Ten Castles
for One Kiss

Paper in Love and Death in the Renaissance Castle, Congress in UCLA, Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies. In cooperation with “Giornate Internazionali Francesca Da Rimini”, Los Angeles, 2015, November 20 – 21.

Italian Abstract

DIECI CASTELLI PER UN BACIO
La storia di Francesca da Rimini tra poesia e fantasia

L’assenza di fonti attendibili che documentino il luogo ove è scoccato il mitico bacio di Paolo e Francesca, ha permesso alla miriade di artisti che dall’Ottocento ne hanno cantato la storia, di liberare la fantasia per ambientarlo nello scenario più consono al loro racconto.
Così la passione più celebre al mondo è stata immaginata in ben dieci diversi palazzi castelli tra Romagna e Marche, collocazioni alcune verosimili, altre impossibili.
Ferruccio Farina ripercorre in sintesi le ipotesi già analizzate da Luigi Tonini nell’Ottocento e più di recente da Piero Meldini, e alle località già individuate ne aggiunge altre recuperate tra le opere letterarie dedicate a Francesca tra Otto e Novecento.

Paper

The lack of reliable sources documenting the place where the legendary kiss between Paolo and Francesca took place has allowed historians to formulate some extremely difficult hypotheses for placing it, and offered the multitude of artists who have been narrating its story since the nineteenth century the chance to give full rein to their imagination and to set it against the backdrop that best fits their tales.

A fixed point for where and when the momentous event – or whatever you like to call it – took place, or where the fire of passion exploded, was examined in an exhaustive manner by Luigi Tonini in the nineteenth century¹, and it was taken up again more recently by Piero Meldini².
We should start by saying that the identification of the place is closely linked to the date on which it may have happened and this, too, is shrouded in mystery. And, as Tonini and Meldini state, the lack of a reliable chronology of the facts and the life of the characters³, due to the silence of contemporary sources, as well as the difficulty in interpreting the few available documents from which we obtain only indirect clues, have generated hypotheses whose value is based not so much on the arguments in support of them, but on a lack of opposing ones.

Commentators, chroniclers and historians from ancient times

Rimini. The oldest explicit reference to a place seems to be that of Jacopo Della Lana who, in his notes to Dante’s Divina Commedia, written between 1324 and 1328⁴, unequivocally indicates Rimini:
Qui tocca Dante una Istoria, la quale venne ad Arimino… [Dante narrates a story that took place in Rimini].

Also Giovanni Boccaccio, writing his Comento in 1374⁵ is very clear:
… E perseverando Polo e Madonna Francesca in· questa dimestichezza; ed essendo Gianciotto andato in alcune terre vicine per podestà, quasi senza alcun sospetto, insieme cominciarono ad usare. Della qual cosa avvedutosi un singulare servidore di Gianciotto, andò a lui, e raccontogli… Di che Gianciotto fieramente turbato, occultamente tornò a Rimino…
[a servant of Gianciotto’s tells him of the betrayal and Gianciotto secretly returns to Rimini…].
He nevertheless expresses some doubt about the case:
Col quale ella poi si congiungesse, mai non udii dire, se non quello, che l’autore (Dante) ne scrive: il che possibile è, che così fosse. Ma io credo, quello esser piuttosto: finzion formata sopra quello che era possibile ad essere avvenuto…
[I have never heard any more about this fact beyond what Dante said, and it is possibly an invention…].

Boccaccio was followed by Giacomo Gradenigo⁶ who, in his comment written between 1380 and 1390 repeating Jacopo della Lana, is equally clear on this point:
Qui tocca Dante una Istoria, la quale venne ad Arimino…
[Dante narrates a story that took place in Rimini]
And, as Tonini comments,
tutti gli altri Cronisti antichi e Commentatori di Dante non v’h alcuno che offra argomento contrario alla esecuzione del fatto in Rimini
[of all these ancient chroniclers none offers an argument to counter the hypothesis of Rimini].

