian composer. Paisiello served in St. Petersburg at the court of Catherine II from 1776 to 1784. He was also briefly Napoleon's maǐtre de chapelle. Paisiello composed some 100 operas, church music, keyboard concertos, string quartets, and other works. His opera The Barber of Seville (1782) was so popular that for a time it hindered the success of Rossini's work of the same name. Paisiello's music is characterized by considerable melodic charm.

Giolitti, Giovanni, 1842-1928, Italian public official, five times premier (1892-93, 1903-5, 1906-9, 1911-14, 1920-21). He entered parliament in 1882 and served (1889-90) as minister of finance before becoming premier. By controlling elections, especially in S Italy, and by regrouping coalitions, he was able to maintain his political supremacy, and the period 1901-14 is often called the Age of Giolitti. A progressive Liberal despite his political corruption and practices of intimidation (called giolittismo), he favored the organization of labor and was responsible for social and agrarian reforms and the introduction (1912) of universal male suffrage. He tried to co-opt the socialist movement by bringing socialist leaders into the government. At the same time, he encouraged the entry of Roman Catholics into politics. Although he initiated the Italian conquest of Libya during his fourth ministry, he opposed Italian participation in World War I. In the troubled period of his fifth premiership, he ousted D'Annunzio from Fiume and settled the conflict with Yugoslavia in that region. He was not, however, successful in dealing with Italy's domestic crsis. Indeed, in the 1921 elections he helped Benito Mussolini by including Fascists among government-sponsored candidates, thus enabling them to win 35 seats in the chamber. Like most prewar politicians, Giolitti failed at first to condemn the increasing Fascist brutality, and only after Nov., 1924, did he openly oppose Mussolini. He is much more controversial than either, however, because of the contradiction between his generally liberal ends and the corrupt, Machiavellian means he employed in pursuing them. Along with Francesco Crispi, Giolitti was the most important Italian political figure between Camillo Benso Cavour and Mussolini.

Giovanni, Bertoldo di: see Bertoldo di Giovanni.

Verga, Giovanni, 1840-1922, Italian novelist, b. Sicily. He abandoned the study of law for literature and wrote several novels of passion in the style of the French realists. His later works, written in a different style, are marked by simplicity and strict accuracy. They deal with the Sicilian middle class and sympathetically treat the poverty and struggles of the peasantry. Verga's technique gave rise to the term verismo, denoting the realistic school. He is considered one of the outstanding writers of modern Europe and has been compared with Flaubert and Zola. His works include Cavalleria rusticana (1880, tr. with other stories in the same volume by D. H. Lawrence, 1928), I Malavoglia (1881, tr. The House by the Medlar Tree, 1890), Novelle rusticane (1883, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, Little Novels of Sicily, 1925), and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889, tr. by D. H. Lawrence, 1923). The dramatization of Cavalleria rusticana was produced in 1884, and Mascagni's opera, based on it, in 1890. A stage version of La lupa, one of his best stories, was produced in 1896 (tr. The Wolf Hunt, 1921).

Villani, Giovanni, c.1275-1348, Italian historian of Florence. As a Florentine government functionary, he participated in some of the events he narrates. His 12-volume history of Florence, written as a universal history from ancient times to 1348, is quite reliable for events during Villani's own time. An early monument of Italian prose, it helped fix the Tuscan language as the Italian standard. Villani died in the plague.

Segantini, Giovanni, 1858-99, Italian painter, b. in the Tyrol. A herder in his youth, he is known for his portrayal of Alpine peasant scenes. Although his early work is neoimpressionist in its love of nature, he made more symbolic paintings in the last years of his life. Well known among his works are The Punishment of Luxury (Liverpool) and At the Watering Place (Basel). The Segantini Museum is in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Della Casa, Giovanni: see Casa.

Cimabue, Giovanni, d. c.1302, Florentine painter, whose real name was Cenni di Pepo or Peppi. The works with which his name is associated constitute a transition in painting from the strictly formalized Byzantine style, hitherto prevalent in Italy, to the freer expression of the 14th cent. Cimabue retained most of the old conventions but introduced greater naturalism in his treatment of figures. He was master of mosaics at the cathedral in Pisa, where a St. John is attributed to him. Other attributions include a fresco, Madonna with Saints and Angels (lower church of St. Francis in Assisi); frescoes representing the four evangelists, scenes from the lives of the Virgin and St. Peter, scenes from the Apocalypse, and the Crucifixion (all in the upper church of St. Francis in Assisi); and Madonna Enthroned (Uffizi). A major work credited to him, a Crucifixion (Santa Croce), was badly damaged in the flood that ravaged Florence in 1966. Cimabue is said to have been the teacher of Giotto.

