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Leonardo
da
Vinci
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Leonardo
da Vinci was a Florentine artist, one of
the great masters of the High Renaissance,
who was also celebrated as a painter,
sculptor, architect, engineer, and
scientist. Read
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Michelangelo
-
Michelangelo
was one of the most inspired creators in
the history of art and, with Leonardo da
Vinci, the most potent force in the
Italian High Renaissance. Read
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Piero
Della
Francesca
- Italian painter whose style was one of
the most individual of the early
Renaissance. Read
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Cristoforo
Colombo
- Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish,
Cristóbal Colón),
Italian-Spanish navigator who sailed west
across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a
route to Asia but achieved fame by making
landfall, instead, in the Caribbean Sea.
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Marconi,
Guglielmo, Marchese
Italian
electrical engineer and Nobel laureate,
known as the inventor of the first
practical radio-signalling system.
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Archimedes
(287-212
BC)
pre-eminent mathematician and
inventor, who wrote important works on
plane and solid geometry, arithmetic, and
mechanics. Archimedes was born in
Syracuse, Sicily, and educated in
Alexandria, Egypt. Read
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Verdi,
Giuseppe
- Italian operatic composer, whose
works stand among the greatest in the
history of opera. Read
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Puccini,
Giacomo
- Italian
composer, whose operas blend intense
emotion and theatricality with tender
lyricism, colourful orchestration, and a
rich vocal line. Read
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Guido
d'Arezzo
- Music theorist. Educated at the
Benedictine Abbey of Pomposa near Ferrara,
Italy, he trained the singers and,
together with a Brother Michael, created
an antiphoner (a collection of antiphons,
now lost) using a revolutionary notational
system. Read
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Garibaldi,
Giuseppe
- Italian nationalist revolutionary
and leader in the struggle for the
unification of Italy and its liberation
from rule by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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Marcus
Aurelius,
full name Marcus Aelius Aurelius Antoninus
(121-180), Roman emperor (161-180) and
Stoic philosopher. Read
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Giotto
The most important Italian painter of the
14th century, whose conception of the
human figure in broad, rounded
terms-rather than in the flat,
two-dimensional terms of Gothic and
Byzantine styles-indicated a concern for
naturalism that marked a turning point in
the development of Western art.
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Angelico,
Fra
Italian painter of the early Renaissance,
who combined the life of a devout friar
with that of an accomplished painter.
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Ferrari,
Enzo
Italian motor-racing driver and sports car
manufacturer. Ferrari was born in Modena
and began his driving career with Alfa
Romeo in the 1920s and continued with them
in the 1930s. Read
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Marciano,
Rocky
American
boxer, who retired as the only undefeated
heavyweight champion in boxing history.
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Armani,
Giorgio
Italian fashion designer, hailed as a
master tailor and as a designer whose
clothes combine elegance, quality, and
practicali Read
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Cimabue
Real name Bencivieni di Pepo, Italian
painter and mosaicist, born in Florence.
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Francis
of Assisi,
St
Italian mystic and preacher, who founded
the Franciscans. Read
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Galileo
(scientist),
Italian physicist and astronomer, who
pioneered the scientific revolution that
flowered in the work of the English
physicist Isaac Newton Read
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Rudolph
Valentino
Italian-born American film actor, who was
idolized as a romantic, exotic lover.
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Amerigo
Vespucci
Italian
navigator, born in Florence, who claimed
that on his first voyage (1497-1498) he
reached the North American mainland before
any other explorer. Read
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Luigi
Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was born in 1867
in Girgenti (now Agrigento) on the island
of Sicily. Luigi's father was a fairly
prosperous sulphur dealer and intended
that his son should follow in his
footsteps, but the boy demonstrated a
studious bent early on, and as a result,
he was provided with a literary schooling.
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Giacomo
Casanova
Giacomo
Casanova began writing his memoirs in
approximately 1791, in the relative
isolation of the Castle of Dux in Bohemia,
where he served as the librarian for Josef
Karl Emmanuel, Count Waldstein.