Pesaro. The first claim for Pesaro belongs to Tommaso Diplovatazio from Corfù, a man of letters and a jurist serving the Sforza family who, in his Chronicum Pisauri composed between 1504 and 1508⁷ states
Et hoc fuit Pisauri in Palatio Comunis juxta Portam Gattuli…
[and this took place in Pesaro…].
But he hastens to add
Aliqui tamen dicunt fuisse Arimini in domo magna quae est in capite plateae magnae…
[sometimes certain people say it happened in Rimini…].
His is a fairly unreliable attribution, because it was formulated two centuries after the event and it is not supported by documentary sources of any kind, as his own doubts confirm.
Again offering Pesaro as a candidate is the scholar Teofilo Betti⁸, director of the Biblioteca Olivieriana in Pesaro in the early seventeenth century, who places the episode in 1289 when, according to texts interpreted by him, Giovanni was banished from Rimini and in exile with his family in Pesaro. Tonini decisively refutes this theory⁹.
It is Tonini who, with regard to Pesaro, even reports an intentional falsehood: in the transcription of Boccaccio’s tale published in 1840 by Pietro Veroli¹⁰ the word Rimini written by Boccaccio is replaced by Pesaro with a falsification that “demonstrates all the writer’s dishonesty”.
Pesaro? As Tonini says sarcastically, how could this be credible when, even in the Commedia with comment by Jacopo della Lana printed in 1477 in Venice, edited by Cristoforo Berardi who was actually from Pesaro, it says clearly “Istoria, la quale venne ad Arimino”?¹¹

Santarcangelo di Romagna. In 1853, a year after Tonini’s first edition of the Memorie storiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini¹², the highly-renowned scholar Mons. Marino Marini entered into a debate with the Rimini historian, putting forward a theory he had already expressed in 1844¹³: the tragedy “in fact happened nowhere else but in Sant’Arcangelo”. And he based his whole thesis by dating it to 1289 when the Malatestas, including Paolo and Francesca, were driven out of Rimini and lived in the castle at Sant’Arcangelo between 1289 and 1290.
In 1853 Tonini replied¹⁴ without sparing “insults”, by disputing one by one Marini’s sources and interpretations; the latter replied in 1854 with an anonymous pamphlet¹⁵, to which Tonini answered under the blunt title: Ritrattazione [Recantation].
And it was Tonini who, in the second edition of his Memorie storiche… of 1870¹⁶, fixed the date and place of what, in those times, had already become the most beloved “case” of the romantic souls of Europe and the Americas.
If there was a case, it can only have happened, one sad day between 1283 and 1285, in Rimini.
After him, there would be no room for historically viable hypotheses, but this would not prevent the legend of the two young lovers, thus enveloped in a cloud of mysterious and fascinating indefiniteness, from choosing for itself the most fitting place to take root and spread.

