Mario Gigliucci (1847-1937)

Media credit University of Leeds

Conte Mario Gigliucci was the second son and third child of Clara Gigliucci (née Novello) and Giovanni Battista Gigliucci, born in Fermo on 19 November 1847. Mario and his brother Giovanni were sent to Italian military colleges in the early 1860s. Like their father, they were active supporters of Italian unification and joined Garibaldi’s Red Shirt volunteer army in 1866. In 1867 he attended the University of Bologna to study engineering.

He maintained a commitment to the arts, including music and drama, and was an amateur painter, with a studio in Piazzale Donatello in Florence. He designed a house in Florence—Villa Rossa in Piazza Savonarola—which became a meeting place for artists. He maintained an interest in England and its current affairs, through both his British mother and wife, Edith Margaret Mozley (1847-1909), and made extended visits each summer. They married in 1875 had three children, Nerina (1878-1963), Donatello (1883-1975) and Bona Sabilla (1885-1982).

During the 1870s he worked as a mining engineer in Sardinia and then in Laveno. The family moved to Florence in 1879, followed by the family of his brother Giovanni the next year.

Gigliucci was close to the Littleton family, who had taken over the Novello family business and retained its name. He organised relief work during World War One. He died in Florence on 13 January 1937 at the age of 89.