Gondola, Giovanni: see Gundulić, Ivan.

Martinelli, Giovanni, 1885-1969, Italian-American operatic tenor. He made his debut in Milan in 1910 and sang (1913-46) at the Metropolitan Opera. His repertoire of about 50 roles included the leading tenor roles in nearly all the principal Italian operas.

Agnelli, Giovanni: see under Agnelli, family.

(born 1485, Tuscany, Italy—died 1528, Lesser Antilles) Italian navigator and explorer for France. Educated in Florence, he moved to Dieppe, France, where he entered the maritime service. In 1524 he was sent to find a westward passage to Asia and reached North America. He explored the eastern coast from Cape Fear northward and became the first European to explore the sites of present-day New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay. He sailed along the coast to Newfoundland, then returned to France. He later led expeditions to Brazil (1527) and to the Caribbean, where he was killed and eaten by cannibals.

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(born Sept. 2, 1840, Catania, Sicily—died Jan. 27, 1922, Catania) Italian writer, the most important of the verismo (realist) school of novelists. Born to a family of landowners, Verga left Sicily for the mainland, where he remained until 1893. There he developed a writing style noted for its terse accuracy and intensity of feeling. His best works include the short stories of Little Novels of Sicily (1883), the novels The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), and the play Cavalleria rusticana (1884; “Rustic Chivalry”), which became immensely popular when it was adapted as an opera by Pietro Mascagni. His influence on the post-World War II generation of Italian Neorealist writers was particularly marked (see Neorealism).

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or Giambattista Tiepolo

(born March 5, 1696, Venice—died March 27, 1770, Madrid) Italian painter and etcher. In the 1730s and '40s the Venetian clergy and nobility vied for his works. In 1750 he went to Würzburg with his sons and collaborators, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and Lorenzo Tiepolo, to decorate the prince-archbishop's palace. His Würzburg frescoes and canvases are his most boldly luminous works. In 1762 he escaped the political disequilibrium of the Seven Years' War by accepting an invitation to paint ceilings in the royal palace in Madrid, again with his sons, his last great undertaking; he remained in Spain until his death. Although he initially used a melancholic chiaroscuro style, his later work is full of bright colour and bold brushwork. His luminous, poetic frescoes both extend the tradition of Baroque ceiling decoration and epitomize Rococo lightness and elegance.

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known as Rosso Fiorentino or Il Rosso

(born March 8, 1495, Florence, Republic of Florence—died Nov. 14, 1540, Paris, Fr.) Italian painter and decorator. He trained under Andrea del Sarto, alongside Jacopo da Pontormo, with whom he became a leading figure in the development of Mannerism. In his later work, the highly charged emotionalism of his early works (e.g., the Assumption fresco, 1513–14, in Florence's Santissima Annunziata) is more subdued; his new style is seen in his Dead Christ with Angels (1525–26). In 1530 he went to France at the invitation of Francis I; there he became a founder of the Fontainebleau school, and the ornamental style he developed influenced decorative arts across northern Europe. He remained in the royal service until his death.

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or Giambattista Piranesi

(born Oct. 4, 1720, Mestre, near Venice—died Nov. 9, 1778, Rome, Papal States) Italian draftsman, printmaker, architect, and art theorist. He went to Rome at 20 as a draftsman for the Venetian ambassador. After settling there in 1747, he developed a highly original etching technique that produced rich textures and bold contrasts of light and shadow. His many prints of Classical and post-Classical Roman structures contributed to the growth of Classical archaeology and the Neoclassical art movement. He is best known today for his extraordinary series of imaginary prisons (Carceri d'invenzione, 1745). His prints are among the most impressive architectural representations in Western art.