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Vincenzo
Bellini
Italian composer, born in Catania,
Sicily, and trained at the Conservatory of
Music, Naples. The premiere of his first
opera, Adelson e Salvini, in 1825,
attracted Domenico Barbaja, the director
of the San Carlo Opera, Naples, and La
Scala, Milan. Read
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Enrico
Caruso
Caruso, Enrico (1873-1921), Italian
dramatic tenor, born in Naples. He made
his debut in Naples in 1894. His first
great success was in Milan in 1898 when he
created the role of Loris in Fedora by the
Italian composer Umberto Giordano.
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Luciano
Pavarotti
Pavarotti, Luciano (1935- ),
internationally famous Italian tenor,
whose dramatic roles and powerful voice
have gained him a superstar status akin to
that of Enrico Caruso in the early years
of the 20th century. Read
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Salvatore
Quasimodo
Quasimodo, Salvatore (1901-1968),
Italian poet and critic, born in Modica,
Sicily. He began to write while working as
a civil engineer. By 1938 he had published
five books of poems. From 1940 he was
drama critic of the journal Tempo.
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Dante
Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian
poet, prose writer, literary theorist,
moral philosopher, and political thinker
and one of the great figures of world
literature
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Niccolò
Machiavelli
Machiavelli, Niccolò
(1469-1527), Italian historian, statesman,
and political philosopher, whose amoral,
but influential writings on statecraft
have turned his name into a synonym for
cunning and duplicity. Read
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Sandro
Botticelli
Botticelli, Sandro, real name Alessandro
di Mariano Filipepi (1445-1510), one of
the leading painters of the Florentine
Renaissance. He developed a highly
personal style characterized by elegant
execution, a sense of melancholy, and a
strong emphasis on line; details in his
paintings appear as sumptuous still lifes.
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Marcello
Mastroianni
Mastroianni, Marcello (1924-1996),
Italian film actor, who won international
renown. Mastroianni was born in Fontana
Liri. He acted as an extra in late-1940s
Italian films and then as a member of the
theatre company of Italian director
Luchino Visconti. Read
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Sophia
Loren
Loren, Sophia (1934- ), Italian film
actress, who progressed from being an
international sex symbol to Academy Award
(Oscar) winner. Born in Rome, Loren was a
beauty contestant when she was discovered
at the age of 15 by film producer Carlo
Ponti, who later became her husband.
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Alessandro
Manzoni
Manzoni, Alessandro Francesco Tommaso
Antonio (1785-1873), Italian novelist,
poet, and playwright, born in Milan. As a
young man he espoused the rationalism and
scepticism prevailing in French literature
of the Enlightenment. Read
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Federico
Fellini
Fellini, Federico (1920-1993), Italian
film director. Born and brought up in the
small seaside resort of Rimini on the
Adriatic Coast, Fellini moved to Rome in
1939 where he made a living as a
journalist and caricaturist.
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Donatello
Donatello, real name Donato di
Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c.
1386-1466), Italian Renaissance sculptor,
who is generally considered the most
original sculptor and one of the greatest
artists of the early Renaissance.
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Al
Pacino
Pacino, Al (1940- ), American actor,
born Alfredo James Pacino in New York.
Pacino trained at the Actors' Studio and
made his screen debut in Me, Natalie
(1969) while pursuing a full-time career
in the theatre. Read
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Francis
Ford
Coppola
Coppola, Francis Ford (1939- ), film
producer, director, and writer, born in
Detroit, Michigan. Coppola was educated at
Hofstra University, where he received a
degree in theatre in 1960, and at the
University of California at Los Angeles
(UCLA) film school. Read
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Dr.
Maria Montessori,
MD
Scientific observation has established
that education is not what the teacher
gives; education is a natural process
spontaneously carried out by the human
individual, and is acquired not by
listening to words but by experiences upon
the environment.
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