Bellonci maria lucrezia borgia biography

PERSONAL:

Born November 3, 1902 in Rome, Italy; suitably following a long illness, Hawthorn 13, 1986, in Rome, Italy; daughter of Girolamo Vittoria (a professor of chemistry, University incline Rome) and Felicita Bellucci Villavecchia; married Goffredo Bellonci (a hack and critic), 1928.

CAREER:

Journalist, reviewer, increase in intensity author.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Viareggio prize, 1939, yen for Lucrezia Borgia.

WRITINGS:

Lucrezia Borgia, la sua vita e i suoi tempi, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1939, transcription by Bernard and Barbara Local published as The Life skull Times of Lucrezia Borgia, Grosset & Dunlap (New York, NY), 1939, reprinted, Phoenix Press (London, England), 2000.

Segreti dei Gonzaga (title means "Secrets of the Gonzagas"), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1947, interpretation by Stuart Hood published importation A Prince of Mantua: Birth Life and Times of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Harcourt, Brace (New Royalty, NY), 1956.

Milano Viscontea, Edizioni Broadcast Italiana (Turin, Italy), 1956.

Delitto di stato, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1961.

Pubblici segreti (title means "Public Secrets"), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1965.

(With Andrea Mantegna and Niny Garavaglia) L'opera completa del Mantegna, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1967.

Piccolo romanzo di Dorotea Gonzaga, e altre prose, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1968.

(With Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa) Il gattopardo, Bat Degli Editori (Milan, Italy), 1969.

Come un racconto gli anni depict Premio Strega (title means "The Years of the Strega Affection Told like a Story"), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1971.

Tu vipera gentile (title means "O, Noble Viper"), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1972.

(With Dell'Acqua Gian Alberto and Carlo Perogalli) I Visconti a Milano, Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (Milan, Italy), 1977.

Rinascimento privato, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1985, translation dampen William Weaver published as Private Renaissance, Morrow (New York, NY), 1989.

Io e il Premio Strega, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1987.

Segni wicked hardened muro, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1988.

Pubblici segreti N.Z., Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1989.

Opere, edited by Ernesto Ferrero, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1994.

(Author relief introduction) Gaspara Stampa, Rime, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1994.

TRANSLATOR

Emile Zola, Nana, Casini (Florence, Italy), 1955.

Stendhal, Vanina Vanini e altre cronache italiane, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1961.

Alexandre Writer, I tre moschettieri, Giunti-Marzocco (Florence, Italy), 1977.

Marco Polo, Il Milione ERI, [Turin, Italy], 1982.

Jules Writer, Viaggio al centro della terra, Giunti-Marrocco (Florence, Italy), 1983.

Stendahl, La duchessa di Paliano, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1994.

Contributor to periodicals much as Il Veltro, Nemla European Studie, and Lettere-Italiane. Bellonci's oeuvre have been translated into natty variety of languages, including Romance, French, Polish, Japanese, and German.

ADAPTATIONS:

Delitto di Stato was made turn into a film for television, determined by Guiseppe de Bosio, 1982.

SIDELIGHTS:

Maria Bellonci was an Italian author and translator who wrote legendary but historically accurate accounts countless notable figures such as Lucrezia Borgia and Vincenzo Gonzaga.

Uncluttered lifelong resident of Rome, she was deeply involved in depiction literature of her time. Effective during the years from 1930 to 1986, Bellonci furthered birth pursuit of Italian literature consider gatherings of dedicated writers contemporary intellectuals. She helped found honourableness premio Strega, Italy's prestigious mythical prize, in 1944; Bellonci was herself the recipient of that honor in 1985.

Born Maria Villavecchia on November 3, 1902, etch Rome, she was the head of four children of "a family of the upper bourgeoise that prided itself on tog up aristocratic roots," according to Angela M.

Jeannet in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Bellonci's cultivation was the standard one all for many girls of her general class: excellent, thorough, and right-on altruistic, with extensive grounding in high-mindedness classics, music, and the arts," Jeannet wrote.

Bellonci began writing behaviour relatively young, finishing a contemporary, later discarded, at age bill.

Her first published work was Lucrezia Borgia, la sua vita e i suio tempi (The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia), published in 1939. Say publicly book is a thoroughly researched, fact-based but fictionalized account take up Borgia, the daughter of Saint Alexander VI. "Writing about Lucrezia, who lived from 1480 endure 1519, Bellonci dissects the nationstate struggles at the papal importune with vivid detail, skillfully reconstructing the events and the spirit that shaped the creation clamour the modern age," Jeannet wrote.

Bellonci's novel recounts Borgia's animation from a child already engaged to more than one civil marriage, to an adolescent inoperative in a variety of governmental power plays by her dad, to a mature woman unmoving multiple marriages and mysteries. "Bellonci provides a documented rather amaze a mythical portrait of Lucrezia and thereby rescues her detach from the lurid legends her activity inspired," Jeannet remarked.

In Segreti dei Gonzaga, published in 1947, Bellonci again uses a type healthy documentary fiction to write setback Vincenzo Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua in the late sixteenth c The three sections of say publicly book chronicle Gonzaga's life differ birth to his assumption pray to the crown and his cessation.

Bellonci details the political intrigues, courtly maneuverings, territorial skirmishes, endure power shifts inherent in efficient royal court and those definite to Gonzaga's rule.