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(born Feb. 24, 1463, Mirandola, duchy of Ferrara—died Nov. 17, 1494, Florence) Italian scholar, philosopher, and humanist. He settled in Florence in 1484 as a protégé of Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino. In 1486 he posted in Rome a list of 900 theses on logic, mathematics, physics, and other subjects that he proposed to defend against any opponent. His Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), which accompanied the posting, epitomizes Renaissance humanism. Accused of heresy by the pope, he was later cleared, and he was later reconverted to orthodoxy by Girolamo Savonarola. Pico was the first Christian scholar to use Kabbalistic doctrine (see Kabbala) in support of Christian theology. His other works include Heptaplus (a seven-point exposition of the Book of Genesis) and a synoptic treatment of Plato and Aristotle, of which Of Being and Unity is a portion. He died at age 31.

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(born Jan. 4, 1710, Jesi, Italy—died March 16, 1736, Pozzuoli) Italian composer. In 1732 he was appointed chapel master to a Neapolitan prince. His comic opera Lo frate 'nnamorato (1732) was followed in 1733 by an opera seria, which had a comic intermezzo that became his best-known work, La serva padrona. His health failing, he moved into a Franciscan monastery (1736), where he wrote his famous Stabat Mater and Salve Regina before dying at age 26. Traveling opera troupes took up La serva padrona, and in 1752 the success of a Paris production set off the controversy known as the guerre des bouffons (“war of the buffoons”), with musical forgers vying to produce spurious works of Pergolesi, leaving some uncertainty about the authenticity of works attributed to him.

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or Giovanni Paolo Panini

(born 1691, Piacenza, Duchy of Parma and Piacenza—died 1765, Rome) Italian painter. After gaining fame for his fresco painting, he specialized in Roman topography and became the foremost artist in that field in the 18th century. His real and imaginary views of ancient Roman ruins embody precise observation and tender nostalgia and combine elements of late classical Baroque art with incipient Romanticism. His work was popular both with tourists and his peers: he was admitted to the Académie Française in 1732 and became its professor of perspective.

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(born circa 1525, Palestrina, near Rome—died Feb. 2, 1594, Rome) Italian composer. He sang in Rome as a choirboy, then worked as an organist in his nearby hometown of Palestrina. He was appointed director of the Vatican's Cappella Giulia by Pope Julius II in 1551, and he later worked at the other great Roman churches. He worked for the d'Este family in Tivoli for four years but returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained there the rest of his life. Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Palestrina to restore the plainchant (a traditional liturgical chant sung in unison) to a more authentic form. The task proved too great, and his editorial work gave way to a flow of creative music, including volumes of masses, motets, and madrigals. After his death, his superbly balanced and serene music was proclaimed as a model for composers in the Roman Catholic church. The modern study of counterpoint dates from the codification of his practice in the 18th century.

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(born May 9, 1740, Taranto, Kingdom of Naples—died June 5, 1816, Naples) Italian composer. Trained in Naples, he served the Russian empress Catherine II as chapel master in St. Petersburg (1776–84), where he wrote many short operas. He had his first operatic success in Vienna in 1784 then returned to Naples to become dramatic composer to Ferdinand IV. In 1802 Paisiello was invited by Napoleon to work in Paris, but after two years he returned to Naples, where, despite changes in regime, he retained his court post until 1815. He composed more than 80 operas, including a very popular Barber of Seville (1782).

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(baptized May 15, 1567, Cremona, Duchy of Milan—died Nov. 29, 1643, Venice) Italian composer. The first of his nine books of madrigals appeared in 1587, the second in 1590. He visited the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua, and his next book (1592) shows freer use of dissonance and close coordination of music and words. He married in 1599 and settled in Mantua. Attacked in 1600 for the even freer dissonance in his newest works, he replied that music now had two “practices,” the stricter first practice for sacred works and the more expressive second practice for secular music. It was his first opera, Orfeo, performed in 1607, that finally established him as a composer of large-scale music rather than of exquisite miniature works. In 1610 he completed his great Vespers. Having long tried to obtain his release from Mantua, he was finally granted it in 1612, and the next year he was put in charge of music at San Marco Basilica, Venice. After the first opera house opened in Venice (1637), he wrote his last three operas, including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and the remarkable Incoronazione di Poppea (1643). Monteverdi is the first great figure of Baroque music, a remarkable innovator who synthesized the elements of the new style to create the first Baroque masterpieces of both sacred and secular music.

