Historical characters
Historical figures born in Conegliano: Gianbattista Cima, Maddalena Montalban, Francesco Beccaruzzi, Arnaldo Benvenuti, Antonio Carpenè, Ugo Cerletti, Francesco Da Collo, Pietro Caronelli, Francesco Gera, Pietro Scarpis, Giovanni Battista Marin, Pier Adolfo Tirindelli, Adolfo Vital, Marco Fanno , Pietro Maset.
Gianbattista Cima
The fame of Conegliano is also linked to the name of the painter Giambattista Cima, who was born in 1459/60. He is an exponent of that magical period of Italian Renaissance pictorial art. Even today it is difficult to accurately reconstruct the life of the artist, whose date of birth is uncertain.
The most reliable hypothesis on the formation of the Cima is that of an initial apprenticeship carried out in Conegliano (which in the years of the youth of Cima was a period of great artistic fervor), before his move to Venice. But it is reasonable to suppose that, after having learned the technique of the painting, his talent pushed him, probably in the years 1487-1488, to the lagoon city, whose pictorial school was very much affected by the influence of nearby Padua and Antonello’s work from Messina. In this environment artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Vivarini and Vittore Carpaccio were formed. The Venetian school is mainly characterized by an interest in color and light, a clear reference to the paintings of Piero della Francesca and Antonello. The art of Cima is affected by this influence, in particular by the works of Bellini, his great master. Soon the Cima opened his own shop in Venice, making use of the experience gained.
Even the conclusion of the painter’s life is surrounded by uncertainty: he seems to have died in 1517-1518 in Venice or perhaps in the native city, where he would have moved to spend the summer months.
The paintings, with a sacred subject, are immersed in a landscape setting that sometimes almost becomes the protagonist of the representation. The landscape is born from the memory of the artist, who often brings together recognizable naturalistic and architectural elements, creating an image between dreams and reality in close symbiosis with the characters. In some works the environment is composed of mountains, villages, castles, churches and walls of an imaginative nature. In other cases the landscape elements are clearly identifiable. In at least 24 paintings, areas of the Conegliano area can be recognized in the background: sometimes it is the castle of Conegliano with the ancient church of San Leonardo or those of San Salvatore, in Susegana, and Collalto; the natural environment is often inspired by the rolling hills of Conegliano or the Piave valley. In some cases these references appear freely combined in the same work. The landscape of Cima thus becomes a realistic vision and documentary testimony of the structure of the city of Conegliano between the 15th and 16th century.
The art of Giambattista Cima was expressed mainly in the creation of works with a religious subject, in which he occupied a leading position in the artistic panorama of the Venice of the time. For ecclesiastical commission he executed large altarpieces and polyptychs, while privately he created a rich production of small paintings, always of sacred and devotional subject. These are generally depictions that repeat the same compositional scheme: Madonna and Child portrayed half-length, accompanied or not by a couple of saints. The fame and the notoriety of the Cima are linked to these sweet and at the same time solemn and majestic figures of Madonna.
No painting of the Cima apprenticeship period (until 1487) is known today while, between the works of the youth period (1487 / 88-1500), many are found in the United States or in Europe. Remember: the Sant’Elena (National Gallery of Art in Washington) rich in architectural details, among which the towers of Coderta and Castelvecchio are recognizable; the Madonna and Child (National Gallery of London) which depicts the hills and castles of Conegliano and Susegana. Among the works preserved in Italy, one can include: the Polyptychs of Olera (Bergamo) and of Miglionico (Matera); the Sacred Conversation of the Civic Museum of Vicenza and that of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan; the paintings (today in Venice) of St. John the Baptist between St. Peter, St. Mark, St. Jerome and St. Paul, the Baptism of Jesus and the masterpiece of the Madonna of Orange, with the background of the castle of S. Salvatore in Susegana; finally the Sacred Conversation of the Duomo (the artist’s only painting in his native city) and the Polyptych that belongs to the period of maturity (1500-1513), of the parish church of San Fior. The Madonna and Child between St. Michael the Archangel and St. Andrew also dates back to these years, at the National Gallery of Parma.