Poetry, narrative, theatre, music and cinema: Rimini, Verucchio, Pesaro

Rimini is the setting adopted by most of the authors of the numerous stage, poetical and narrative works which, ever since that fateful date in 1795¹⁷, were produced one after the other throughout the whole of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The kiss, with or without the bloody intervention of Gianciotto, is placed either in the castle – an imagined one, given that at the time Castelsismondo had not yet been built – or in the Malatestas’ “palatium” in the heart of town. This is how it was for Fabbri, Pellico, Hunt, Huland, Gilmore Simms and Ostrowski¹⁸ and for the large band of authors who came after them.
This is also how it would be, from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1910s, in the second wave of success for the “Francesca” affair created by Boker, Phillips, D’Annunzio and their many imitators all over the world. It was Rimini also for the Australians with Eduard A. Vidler¹⁹ who placed the last kiss in a romantic “Woody Glen”.
There are two authors who stand out in those years.
The first is the Spaniard Vicente Colorado; in his story of 1897²⁰, he shows a preference for Pesaro where, in an incredible historical mish-mash, Francesca actually meets Dante and Beatrice and makes friends with the latter.
The second is Francis Marion Crawford; for the tragedy he composed in 1902 for Sarah Bernhardt²¹, after research and inspections of Malatesta lands and castles²², he opts for the Verucchio fortress, the “cradle of the Malatestas”. More than historical sources – which he quotes, as always, by giving a forced interpretation of them – what helps him to make up his mind is the emotion felt at the sight of that fascinating castle where he immediately recognized the room of Francesca and her last kiss.
Verucchio has also been the favourite more recently of Jacques Tournier in his short novel Francesca da Rimini²³.
For most of the librettists, too, Rimini is the preferred town: Paolo Pola²⁴, Antonio Ghislanzoni²⁵, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré²⁶ set the tragedy in the “internal courtyard of the Malatesta palace”, and Antonio Colautti²⁷ in a garden above the castle terrace, while Felice Romani²⁸ in an “external cloister of a monastery, from which we see the dome of a Gothic temple”, and Matteo Benvenuti²⁹ in a ground-floor hall of the castle.
Nevertheless in texts for musical works, there are numerous mysterious, unnamed castles. Take the case, for example, of Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s libretto Francesca da Rimini for Rachmaninov’s opera³⁰.
The castles in films made in the early years of the cinema are also nameless. In the screenplays by William Ranous, Mario Morais and Ugo Folena³¹, for example, nothing indicates whether the scene is the Castelsismondo in Rimini. Folena proposes an unusual feature: the first kiss between the handsome Paolo and his beloved, played by the lovely Francesca Bertini, instead of being in the area of the court, takes place in the open sea, on the boat taking the prospective bride to her matrimonial sacrifice.
Rimini is the setting preferred by the innumerable “historical” accounts that were printed between 1890 and 1930³², in which Francesca reaches extraordinary heights and declares she is the heroine of every “gentle soul”, even those in the most lowly walks of life. Just think of René Delorme³³, one of the favourite authors of milliners and dressmakers throughout Europe, who describes his Francoise as she looks out from the battlements onto the port of Marecchia, in the hope of seeing her lover disembark. Weeping, of course.

Painting and graphic art

With regard to the very substantial corpus of paintings, engravings and illustrations that take as their subject the love-affair of Paolo and Francesca, most of the Malatesta castles and palaces appearing in them are nameless. And, with a few rare exceptions³⁴, the artist’s lens is focused on the most intimate, most sensual moment – the one most hidden from indiscreet eyes: the room with the alcove and the inevitable four-poster bed. The whole process is accompanied by furnishings that are now taken for granted: the “Book of Galehaut”, lectern, drapes, coats-of arms, Gothic glass panes, painted Madonnas, crucifixes and carpets – all according to a magic formula whose prototypes must be considered to be the paintings of Coupin de la Couperie and Ingres³⁵.
In the rare overall views, towers and castles are in various styles: at times they are reminiscent of French architectures, at times German ones and at times Italian. None of them can be identified with a precise location. Examples would be Frederic Leighton and Gaetano Bozza³⁶.

Traditions and inventions

The localities that have been given the honour of hosting the Francesca affair in traditions not otherwise specified are numerous.
They include the Giaggiolo and Cusercoli castles, given to Paolo as dowry by his wife Orabile Beatrice, situated in the Apennines about thirty kilometres from Forlì. Even though no source indicates them as possible locations for the “kiss”, the people of Forlì support the hypothesis that, being so distant from Rimini, they could be safe venues for the clandestine meetings of the two lovers. Why not?
The Montescudo and Montefiore fortresses located between the Romagna of the Malatestas and Montefeltro are also lacking in pedigree, but their geographical position, the comings-and-goings and sojourns there of all the Malatestas – before, during and after Francesca – and the spectacular and highly romantic nature of the surrounding scenery give legitimacy to their candidature. Why not?

