by Dianne Hales | Apr 13, 2021 | art, art history, books on Italy, culture, history, Italian, Italian language, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, Renaissance, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs
More than five centuries after his birth on April 15, 1519, Leonardo da Vinci and his Mona Lisa are still making headlines. A front-page article in the New York Times claims that the Saudi Cultural Ministry, which bought Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World)...
by Dianne Hales | Apr 6, 2021 | April, Books, books on Italy, history, Italian, Italian language, Italy, Language, Sayings and expressions, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs
T.S. Eliot called it the cruelest month (il mese più crudele). Yet this is also the romantic month that inspired classic songs and movies like Enchanted April, April in Paris and April Love. And as the cheerful childhood rhyme reminds us, April showers bring...
by Dianne Hales | Mar 30, 2021 | Books, books on Italy, culture, Easter, history, Italian, Italian language, Italy, learning Italian, Religion, Sayings and expressions, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs
On my first Easter in Rome in the Jubilee year of 2000, I joined the throngs jammed into the massive piazza of St. Peter’s basilica. Pope John Paul II, bent with age, extended Easter greetings in dozens of languages, including Italian. “Buona Pasqua!” the Roman family...
by Dianne Hales | Mar 16, 2021 | art, art history, Books, books on Italy, culture, Florence, history, Italian, Italian movies, Italy, Language, learning Italian, Renaissance, Sayings and expressions, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs
In English the most eagerly awaited of seasons “springs” to life with blunt urgency. In Italian la primavera blossoms into four elegant syllables. My etymological dictionary traces primavera back to radici indoeuropee (Indo-European roots): prima for “before” and vas...
by Dianne Hales | Mar 9, 2021 | Books, books on Italy, history, Italian movies, Italy, Language, Roman history, Rome, Travel, Web/Tech, Weblogs
“Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered). These three Latin words summarize the passions of the consummate Roman leader: Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), who lived to conquer—by sword, word, or seduction. By age thirty, Caesar had proven himself a fearless...