One of the buildings that embellish what was once the lower Wrinkle or Saran (now Via GB). Cima) is the birthplace of the painter. Identified by two scholars of the painter, Botteon and Aliprandi, through the discovery of documents from 1516 and 1578, was abandoned for years. It is due to the patronage of Camillo Vazzoler if the house was not only restored to the ancient structures, but allowed the recovery of an important piece of the city’s history. During the restoration in the foundations, an interesting stratigraphy with ceramic fragments of the recent Bronze Age (XIV-XIII century BC) resurfaced, a finding that opened the way to new hypotheses on the origin of the city; also on the walls dates have been discovered including a “1492 adì 9 otubrio”, referring to three days before the discovery of America. Currently the house, in addition to hosting the reproductions of the painter’s paintings and a small archaeological museum (with jars, keel cups and dolii found during the restoration), is home to the Cima Foundation, which promotes conferences and studies on the artist.
Bartolomeo Gera
Vivere Conegliano e non soltanto vivere a Conegliano. Assicurare alla Città il prestigio e la dignità che le sono dovuti. Curarsi di ciò che è meglio per tutti e non solo per se stessi. Promuovere una cultura libera da legami politici o ideologici che possa diventare uno strumento di crescita sociale ed economica e generare pace e amicizia. Se Bartolomeo Gera, nel lontano XIX secolo, avesse dovuto riassumere in poche battute il suo “credo” culturale e sociale, avrebbe usato proprio queste parole. Di lui conosciamo la caparbietà nel portare a termine i progetti e gli impegni presi, l’entusiasmo di scoprire nuovi talenti, la foga, tutta risorgimentale, di dare corpo alle idee. Bartolomeo era nato il 30 giugno 1769 a Conegliano, dove il padre Giuseppe si era stabilito abitando nello splendido palazzo Gera in via Cavour. Bartolomeo divideva il suo tempo tra Venezia, dove respirava il fermento culturale e artistico dell’Accademia di Belle Arti, allora presieduta dal Conte Cicognara, e Conegliano, dove lesinava il suo contributo all’amministrazione e alla cultura cittadina. In seno a questo ambiente vivace e dinamico il Gera giunse a delineare il suo miglior progetto che ancora oggi impreziosisce la Città. Nel 1827, consultandosi con il Cicognara e con il fratello Vittore, architetto e agronomo, individua in Giuseppe Jappelli (Venezia 1783-1852) l’architetto adatto per dare forma al suo sogno: una villa splendida che esprima solo il bello dell’arte e che possa essere per tutti la perla di Conegliano! Un edificio che si libri verso l’alto, tipo il Partenone a misura d’uomo, del passo, della vita e delle stagioni di chi la elegge a buen retiro per gli studi e le conversazioni, come un luogo di pace affacciato sulla pianura. Convinto della necessità di promuovere l’arte fra i giovani, senza barriere sociali, politiche, di ceto o di provenienza, per scolpire il maestoso timpano che mostra alla città figure a grandezza naturale, Bartolomeo sceglie Marco Casagrande, giovane studente dell’Accademia di indiscusso talento, di origini contadine, che egli stesso manteneva agli studi. L’Architettura accoglie le Arti Sorelle e apre loro la sua casa. Grande esempio della personalità del Gera: aprire le porte a chiunque possa contribuire con un dialogo costruttivo a una crescita culturale, artistica, sociale. Aprirsi alle nuove idee, essere pronti ad accogliere un progetto imprevisto, ma buono e a farlo proprio, quasi a salire su un treno in corsa. Così presero vita gli affreschi del salone: i cartoni con la bozza dei dipinti che, nel giugno del 1835, Giovanni Demin (1786-1859) presentò a Bartolomeo, erano tutto e il contrario di tutto. Cesare e il suo esercito conquista il territorio degli Elvezi: la Gloria. La popolazione autoctona, soggiogata dopo