Gradara, a case of creative marketing

Of those mentioned, the only castle that cannot boast any reliable historical reference is Gradara. We only need to consider that even the “Bible” recounting its history, Le Memorie di Gradara³⁷ by the Pesaro historian Annibale Degli Abati Olivieri, makes no reference to Francesca’s story.
Paradoxically, Gradara is the locality that, more than any other, has managed to gain credit for being the site of the amorous passion between Paolo and Francesca, thus winning for itself extraordinary popular acclaim.
It all began in the 1930s when restoration works were carried out on the castle, which was then private property; these were accompanied by the publication of a pamphlet by the unknown Lambertino Carnevali³⁸ who, with a vain desire to write history, took up the arguments previously refuted by Tonini and stated that the real setting for the love tragedy between Paolo and Francesca was Gradara. He claimed an oral tradition that had “never died out” among the village inhabitants and also quoted at length two phantom archaeological finds from several centuries before that had been discovered near the fortress: a male skeleton dressed in armour – the handsome Paolo, who else? – and a sarcophagus from the Roman period with the remains of a woman – Francesca, of course, hurriedly placed in an older grave.
But above all what confirms Gradara’s credentials is an article from those years in the Corriere della Sera repeating Carnevali’s arguments. The effect of this authentication is shown by an episode – whether true or false is not important – narrated by Miriam Petacci in the memoirs of her sister: taking night-time walks on the tower of the castle in the late 1930s were none other than Benito Mussolini and his beloved Claretta³⁹.
In actual fact, the real reason for Gradara’s success lies in the beauty of its castle, which is one of the most fascinating classic examples in the Italian medieval tradition, in a position dominating the Romagna coast and hills with a breathtaking panorama.
And this is why, ever since the end of the war, Gradara has easily been able to designate itself “fortress of love and fortress of the kiss” in novels, films, TV broadcasts, documentaries and on the Web, constantly and with increasing success. This is in spite of any historical reliability and of that unbelievable room with trapdoor being tackily constructed on the basis of Boccaccio’s tale.
From the rich anthology available we may recall the 1949 film by Raffaello Matarrazzo⁴⁰ – its scenes were also shot in San Marino -, the endless popular literature headed by the photo-romance magazine Grand Hotel in 1966 and the film for TV by Flavio Nicolini of 1990. And – why not? – a lively erotic cartoon published in Italian, English, German and Flemish in 1977⁴¹ in which the Gradara fortress stands out triumphantly.

San Giovanni in Marignano, a “true” new setting

During the years in which Tonini and Marini published their theses, Eugenio Alberi, a man of letters and historiographer from Padua and a fervent patriot⁴², could hardly fail to dedicate one of his stories to that icon of passion who in those years had also become – and not just in Italy – the heroine of freedom.
Alberi narrates how, by a lucky chance, an astonishing document that finally revealed the truth about Francesca’s tragedy came into his possession⁴³.
One spring day, while he was walking with a friend in the pleasant countryside between Rimini and the Montefeltro area “between the Apennines and the sea… in the shade of a young oak tree… with my gaze on the sky and the waves and the delightful green grasses…”, he came across an ancient stone cross bearing the incomprehensible initials D. I. D. I., engraved in Gothic letters.
To clear up the mystery, he goes to the “priory of a nearby castle…” [*** ] where a priest shows him a manuscript with the title Fabiani Praesbiteris S. Joannes e Marignano de rebus memorabilibus sui temporis memoriae containing the chronicle of events that happened between 1257 and 1296.
Leafing through it, next to the first lines of the hymn of Saint Ambrose Dies ire dies illa, he sees a drawing of a cross exactly similar in style to the stone cross with initials found under the oak tree.
The lines come at the end of the narration of the death of Francesca da Rimini, the work of that same Fabiano from San Giovanni in Marignano who alone was
“testimonio e, in certa guisa, partecipe della catastrofe!”
[witness to the catastrophe].

And this is Fabiano’s story, which Alberi translates from the Latin.