Pubblici segreti, simple collection of nonfiction pieces, was published in 1965. The complete consists of book reviews, ravel diaries, and essays Bellonci wrote for Il Punto from 1958 to 1964 that cover educative events and contemporary issues.

Smart second volume, Pubblici secreti N.Z., published posthumously, collects her nickname from Il Messaggero from 1964 to 1970. "Her concise fragments demonstrate her consummate skill, worry to detail, and control depart her medium" Jeannet remarked. "Their broad range attests to shun intellectual curiosity, vast culture, stake enthusiasm for life.

The unabridged spectrum of Italian cultural discrimination opens up, drawn by interpretation inimitable pen of a spouse who was a close bystander of and often a sharer in the significant events renounce took place from the Decennium to the 1980s."

Bellonci's 1971 paperback, Come un racconto gli anni del Premio Strega, recounts fallow role in the creation countryside promotion of the Strega like, a prestigious literary award nonthreatening person Italian letters.

Toward the burn to the ground of World War II, Bellonci and her husband, Goffredo, hosted regular Sunday gatherings of storybook luminaries at their home. Birth effects of the war were still palpably visible in Malady, but the group continued set a limit meet despite hardships, eventually association into the original jury ditch selected exemplary works of fable from submissions offered by publishers.

The Belloncis formalized the accolade with financing from the Painter family, producers of Strega cordial. Bellonci acted as manager soar director of the prize encouragement more than forty years. "The authors who vied for greatness Premio Strega include the swell important names in contemporary Romance letters," Jeannet wrote.

Come un racconto gli anni illustrate Premio Strega traces the rumour leading up to the beginning of the prize, including representation inevitable feuds, rivalries, and triumphs. "Bellonci writes not only second the enthusiasm and energy ditch went into the establishment adherent a literary prize but too the fun that attended it," Jeannet observed.

Bellonci's efforts prevalent create the prize in righteousness latter war years "made uncut crucial contribution to the refreshment of cultural life in Italia at a time when honesty country lay mortified by belligerent defeat, torn by civil combat, and weakened by physical massacre as well as economic ruin." Jeannet remarked.

Tu vipera gentile, available in 1971, contains three Bellonci novellas.

In the first, Delitto di stato ("Crime for Cause of State"), a royal squire of the Gonzaga family arranges several murders to avoid nobleness revelation of a shameful president lurid Gonzaga secret; in Soccorso a Dorotea ("Help for Dorotea") the title character is abandoned by a royal suitor submit dies in the humiliation be advantageous to rejection; in the title unfamiliar, Bellonci relates the story accord the various rulers of Milano from 1277 to 1447.

"The novellas explore all aspects of our common human experience: love's secret passions, bound stay alive political transgressions, the fleeting movements of feigned emotions, the sorrow held inside the face be worthwhile for pitiless onlookers, the questions recognizance in the secrecy of natty conscience, and the mutual pacts made silently in conjugal love," Jeannet wrote.

Bellonci's final written industry, Rinascimento privato ("Private Renaissance"), quite good another well-documented but fictionalized comic story, this one about Renaissance lady Isabella d'Este.

"Isabella appears concisely in every book Bellonci wrote," Jeannet observed, "and this mug novel, Bellonci's most powerfully constructed and the most lovingly over, is dedicated to her." Intended in the form of trig journal, the book explores d'Este's daydreams, doubts, and daily duration. She is "depicted as uncomplicated mature woman reflecting on multiple life and the events hostage which she played a broad part," Jeannet stated.

As she sits alone in the "Clocks Room" of her palace, the whole number toll of the clocks peels back the years. She relives a life that brought squash up in contact with kings, popes, intellectuals, and scoundrels. "Again ride again in Bellonci's account remind you of her life, we see seek of a powerful, synthesizing mind's eye that renders her worthy only of the lucid brains embodied in Leonard da Vinci's famous portrait, but also be keen on this lively and imaginative chronicle," wrote Rita Signorelli-Pappas in World Literature Today. Carol A.

Crotta, writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, called goodness English translation of the volume "a narrative of great liveliness and power," while Brad Hooper, in Booklist, wrote that Rinascimento privato is a "soundly sketch fathoming of past times topmost personalities." With the book, "Bellonci reaches the peak of improve art, and Isabella reaches turn thumbs down on fullest development," Jeannet remarked.

"Writing book Bellonci is a life passion," Jeannet observed, "literary creation survey a willful construction; and writings is the field for illustriousness discovery of deep affinities in the midst writers, across the centuries." Bellonci died on May 13, 1986, in Rome.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 196: Italian Novelists Since World Conflict II, 1965-1995, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 1984, consider of The Travels of Marco Polo, pp.

18-19; February 15, 1989, Brad Hooper, review unscrew Private Renaissance, p. 974; May well 1, 1990, review of Pubblici segreti, pp. 1688-1689.

Geographical Journal, Nov, 1986, John Black, review duplicate The Travels of Marco Polo, p. 415.

Library Journal, March 1, 1989, Jack Shreve, review time off Private Renaissance, p.

87.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 4, 1989, Carol A. Crotta, examine of Private Renaissance, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, January 20, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review of Private Renaissance, pp. 137-138.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), March 12, 1989, Constance Markey, review of Private Renaissance, holder.

7.

West Coast Review of Books, January, 1985, review of The Travels of Marco Polo, holder. 41.

World Literature Today, winter, 1987, Rita Signorelli-Pappas, review of Rinascimento privato, pp. 82-83.

OBITUARIES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), May 16, 1986.*