una feroce battaglia, abbandona con dignità la sua terra allo straniero: la sconfitta. E Cesare, dopo i successi di condottiero, perisce sotto le coltellate dei suoi familiari: il riscatto, la giustizia che la storia, talvolta, riconosce ai più deboli. Difficile non leggervi il soffio irredentista del risorgimento antiaustriaco. Ciò nonostante, Bartolomeo accetta il rischio e dà via libera a Demin: salire sul treno in corsa e rimanere in piedi… Gera aveva 66 anni; un’età ragguardevole, all’epoca, ma una mente vivace, giovane e rivolta al futuro. Quel futuro è il nostro presente; Bartolomeo morì nel 1848, ma il suo messaggio non è mai stato più attuale. Sta a noi farlo nostro e riscoprire nel mondo di oggi la sua visione della vita che altro non era che il suo modo di vivere arte e cultura. Villa Gera in Castello, dopo quasi duecento anni, è ancora là, sul colle di Giano, incorniciata dallo splendido paesaggio e dalla rassicurante cinta medievale sulla quale si dispiega un suggestivo camminamento. E, oggi come allora, le sue porte sono aperte a chi, con amore e rispetto, vuole respirare la cultura come Bartolomeo Gera la sognava, così come reca l’iscrizione sul tempietto sulle Mura: Pace e Amicizia.
Maddalena Montalban
Maddalena Montalban was born in Conegliano on September 16, 1820, the firstborn of Count Girolamo and Lucrezia Guizzetti. She was educated in boarding school, perhaps in Venice, and in 1842 she married the rich Venetian merchant Angelo Comello.
With her marriage, Montalban became attached to a family and social environment of patriotic orientation and took part in a series of connecting initiatives, propaganda, fundraising, assistance and contacts with other insurgent groups in the north of the peninsula. In April 1848 she joined a committee of women (Pia association for aid to the military) created to organize the assistance and care of the wounded and the supply of weapons and clothes to the volunteers.
After the disappointment of fourty-eight, she approached republicanism and this gave her the epithet of “Countess Mazzini”, as evidenced by the correspondence with Mazzini, who often asked for help for the anti-monarchy conspiracy, and the participation in action committees which in the name of the Mazzinian ideal promoted the themes of the independence of the Veneto during the fifties and sixties.
In 1867, a year after the liberation of the Veneto, the Montalban, whose reputation as “Countess of Mazzini” had become established, received a visit by Garibaldi, with whom she had been in correspondence since 1848.
She died in Venice on May 31, 1869.
Francesco Beccaruzzi
Francesco Beccaruzzi was born in Conegliano around the years 1492-1493 and died in Treviso around 1562-1563).
The painter from Conegliano first carried out an apprenticeship in the workshop of Cima da Conegliano and then continued the activity under the guidance of Pordenone, who led him to Treviso for the artistic works to be held at a chapel of the Duomo. Of the period of collaboration with Pordenone, the Meeting of Gioacchino and Anna survived. However, he did most of his work in Conegliano. The Venetian artistic influences of Tintoretto and Palma il Vecchio were not lacking, evident in some works, as in Portrait of a Young Woman. During the artistic phase, Beccaruzzi approached Tiziano and thanks to this derivation he created San Francesco that receives the stigmata, a work that many critics consider the most successful for the setting, for the color and for the union of the different influences. In the last artistic period, Beccaruzzi was inspired by the Veronese style, which he demonstrated in the Marriage of Saint Catherine. His birthplace is located in the historic center of Conegliano, where he borders the Convent of San Francesco at number 17 of the street dedicated to him. Casa Beccaruzzi is now home to the ANA of Conegliano.