At sunset one day in July of 1288, the prior of Santa Veneranda near San Giovanni in Marignano, well known and revered as a man of holy habits, was meditating when he was interrupted by the maidservant of Madonna Francesca, wife of Giovanni of the Malatesta family, who begged him to go to the palace in Pesaro because she was
“estremamente bisognosa dell’uomo santo e lo vuole consigliero”
[she needed his advice]
and asked him to go to her in the early hours of the morning when her husband would be out hunting.
It was well known the manuscript recounts that Paolo of the Malatestas was a fugitive escaping from the wrath of his brother who suspected him of having a relationship with his wife, but a good priest must not shrink from his mission and the next morning he meets the lovely Francesca who is kneeling at the altar, contrite and weeping.
The holy man says:
“Figliuola; il rimorso che vi -strazia è già pegno della misericordia del Signore: affidatevi a quella: aprite il·vostro cuore·e riconciliatevi con Dio”
[Daughter, trust in the mercy of the Lord…].
And Francesca, completely overwrought, falls at his feet in floods of tears, confesses her passion and receives his blessing. The next day she will go to his sanctuary to agree on how to redeem herself and recover the trust of her betrayed husband, determined
“a mostrarsi negli atti e nelle parole quale da tanto tempo già più non era per lui”
[to be more kind to him than she had been for a long time].
Giovanni returns to the palace and Francesca is loving as never before:
lo sciancato sentì riaprirsi la fonte dell’antica benevolenza e ammansirsi l’ira della patita ignominia… e un raggio di conforto gli balenò nello sguardo
[The anger in Gianciotto disappears and hope returns…]
and he willingly gives Francesca permission to go that evening to the sanctuary of Santa Veneranda.
But as soon as Francesca leaves on horseback to go to the church, a servant warns Gianciotto that Paolo has been seen wandering on foot from Saludecio towards San Giovanni in Marignano:
fu a ser Gianni quasi colpo di fulmine: tornò l’ira a divampargli nel petto…inganno le mutate apparenze ·della consorte; inganno la sua andata a Santa Veneranda
[Gianciotto, as if thunderstruck, is again gripped by anger and feels newly deceived…].
Enraged, he thinks “with cruel pleasure” of catching them together and satisfying his thirst for revenge with blood.
Meanwhile Paolo, as he wanders through the fields at dusk, sees Francesca passing and rushes up to her, grabbing the horse’s reins.
Ser cavaliere, in nome di Dio,·ritiratevi… Al dire di lei scompaiono i sogni che l’avevano assalito e abbandona le redini spingendo il cavallo della sua amata ad andare, e rimane inebetito
[Knight, in God’s name, stand away, and Paolo, stupefied, lets her go].
Francesca hurries to the church and to the arms of the old priest and, in that holy place, she conquers “the tremendous internal battle” caused by the sight of her lover. Father Fabiano decides to call Giovanni to ask him for forgiveness and make peace with him before the sacraments.
But suddenly Paolo appears at the door, distraught:
Fra te e ser Gianni non v’h pace fin che io respiri. Ma tu l’avrai…
[While I live, there will be no peace between you and Giovanni, and you shall have peace …].
He unsheathes his dagger to kill himself but Francesca throws herself on his chest:
Vivi,… vivi… usciam di qua
[Let us immediately go out of here, alive].
The demon of Love holds her again in thrall … but outside the door a ghost with glittering eyes waits for the young lovers and shouts:
Insieme sì, ma all’Inferno
[Together, yes, but to Hell]…,
and with just one blow he stabs them both. The tragedy has been played out.

So, thanks to Father Fabiano’s manuscript, San Giovanni in Marignano, a little castle between Romagna and Marche, “the bread-basket of the Malatestas”, can also claim to have been the “true” setting for the tragic epilogue of the most famous and best-loved love story in modern history.
That’s the tenth one, but perhaps it won’t be the last.

