Giuseppe Gioachino Belli

Giuseppe Gioachino Belli was born in Rome on September 7, 1791, into a lower middle class family. His father died of typhus not long after taking a job in Civitavecchia, so Belli, his mother and his two brothers moved back to Rome and lived in cheap lodgings. He started out writing sonnets in Italian. However, a trip to Milan changed that, because he came across the dialect satire of Carlo Porta there. That inspired him to write in Romanesco (the dialect of Rome), and between 1830 and 1839 he wrote most of his roughly 2,279 sonnets about ordinary Romans and the papal city of the 19th century.

The sonnets are sharp and funny, and they go after the clergy as well as everyday life. Belli’s own politics, though, were mostly conservative, and in his later years he worked as a censor for the papal government. Basically, he ended up banning works by writers and composers such as Shakespeare, Verdi and Rossini. Shortly before he died on December 21, 1863, he asked a friend to burn the sonnets. The friend gave them to Belli’s son Ciro instead, who published a heavily edited selection in 1866. As a result, the sonnets survived, and Belli is remembered as a major figure of Roman dialect poetry.

Note

The first stamp on the third row of this album page shows Giuseppe Gioachina Belli with Rome where he was born in the background. I don’t like the design or style of this or any of these stamps.

Contains 12 spots: own 12 – 12 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Sep 7, 2023

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot	own	catalog	subject	description
1.1	✓	1962	DRS Satellite Europa (CEPT) 1991 - Europe in Space	750₤ (apr 1991) comm., multi-color
1.2	✓	1957	Europees Youthtreffen	750₤ (mar 1991) comm., multi-color
1.3	✓	1963	Proposed Hermes Spaceship and Columbus Space Station Europa (CEPT) 1991 - Europe in Space	800₤ (apr 1991) comm., multi-color
2.1	✓	1964	Sta Maria Maggiore Church - Lanciano Italian Artistic Heritage 1991	600₤ (may 1991) comm., dark brown & siena
2.2	✓	1966	Sampdoria National Football Champion	3000₤ (may 1991) comm., multi-color
2.3	✓	1967	Centenary of Basketball	500₤ (jun 1991) comm., multi-color
2.4	✓	1972	Egyptian Museum - Turin	750₤ (aug 1991) comm., multi-color
3.1	✓	1960	Birth Bicentenary of Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863)	600₤ (apr 1991) comm., dark blue & grey brown
3.2	✓	1965	Schools and Universities- Sassari Schools and Universities	600₤ (may 1991) comm., multi-color
3.3	✓	1973	Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) scientist 100 Years of Radio	750₤ (sep 1991) comm., multi-color
4.1	✓	1970	Youth and Gulls - Pericle Fazzini Italian Artistic Heritage 1991	600₤ (jun 1991) comm., multi-color
4.2	✓	1971	Palazzo Esposizioni - Turin; Pier Luigi Nervi Italian Artistic Heritage 1991	3200₤ (jun 1991) comm., multi-color

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.