Arnaldo Benvenuti
Arnaldo Benvenuti (Conegliano, 1912 – Padua, 1942) was an Italian musician and composer. After finishing his piano studies at the Conservatory of Milan with the illustrious Maestra Erminia Foltran Carpenè, founder of the Conegliano piano school, he worked as a teacher at the Music School of the “Dante Alighieri” College. He composed songs for piano and orchestra and the symphonic poem King Peste. He became a professor at the Florence Conservatory at only 26 years old. He participated in the IV International Venetian Exhibition of Contemporary Music. He died at the age of 30, in 1942 when he was in possession of the Piano Chair at the Venice Conservatory. A street in the city of Conegliano was named after him.
Antonio Carpenè
Antonio Carpenè (Brugnera, 17 August 1838 – Conegliano, 23 March 1902) was an Italian chemist and oenologist.
He worked throughout his life on studies applied to viticulture, and to oenology with particular attention to the methods of sparkling wine. In 1879 he developed the industrial production of enocyanin. Mazzini participated in some important Risorgimento battles. A scientist with a positivist and progressive spirit, he had contacts with Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the latter wrote to him inviting him to investigate the important research on the effects of sulphurous acid on wine and beer ferments. He did his best to overcome agricultural backwardness and to renew the antiquated systems of vine cultivation in use in those days in Italy. He made a decisive contribution to the formation of the wine school of Conegliano, the first in Italy, founded with Giovanni Battista Cerletti in 1876 based on the principles of the provincial enological society established in 1868.
Ugo Cerletti
Ugo Cerletti (Conegliano, 26 September 1877 – Rome, 25 July 1963) was an Italian neurologist and psychiatrist. Creator of electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as electroshock, used for the treatment of certain mental disorders.
Since 1935, metrazole (a seizure drug) and insulin were widely used in many countries for treatment of schizophrenia, with interesting results. From 1936 Cerletti began to look for a more economical method to perform the shock on his patients because the indigent conditions among which he was forced to work persuaded him of the need to find a less expensive means to provoke the “healthy” epileptic seizure. He came to use the therapeutic electroshock on humans after the experiments he conducted on animals about the neurological consequences of repeated epileptic seizures. The idea of using the TEC on neuropsychiatric patients came to him after observing some pigs that were anesthetized with an electric discharge before being taken to the slaughterhouse. The idea behind the approach was based on research carried out by Nobel laureate Julius Wagner-Jauregg on the use of malaria-induced convulsions for the treatment of certain nervous and mental disorders – such as paralytic dementia caused by syphilis – as well as on theories developed by Ladislas Meduna, according to which schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic disorders; research and theories that in 1933 led Manfred Sakel to develop the “insulin coma therapy” in psychiatry. In Genoa, and later in Rome, he used electroconvulsive apparatus to cause repeatable and controllable seizures on dogs and other animals. In 1937 in Münsingen, Switzerland, during a conference on new treatments for schizophrenia, the professor sought consensus and collaboration on the use of electricity as a convulsing medium but his intervention was completely silent. Also in 1937 a conference was held in Italy on the new treatments for schizophrenia where the professor exposed the data obtained from the first researches. In his long career as a psychiatrist and neurologist, Cerletti published 113 scientific papers, on the pathology of senile plaques in Alzheimer’s disease, on the structure of glia cells, on normal and pathological nervous tissue, on congenital syphilis, on hormones and on endemic goiter.
Francesco Da Collo
He was born in Conegliano in about 1480, a descendant of an ancient aristocratic Cenedese family. Of great ingenuity, “distinguished knight for dignity”, he was above all a political and diplomatic figure. In this capacity by emperor Maximilian I in 1524 he was sent as ambassador to conclude the peace between Sigismund King of Poland and Basil the Grand Duke of Muscovy and to oppose the Ottoman threat. He wrote a very precious account of the journey and of the difficult diplomatic negotiations in Latin, translated into Italian by Fabio Sbarra, also with observations on the events of the time. He died in Conegliano in 1571.