Notes

1. Luigi Tonini, Memorie storiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini, Rimini, Ercolani, 1852; Luigi Tonini, Memorie storiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini ad illustrazione del fatto narrato nel V. dell’Inferno raccolte dal Commendatore Dottor Luigi Tonini Con appendice di Documenti edizione seconda riveduta dall’Autore ed accresciuta aggiunti inoltre i seguenti opuscoli del medesimo: Risposte due a monsignor Marino Marini, Genealogia dei Malatesti discendenti da Giovanni e da Paolo; Lettera sopra un supposto Comento di Dante; Memoria sull’anno dell’assassinio dei due fanesi alla Cattolica, Rimini, Malvolti, 1870.
2. Piero Meldini, Chi, come, dove e quando, le fonti documentarie e narrative della vicenda, in Francesca Je t’aime, Giornata internazionale di Studi dedicata a Francesca da Rimini, Atti del convegno, Rimini, Romagna Arte e Storia, 2008.
3. Malatesta da Verucchio (1222 ? – 1312), Giovanni Ciotto (1245 ? – 1304 ?) c.a 1275-1282 married Francesca da Polenta; c.a 1286 re-married Zambrasina Zambrasi; Paolo (? – ?) c.a 1269 married Orabile Beatrice da Ghiaggiolo, c.a 1283 – 1285 murdered by his brother Giovanni Ciotto; Francesca (? – ?) c.a 1275-1282 married Giovanni Ciotto, c.a 1283 – 1285 murdered by her husband Giovanni Ciotto.
4. Comedia di Dante degli Allaghieri col Commento di Jacopo della Lana bolognese, a cura di Luciano Scarabelli. Bologna, Tipografia Regia, 1866-67.
5. Delle opere di M. Giovanni Boccacci cittadino fiorentino…, Firenze (Napoli) 1723 – 1724 a c. di Cillenio Zacclori.
6. Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, [1392-1393 o 1399-1400]. Rimini, Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga, Sc-Ms. 1162; Paola Del Bianco, Il Dante Gradenighiano della Biblioteca Gambalunga di Rimini, in Parola di donna, Giornate internazionali di studio Francesca da Rimini, Atti del convegno 2009, Rimini 2010.
7. Tommaso Diplovatazio (Corfù 1468 – Pesaro 1541, Byzantine Jurist), Chronicon Pisauri, Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana, Ms. Cod. Oliv. 1422).
8. Teofilo Betti, Delle cose pesaresi, Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana, Ms. cod. Oliv. 994, t. II, lib. XII, p. 485. Teofilo Betti Orciano (1754 – Roma 1831), son of Cosmo Betti. Cosmo Betti, La consumazione del Secolo, poema, Lucca, Bonsignori, 1793, a poor Dantesque imitation.
9. This Thesis, however, was taken up by respected scholars as Carlo Troja. Carlo Troja, Del Veltro allegorico di Dante, Firenze, Molini, 1826.
10. Pietro Veroli, Il narratore Storico italiano, Firenze, Mazzoni, 1840, fasc. 3, p. 130.
11. La ‘Commedia’ col commento di Benvenuto da Imola (ma Iacomo della Lana), Venezia, Vindelino da Spira, editor Cristofaro Berardi da Pesaro, 1477. First commented edition of Commedia.
12. Luigi Tonini, Memorie storiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini, Rimini, Ercolani, 1852.
13. Marino Marini, Memorie istorico-critiche della città di Santo Arcangelo, Roma, Bourliè, 1844. Marino Marini (Santarcangelo di Romagna 1783, Roma 1855) was the nephew and successor of Gaetano Marini, like him prefect of the Vatican archives and conservator of the Vatican Apostolic Library.
14. Luigi Tonini, Risposta del dott. Luigi Tonini alle osservazioni critiche di monsig. Marino Marini sulle memorie storiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini, Rimini, Ercolani, 1853.
15. [Marino Marini], Appendice alle Osservazioni critiche intorno a Francesca da Rimini, Roma, Belle Arti, 1854.
16. Luigi Tonini, Memorie storiche…, Rimini, Malvolti, 1870, cit.
17. Francesco Gianni, Francesca di Arimino, Firenze, Lucchi, 1795. First known poem dedicated to Francesca da Rimini outside the Divina Commedia.
18. Ferruccio Farina, Francesca da Rimini, sulle tracce di un mito, Rimini, Romagna Arte e Storia, 2006.