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orig. Lodovico

(born April 6, 1498, Forli, Papal States—died Nov. 30, 1526, Mantua, marquisate of Mantua) Italian general. A member of the younger branch of the Medici family, he was the son of Giovanni de' Medici, who died soon after his birth, and Caterina Sforza, of the powerful Sforza family of Milan. He took his father's name, trained as a soldier, and fought for a Medici cousin, Pope Leo X, in 1516–17 and 1521. In the service of the French (1522, 1525) he fought with the army of the League of Cognac in 1526 and was mortally wounded in the battle near Mantua. He was known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (“of the Black Bands”) for the black banners his army (or bands) carried in mourning for Leo X after 1521.

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(born Jan. 26, 1582, Parma—died Nov. 30, 1647, Rome) Italian painter. He studied with Agostino Carracci. In 1602 he went to Rome to work with Annibale Carracci in the Farnese Palace. After Annibale's death, he became the leading fresco painter in Rome. His work shows the influence of Correggio's dynamic illusionism. His masterpiece is the Assumption of the Virgin in the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle (1625–27), which he took over from his rival, Domenichino; with its vigorously painted figures floating in the clouds over the viewer, it is a pivotal work of the Baroque period. He worked in Naples 1633–46; his best-known work there is the dome of the chapel of San Gennaro in the cathedral (1641–46).

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(born circa 1403, Siena, Republic of Siena—died 1482, Siena) Italian painter active in Siena. A prolific artist, he produced his most characteristic works from the 1440s, notably the monumental altarpiece The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (1447–49), 12 scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist, and a Madonna (1463) altarpiece in Pienza Cathedral. He also painted countless other religious panels. His tormented spirituality and expressionistic style were little appreciated until his reputation was revived in the 20th century.

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orig. Lodovico

(born April 6, 1498, Forli, Papal States—died Nov. 30, 1526, Mantua, marquisate of Mantua) Italian general. A member of the younger branch of the Medici family, he was the son of Giovanni de' Medici, who died soon after his birth, and Caterina Sforza, of the powerful Sforza family of Milan. He took his father's name, trained as a soldier, and fought for a Medici cousin, Pope Leo X, in 1516–17 and 1521. In the service of the French (1522, 1525) he fought with the army of the League of Cognac in 1526 and was mortally wounded in the battle near Mantua. He was known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (“of the Black Bands”) for the black banners his army (or bands) carried in mourning for Leo X after 1521.

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(born 1485, Tuscany, Italy—died 1528, Lesser Antilles) Italian navigator and explorer for France. Educated in Florence, he moved to Dieppe, France, where he entered the maritime service. In 1524 he was sent to find a westward passage to Asia and reached North America. He explored the eastern coast from Cape Fear northward and became the first European to explore the sites of present-day New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay. He sailed along the coast to Newfoundland, then returned to France. He later led expeditions to Brazil (1527) and to the Caribbean, where he was killed and eaten by cannibals.

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(born Sept. 2, 1840, Catania, Sicily—died Jan. 27, 1922, Catania) Italian writer, the most important of the verismo (realist) school of novelists. Born to a family of landowners, Verga left Sicily for the mainland, where he remained until 1893. There he developed a writing style noted for its terse accuracy and intensity of feeling. His best works include the short stories of Little Novels of Sicily (1883), the novels The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) and Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1889), and the play Cavalleria rusticana (1884; “Rustic Chivalry”), which became immensely popular when it was adapted as an opera by Pietro Mascagni. His influence on the post-World War II generation of Italian Neorealist writers was particularly marked (see Neorealism).

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(born circa 1525, Palestrina, near Rome—died Feb. 2, 1594, Rome) Italian composer. He sang in Rome as a choirboy, then worked as an organist in his nearby hometown of Palestrina. He was appointed director of the Vatican's Cappella Giulia by Pope Julius II in 1551, and he later worked at the other great Roman churches. He worked for the d'Este family in Tivoli for four years but returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained there the rest of his life. Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Palestrina to restore the plainchant (a traditional liturgical chant sung in unison) to a more authentic form. The task proved too great, and his editorial work gave way to a flow of creative music, including volumes of masses, motets, and madrigals. After his death, his superbly balanced and serene music was proclaimed as a model for composers in the Roman Catholic church. The modern study of counterpoint dates from the codification of his practice in the 18th century.

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or Giovanni Paolo Panini

(born 1691, Piacenza, Duchy of Parma and Piacenza—died 1765, Rome) Italian painter. After gaining fame for his fresco painting, he specialized in Roman topography and became the foremost artist in that field in the 18th century. His real and imaginary views of ancient Roman ruins embody precise observation and tender nostalgia and combine elements of late classical Baroque art with incipient Romanticism. His work was popular both with tourists and his peers: he was admitted to the Académie Française in 1732 and became its professor of perspective.

