Gaetano Cozzi – historian and writer

 Academic became Padua University professor

Historian Gaetano Cozzi, who became an expert on the statesman Paolo Sarpi and taught at Padua University in the 1960s, was born on 15 September 1922 in Zero Branco in the province of Treviso in the Veneto.

Although confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, Cozzi became famous internationally because of his research into the life of Sarpi, and his own writing about the relationship between law and society in Italy.

Cozzi grew up in Legnano, a municipality of Milan, and went to military school. At the age of 20, he became a second lieutenant in the Alpine troops. While attending a training school in Parma he was kicked by a horse and suffered a leg wound. A vaccine injected into him to treat the wound caused a serious infection and although his condition stabilised after a few months he was left paralysed in his lower limbs.

He had to have frequent periods in hospital, but his medical treatment, rather than demoralising him, stimulated him intellectually. He began to take an interest in politics and came into contact with the Liberal Party in Italy. He contributed to the Resistance in 1943, while lying in his hospital bed, by writing for Italian newspapers that carried propaganda pieces.

Despite being paralysed, Cozzi prepared to take his University exams and he graduated in History of Italian Law at the University of Milan in 1949. His thesis was about the writer Paolo Sarpi, and the relationship between the state and the church in Italy.

Cozzi moved to Venice to continue his research, even though life was difficult for him there because of his disability. After the founding of the Institute for the History of Venetian Society and State, he was appointed its secretary in 1955.

His first book, about Niccoló Contarini, who was the Doge of Venice in 1630, had to be dictated by Cozzi to his mother in 1958 because his illness had once again forced him to lie in bed.

Cozzi was appointed to teach history at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature in Venice and while attending a meeting at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in 1960, he met Luisa Zille, an expert in Philology, who he married in 1962 in Venice. He later collaborated with his wife to edit the Complete Works of Paolo Sarpi.

In 1966, Cozzi was appointed by the prestigious University of Padua to teach Medieval and Modern History at their faculty of Political Sciences.

Cozzi was a prolific writer about criminal justice and prisons in the Venetian republic and he also wrote The History of Venice, published in two volumes in 1986 and 1992.

In 1987, he became a board member of the newly established, Treviso based, Benetton Foundation for Studies and Research.

Cozzi’s writing and research had to be interspersed with long periods in hospital because of complications with his health. He suffered a further blow when his wife, Luisa, who was suffering from depression, took her own life in 1995.

His teaching career came to an end in 1998 with a ceremony at Ca’ Foscari in Venice, where he was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus.

The historian died in 2001 in Venice at the age of 78. He was buried in the cemetery at Zero Branco next to his wife, Luisa. His gravestone bears the inscription: ‘Still together, always together.’

Zero Branco is a comune in the province of Treviso, located about 37 kilometres from Padua. Casa Luisa e Gaetano Cozzi in Via Milan is now a cultural centre in the countryside outside Zero Branca, having been bequeathed to Fondazione Benetton in Gaetano Cozzi’s will. It is now an eight-hectare complex consisting of a former farmhouse, rustic outbuildings, and agricultural land, which is used by the Benetton Foundation for agricultural research.  

A library houses Cozzi’s documents and archives, which  are made available to scholars. Luisa’s Bechstein piano is preserved there and musical activities take place at Casa Cozzi in her memory.

 

Church of the Eremitani

Home of Andrea Mantegna’s famous frescoes

Padua's Chiesa degli Eremitani dates
back to the 13th century

Near the Giardino dell’Arena, where you can still see the remains of Padua’s Roman Ampitheatre, stands the Chiesa degli Eremitani, or Church of the Hermits, one of the most important churches in the city in the 14th century.

The Church of the Eremitani was built for Augustinian friars between 1260 and 1276 and dedicated to the Saints Philip and James. The friars remained in the church and adjoining monastery until 1806, when Padua was under Napoleonic rule and the order was suppressed. The Church was reopened for services in 1808 and became a parish church in 1817.

The church has a plain façade and a loggia with a circular rose window above it. Inside, it has a single nave with plain walls decorated with ochre and red bricks and a vaulted wooden ceiling.

It houses the ornate tombs of two lords of Padua, Jacopo II da Carrara and Ubertino da Carrara, which were designed by Andriolo de Santi. The Musei Civici agli Eremitani (Civic Museum) of Padua is now housed in the former Augustinian monastery to the left of the church.

In the Chapel of the Ovetari family, Andrea Mantegna began his artistic career at the age of 17. One of the heaviest losses to Italy’s cultural heritage during World War II occurred in 1944 in Padua when 15th century frescoes painted by Mantegna were blown into thousands of pieces by bombs.

The damage the church suffered in
the air raid was considerable

A raid on the city was carried out by the Allies, hoping to hit Padua’s railway station and a building where the occupying Germans had established their headquarters. But the bombs landed on Padua’s Church of the Eremitani instead, causing devastating damage to the beautiful frescoes created by the young Andrea Mantegna in one of the side chapels.

It was one of the worst blows inflicted on Italy’s art treasures during the war, as Mantegna’s frescoes, which had been painted directly on to the walls of the church, were considered a highly important work.

Andrea Mantegna, who was born near Vicenza in 1431, had been commissioned to paint a cycle of frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel, one of the side chapels in the Church of the Eremitani.

The commission marked the beginning of Mantegna’s artistic career when he started work at the age of 17 in 1448. The artist was in his mid-20s by the time he had finished the cycle in 1457, which showed scenes from the lives of Saint James and Saint Christopher.

Panels on the walls of the chapel
show how the frescoes looked

Tragically, the German invading army had established their headquarters in Padua next to the Church of the Eremitani. When the bombs fell in 1944, the chapel and the wonderful frescoes were severely damaged. They were reduced to more than 88,000 separate pieces, which were later found mixed in with bit of plaster and bricks on the ground.

Fortunately, a detailed photographic survey of the work had been made previously and it was possible later to reconstruct the artist’s designs and recompose part of the cycle depicting the Martyrdom of Saint James. 

Fragments that could be identified have been fixed to panels on the walls of the chapel where the frescoes were originally painted, which gives visitors some idea of how they looked before the church was bombed.

Other frescoes by Mantegna had been removed before the war to protect them from damp, and they remained undamaged and were eventually reinstated in the church.

In other chapels in the Church, 14th century frescoes painted by Guarentio and Giusto de’ Menabuoi miraculously survived.

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