19. Eduard A. Vidler, The Rose of Ravenna, Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Robertson, 1913.
20. Vicente Colorado, Francisca de Rimini, Episodio dramatico en tres actos Y en verso original, Madrid, 1897.
21. Francis Marion Crawford, Francesca da Rimini : drame en cinq actes dont un prologue, traduit par Marcel Schwob, Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1902.
22. “Nothing indicates that the incident happened in Rimini There is a belief that the event took place in Verucchio”.
23. Jacques Tournier, Francesca da Rimini, roman, Paris, Seuil, 2010.
24. Paolo Pola, Francesca da Rimini dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nel Gran teatro La Fenice il carnivale del 1829, Venezia, Casali (1829).
25. Antonio Ghislanzoni, Francesca da Rimini, tragedia lirica in 4 atti, musica del maestro Antonio Cagnoni, Torino, Tip. Teatrale, 1875.
26. Jules Barbier et Michel Carré, Françoise de Rimini : opéra en quatre actes avec prologue et épilogue, musique de Ambroise Thomas, Paris, Au Ménestrel, 1882.
27. Antinio Colautti, Paolo e Francesca, dramma lirico in un atto, musica di Luigi Mancinelli, Bologna 1907.
28. Felice Romani, Francesca da Rimini, da rappresentarsi nel Teatro Eretenio in Vicenza, La musica è scritta espressamente dal sig. Maestro Feliciano Strepponi, Vicenza, Parise, 1823; Felice Romani, Francesca da Rimini, dramma per musica da rappresentarsi nel Real Teatro di San Carlo nella primavera dell’anno 1831, La poesia è del signor Felice Romani; la musica è del maestro di cappella signor Giuseppe Staffa, Napoli, Flautina, 1831.
29. Matteo Benvenuti, Francesca da Rimini, musica del maestro Giuseppe Marcarini, Milano, Tip. Letteraria, 1871.
30. Francesca da Rimini (op. 32) is a symphonic fantasy in E minor by Pëtr Il’ič Čajkovskij (1876).
31. William V. Ranous, Francesca da Rimini (The Two brothers); Vitagraph production, Usa, 1907; Mario Morais, Francesca da Rimini, Luca Comerio production, Milano; Italia 1908; Ugo Folena, Francesca da Rimini, Italia 1909.
32. Idelbrando Bencivenni, Francesca da Rimini, romanzo storico. Published by many editors: Salani, Milano, and Vicenzi, Bassano, from 1873 to 1915.
33. Saint-Juirs (R. Delorme), Francoise de Rimini, series Les Grandes Amoureuses, Parigi, Marpon e Flammarion, 1884.
34. Very briefly, there are two kinds of pictorial representation: the genre dantesque with the eternal embrace in hell, with or without flames, and the romantic genre, with hugs and kisses, with or without Gianciotto.
35. Marie-Philippe Coupin de La Couperie, Les amours funestes de François de Rimini et Paolo Malatesta, c.a 1812, Arenberg, Napoleonmuseum; Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, Françoise de Rimini, 1814, Chantilly, Musée Condè.
36. Lord Frederic Leighton, The kiss of Paolo and Francesca, London, Leighton House Museum.
37. Annibale degli Abati Olivieri Giordani, Memorie di Gradara terra del contado di Pesaro, Pesaro, Gavelli, 1775.
38. Lambertino Carnevali, Il castello malatestiano di Gradara, Pesaro, Federici, 1933.
39. Myriam Petacci, Chi ama è perduto: mia sorella Claretta, a cura di Santi Corvaja, Gardolo di Trento, Reverdito, 1988.
40. Raffaello Matarazzo, Paolo e Francesca (Francesca da Rimini), Lux Film, Italia 1949.
41. Paolo en Francesca, Betapress, Tilburg, Nederland, 1977; Milano, Edilperiodici, 1977.
42. Eugenio Alberi, patriot, was volunteer in the Roman Republic in 1849 and in the Italian Indipendence war of 1859.
43. Eugenio Alberi, Francesca da Rimini, in Scene d’amore, album artistico-letterario, Firenze, Dini, 1852. He resurrects the thesis of Teofilo Betti indicating the fateful year in 1288 assuming the presence of the family Malatesta in Pesaro.

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