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(born May 9, 1740, Taranto, Kingdom of Naples—died June 5, 1816, Naples) Italian composer. Trained in Naples, he served the Russian empress Catherine II as chapel master in St. Petersburg (1776–84), where he wrote many short operas. He had his first operatic success in Vienna in 1784 then returned to Naples to become dramatic composer to Ferdinand IV. In 1802 Paisiello was invited by Napoleon to work in Paris, but after two years he returned to Naples, where, despite changes in regime, he retained his court post until 1815. He composed more than 80 operas, including a very popular Barber of Seville (1782).

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(born Jan. 26, 1582, Parma—died Nov. 30, 1647, Rome) Italian painter. He studied with Agostino Carracci. In 1602 he went to Rome to work with Annibale Carracci in the Farnese Palace. After Annibale's death, he became the leading fresco painter in Rome. His work shows the influence of Correggio's dynamic illusionism. His masterpiece is the Assumption of the Virgin in the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle (1625–27), which he took over from his rival, Domenichino; with its vigorously painted figures floating in the clouds over the viewer, it is a pivotal work of the Baroque period. He worked in Naples 1633–46; his best-known work there is the dome of the chapel of San Gennaro in the cathedral (1641–46).

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(born Oct. 22, 1842, Mondovì, Piedmont, Kingdom of Sardinia—died July 17, 1928, Cavour, Italy) Italian politician and prime minister five times between 1892 and 1921. He served in parliament (1882–1928). As a political leader, he used the technique later called giolittisma, which emphasized personal deals rather than party loyalty, as well as electoral corruption. As prime minister (1892–93), he instituted reforms but became enveloped in a bank scandal; he cleared himself but greatly damaged his successor, Francesco Crispi. As minister of the interior (1901–03) and prime minister (1903–05, 1906–09), he was both praised and criticized for his calm attitude toward widespread strikes. In his fourth ministry (1911–14) he oversaw the Italo-Turkish War, then opposed Italy's entrance into World War I. In his final term as premier (1920–21), he undertook Italy's reconstruction. He tolerated the early Fascists but in 1924 withdrew his support.

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(born May 30, 1875, Castelvetrano, Italy—died April 15, 1944, Florence) Italian philosopher, sometimes called the “philosopher of fascism.” A university professor, he and Benedetto Croce edited the journal La Critica (1903–22). He served in education posts in Benito Mussolini's government. His philosophy of “actual idealism,” strongly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, denied the existence of individual minds and of any distinction between theory and practice, subject and object, past and present. He planned and edited the Enciclopedia Italiana (1936) and wrote prolifically on education and philosophy. Among his works are The Reform of Education (1920), The Philosophy of Art (1931), and My Religion (1943). He was killed by antifascist communists.

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(born 1313, Paris, France—died Dec. 21, 1375, Certaldo, Tuscany) Italian poet and scholar. His life was full of difficulties and occasional bouts of poverty. His early works include The Love Afflicted (circa 1336), a prose work in five books, and The Book of Theseus (circa 1340), an ambitious epic of 12 cantos. He is best known for his Decameron, a masterpiece of classical Italian prose that had an enormous influence on literature throughout Europe. A group of 100 earthy tales united by a frame story, it was probably composed 1348–53. After this period he turned to humanist scholarship in Latin. With Petrarch, he laid the foundations for Renaissance humanism, and through his writings in Italian he helped raise vernacular literature to the level of the classics of antiquity.

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known as Rosso Fiorentino or Il Rosso

(born March 8, 1495, Florence, Republic of Florence—died Nov. 14, 1540, Paris, Fr.) Italian painter and decorator. He trained under Andrea del Sarto, alongside Jacopo da Pontormo, with whom he became a leading figure in the development of Mannerism. In his later work, the highly charged emotionalism of his early works (e.g., the Assumption fresco, 1513–14, in Florence's Santissima Annunziata) is more subdued; his new style is seen in his Dead Christ with Angels (1525–26). In 1530 he went to France at the invitation of Francis I; there he became a founder of the Fontainebleau school, and the ornamental style he developed influenced decorative arts across northern Europe. He remained in the royal service until his death.

