Don Giovanni Verità, Garibaldian priest.
Don Giovanni Verità (1807-1885), a priest from Modigliana, an opponent of the Pope-King, was an ardent patriot of the Risorgimento period, as certain Romagnoli knew how to be, and a courageous character. He was arrested because he was accused of participating in the Carbonari uprisings. He was a lover of hunting and this passion of his served to divert the suspicions of the papal gendarmes: like that night of 21 August 1849 when the priest, a rifle slung over his shoulder, on Mount Trebbio, waited for Garibaldi hunted by Austrian troops and hosted him for a night in his home.
Today the house where the Modiglianese canon was born houses the Don Giovanni Verità Municipal Museum.
There is also a monument dedicated to him in the centre of the public garden. In September 2006, the centenary of the inauguration of the monument by sculptor Italo Vagnetti was celebrated.
Philanthropist (1783-1867)
Founder of the nursery school that took his name, he died in Modigliana on 8th April 1867 and was buried in the municipal cemetery. Born in Turin, Modigliana by adoption, in a will dated 18th April 1866 he donated his entire estate for the education of the poor, children of the people. His own house was adapted to this new function. On 1 September 1868, the first twenty children of Modigliana were ‘collected’ and from then on this kindergarten was established, which has always met with the approval of civil, ecclesiastical and scholastic authorities. The kindergarten later became the property of the Municipality of Modigliana.
The great philanthropist rests in the graveyard of the municipal cemetery together with two other illustrious fellow citizens: Don Giovanni Verità and Silvestro Lega. The bas-reliefs on the tombs with the faces of the deceased and the large Christ are works by Modigliana sculptor Vincenzo Stagnani.
The Modigliana nursery school still bears his name.
Soprano (1903-1995).
Domenica Tassinari, alias Pia, was born in Modigliana on 15 September 1903 in the same building that was also the birthplace of Silvestro Lega. While still a child at boarding school, she began taking singing lessons from Professor Berardi at the Istituto Righi in Faenza. She made her debut in Puccini’s ‘Boheme’ on 13 December 1927 in Casale Monferrato. His golden years were from ’32 to ’37, when he sang mainly at La Scala, and from ’33 to ’44 and from ’52 to ’60 when from time to time he performed at the Rome Opera House in Werther, Boheme, Manon, Iris, Falstaff and many other operas. He also performed at the world-famous Metropolitan in New York in Tosca and Boheme. His last appearance was in ’62 in Philadelphia in Carmen. He died in Faenza on 15 June 1995.
The municipal music school of Modigliana is named after Pia Tassinari. The Museo Don Giovanni Verità has a room dedicated to her where photographs and personal objects of the singer are kept.
Silvestro Lega, renowned Macchiaioli painter 1826 – 1895
Silvestro Lega was born in 1826 in Modigliana and died in 1895 in Florence.
A well-known Macchiaiolo painter, Lega spent most of his life in Tuscany and for the technique he adopted he was, together with Fattori and Signorini, the founder of the greatest artistic movement of the 19th century, that of the ‘Macchiaioli’. As is often the case in artistic circles, he was most appreciated after his death and spent a life of poverty, for financial and health reasons.
A great friend of Don Giovanni Verità, to whom he dedicated a portrait and other paintings, Lega was also a fervent Mazzinian and fought for the Unification of Italy among the Tuscan volunteers at Curtatone and Montanara (1848). The lives of the two city glories, Lega and Don Giovanni Verità, were often intertwined not only because of the sincere friendship that bound them, but because they were both animated by a strong political-liberal commitment that made, especially the priest-patriot, a protagonist of the Italian Risorgimento.
They were members of the Accademia degli Incamminati, a glorious cultural institution in Modigliana reborn in 1755 on the ashes of the original Accademia dei Pastori del Marzeno, dating back to 1659. Today they rest in the municipal cemetery and their memories are kept in the Don Giovanni Verità Civic Museum and the Municipal Library. Modigliana dedicated a large exhibition to its famous son on the centenary of his death (1995).
Numerous works by the famous artist are housed in the Museo Comunale Don Giovanni Verità in Modigliana (Via Garibaldi) and in the Pinacoteca of the same name such as: Portrait of Don Giovanni Verità, Portrait of Garibaldi (Museum), Landscape, Portrait of Mazzini dying, the Incredulity of St. Thomas and the Portrait of Bartolomeo Campi, founder of the Accademia degli Incamminati (Art Gallery).
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