Pietro Caronelli
He was born in Conegliano in 1736 and graduated in law in Padua, gaining a reputation as a talented jurist and speaker. He devoted himself to philosophical, historical and economic disciplines, he was also president of the Agricultural Academy and wrote numerous and valuable works on the subject. He was head of the municipality of Conegliano and of the Central Council of the Treviso area. He was made Count of the Venetian Republic for his scientific merits. He died in 1801.
Francesco Gera
He was born in Conegliano in 1803, was highly appreciated in the agricultural sciences and carried out a methodical teaching on the cultivation of the fields, on which he also wrote several essays. He was a member of several national and foreign Academies so as to obtain the esteem of Frederick William of Prussia and King Charles Albert. He was also a fervent patriot, an object of persecution by Austria. He died in 1867.
Pietro Scarpis
He was born in Conegliano in 1832 and at the age of sixteen he showed his patriotic feelings by taking part in the defense of Venice. He graduated in law from the University of Padua and later participated with Garibaldi in the Expedition of the Thousand. In all subsequent battles for the Unification of Italy he fought with heroism and boldness. He died in 1900 and had a grand mourning in the city.
Giovanni Battista Marin
He was born in Conegliano in 1833 and was an ardent and bold patriot who participated in the expedition of the Thousand and then distinguished himself as a corporal trumpeter among the Garibaldians. He died in Turin in 1893.
Pier Adolfo Tirindelli
He was born in Conegliano in 1858, as an eleven-year-old entered the Milan Conservatory and at eighteen he graduated with honors, immediately joining the Scala Orchestra. He directed the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice; he played and directed in America, in Paris, Vienna and London, obtaining great appreciation everywhere. He then settled in Rome and had the esteem of great artists such as Puccini and Mascagni. His creations are above all love lyrics. He died in 1937.
Adolfo Vital
He was born in Conegliano in 1873, he graduated in literature and taught for a long time in various schools including the Cima di Conegliano. Historian, scholar and palaeographer, he wrote numerous works on the history and art of Conegliano and the territory as well as a catalog of the records of the old municipal archive. For his value he was a member of the Venetian Deputation of National History and was elected honorary inspector of national monuments and curator of the interesting municipal archive. It is reminiscent of both a city street and a stone slab on the facade of the Castle tower.
Marco Fanno
He was born in Conegliano in 1878 into a Jewish family. He was Professor of Economics in various Italian universities and finally in that of Padua where he held the chair of Finance Science and then that of Political Economy. His career was interrupted by the promulgation of the racial laws and resumed in 1945. The department of economic sciences of the University of Padua is dedicated to his memory. A street in Conegliano and the Technical and Commercial Institute of the city are named after him.
Pietro Maset
He was born in 1911 in Conegliano, he was Captain of the Alpines in permanent service and spent his youth among barracks and wars in Africa, Albania, Greece and Russia. He was decorated with bronze and silver medals for military valor, and with a gold medal for partisan valor.
Lucchesia Sbarra Coderta
Lucchesia Sbarra Coderta, sorella del poeta e matematico Pulzio Sbarra, fu poetessa rinomata, pubblicò in ottava rima Immortal compagnia di dame e eroi e nel 1610 un poemetto di Poesie scelte. Morì nel 1662.
Would you like more information,
do you have advice or suggestions?
Visit Conegliano is an informative site that is attentive to everyone's needs. Don't hesitate to contact us with any request or if you have suggestions on how to improve the portal.
Would you like to receive updates on events
and Visit Conegliano initiatives?
Sign up to be updated on events, offers, services and news related to the tourism sector of Conegliano.
You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time by clicking on the link in the footer of our emails.
Follow us on Social Media
Menu
Credits:
Foto archivio Comune di Conegliano, Arcangelo Piai, Francesco Galifi, Da Ros&Pollesel.
Testi archivio Comune di Conegliano, Guida "Conegliano Città d’arte e del vino" (G.B. Molli, D. Canzian, ed. Biblos, Cittadella 2018),
Consorzio Tutela del Vino Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco (www.prosecco.it).
Privacy & Cookies - Powered by Neiko