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or Giambattista Tiepolo

(born March 5, 1696, Venice—died March 27, 1770, Madrid) Italian painter and etcher. In the 1730s and '40s the Venetian clergy and nobility vied for his works. In 1750 he went to Würzburg with his sons and collaborators, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and Lorenzo Tiepolo, to decorate the prince-archbishop's palace. His Würzburg frescoes and canvases are his most boldly luminous works. In 1762 he escaped the political disequilibrium of the Seven Years' War by accepting an invitation to paint ceilings in the royal palace in Madrid, again with his sons, his last great undertaking; he remained in Spain until his death. Although he initially used a melancholic chiaroscuro style, his later work is full of bright colour and bold brushwork. His luminous, poetic frescoes both extend the tradition of Baroque ceiling decoration and epitomize Rococo lightness and elegance.

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or Giambattista Piranesi

(born Oct. 4, 1720, Mestre, near Venice—died Nov. 9, 1778, Rome, Papal States) Italian draftsman, printmaker, architect, and art theorist. He went to Rome at 20 as a draftsman for the Venetian ambassador. After settling there in 1747, he developed a highly original etching technique that produced rich textures and bold contrasts of light and shadow. His many prints of Classical and post-Classical Roman structures contributed to the growth of Classical archaeology and the Neoclassical art movement. He is best known today for his extraordinary series of imaginary prisons (Carceri d'invenzione, 1745). His prints are among the most impressive architectural representations in Western art.

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(born Jan. 4, 1710, Jesi, Italy—died March 16, 1736, Pozzuoli) Italian composer. In 1732 he was appointed chapel master to a Neapolitan prince. His comic opera Lo frate 'nnamorato (1732) was followed in 1733 by an opera seria, which had a comic intermezzo that became his best-known work, La serva padrona. His health failing, he moved into a Franciscan monastery (1736), where he wrote his famous Stabat Mater and Salve Regina before dying at age 26. Traveling opera troupes took up La serva padrona, and in 1752 the success of a Paris production set off the controversy known as the guerre des bouffons (“war of the buffoons”), with musical forgers vying to produce spurious works of Pergolesi, leaving some uncertainty about the authenticity of works attributed to him.

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(born Feb. 24, 1463, Mirandola, duchy of Ferrara—died Nov. 17, 1494, Florence) Italian scholar, philosopher, and humanist. He settled in Florence in 1484 as a protégé of Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino. In 1486 he posted in Rome a list of 900 theses on logic, mathematics, physics, and other subjects that he proposed to defend against any opponent. His Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), which accompanied the posting, epitomizes Renaissance humanism. Accused of heresy by the pope, he was later cleared, and he was later reconverted to orthodoxy by Girolamo Savonarola. Pico was the first Christian scholar to use Kabbalistic doctrine (see Kabbala) in support of Christian theology. His other works include Heptaplus (a seven-point exposition of the Book of Genesis) and a synoptic treatment of Plato and Aristotle, of which Of Being and Unity is a portion. He died at age 31.

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(born Oct. 22, 1842, Mondovì, Piedmont, Kingdom of Sardinia—died July 17, 1928, Cavour, Italy) Italian politician and prime minister five times between 1892 and 1921. He served in parliament (1882–1928). As a political leader, he used the technique later called giolittisma, which emphasized personal deals rather than party loyalty, as well as electoral corruption. As prime minister (1892–93), he instituted reforms but became enveloped in a bank scandal; he cleared himself but greatly damaged his successor, Francesco Crispi. As minister of the interior (1901–03) and prime minister (1903–05, 1906–09), he was both praised and criticized for his calm attitude toward widespread strikes. In his fourth ministry (1911–14) he oversaw the Italo-Turkish War, then opposed Italy's entrance into World War I. In his final term as premier (1920–21), he undertook Italy's reconstruction. He tolerated the early Fascists but in 1924 withdrew his support.

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(born May 30, 1875, Castelvetrano, Italy—died April 15, 1944, Florence) Italian philosopher, sometimes called the “philosopher of fascism.” A university professor, he and Benedetto Croce edited the journal La Critica (1903–22). He served in education posts in Benito Mussolini's government. His philosophy of “actual idealism,” strongly influenced by G.W.F. Hegel, denied the existence of individual minds and of any distinction between theory and practice, subject and object, past and present. He planned and edited the Enciclopedia Italiana (1936) and wrote prolifically on education and philosophy. Among his works are The Reform of Education (1920), The Philosophy of Art (1931), and My Religion (1943). He was killed by antifascist communists.

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(baptized May 15, 1567, Cremona, Duchy of Milan—died Nov. 29, 1643, Venice) Italian composer. The first of his nine books of madrigals appeared in 1587, the second in 1590. He visited the court of the Gonzagas in Mantua, and his next book (1592) shows freer use of dissonance and close coordination of music and words. He married in 1599 and settled in Mantua. Attacked in 1600 for the even freer dissonance in his newest works, he replied that music now had two “practices,” the stricter first practice for sacred works and the more expressive second practice for secular music. It was his first opera, Orfeo, performed in 1607, that finally established him as a composer of large-scale music rather than of exquisite miniature works. In 1610 he completed his great Vespers. Having long tried to obtain his release from Mantua, he was finally granted it in 1612, and the next year he was put in charge of music at San Marco Basilica, Venice. After the first opera house opened in Venice (1637), he wrote his last three operas, including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and the remarkable Incoronazione di Poppea (1643). Monteverdi is the first great figure of Baroque music, a remarkable innovator who synthesized the elements of the new style to create the first Baroque masterpieces of both sacred and secular music.

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(born 1313, Paris, France—died Dec. 21, 1375, Certaldo, Tuscany) Italian poet and scholar. His life was full of difficulties and occasional bouts of poverty. His early works include The Love Afflicted (circa 1336), a prose work in five books, and The Book of Theseus (circa 1340), an ambitious epic of 12 cantos. He is best known for his Decameron, a masterpiece of classical Italian prose that had an enormous influence on literature throughout Europe. A group of 100 earthy tales united by a frame story, it was probably composed 1348–53. After this period he turned to humanist scholarship in Latin. With Petrarch, he laid the foundations for Renaissance humanism, and through his writings in Italian he helped raise vernacular literature to the level of the classics of antiquity.

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Giovanni is an Italian given name (from Latin:Iohannes), the Italian equivalent of Johann (John). It may also refer to:

People

• Pope John XVIII, whose given name was Giovanni Fasano
• Pope Gelasius II, whose given name was Giovanni Coniulo
• Pope John Paul II, known in Italian language as Giovanni Paolo II
• Giovanni Adamo, an Italian violinist
• Giovanni Agnelli, Italian entrepreneur, who founded Fiat car manufacturing in 1899
• Giovanni Arnolfini, a merchant from Lucca
• Giovanni Becatti, an Italian archaeologist
• Giovanni Bononcini, an Italian Baroque composer and cellist
• Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian Renaissance writer
• Giovanni Boldini, an Italian painter
• Giovanni Bosco, an Italian saint
• Giovanni Csermanek, later János Kádár, Hungarian communist leader
• Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer
• Giovanni de Macque, late Renaissance Franco-Flemish composer
• Giovanni di Giovanni, an Italian youth executed for practising sodomy
• Giovanni Facchini, an Italian economist
• Giovanni Giacometti, a Swiss painter
• Giovanni Gieco, an American actor.
• Giovanni Gozzadini, an Italian archaeologist
• Giovanni Papini, an Italian journalist, essayist, literary critic, poet, and novelist
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, an Italian philosopher
• Giovanni Ribisi, American actor
• Giovanni Salvatore Abruzzese, an Italian-American novelist
• Giovani dos Santos, a Mexican football player
• Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer
• Giovanni Silva de Oliveira, usually known as Giovanni, Brazilian soccer player
• Giovanni Semerano, an Italian philologist
• Giovanni Trapattoni, an Italian football coach and former player
• Giovanni Visconti, an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal
• Aria Giovanni, model and adult film actress, Penthouse Pet for the month of September 2000
• Joy Giovanni, actress and former WWE Diva
• Nikki Giovanni, American poet, activist and author

Fiction

• Don Giovanni, an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of Don Juan
• Giovanni (Pokémon), boss of Team Rocket in the fictional world of Pokémon.
• The Giovanni, a group of vampires in Vampire: The Masquerade/World of Darkness roleplay and video game
• Giovanni's Room, a novel by James Baldwin

See also

• Geovany Soto, Puerto Rican baseball player
• Giovanni Battista
• Geovanni, Brazilian soccer player
• Giovani dos Santos, Mexican soccer player