Chilling story that gave notoriety to village in Val Brembana

Mass murderer born 168 years ago still officially on the run

Simone Pianetti shot and killed
seven perceived enemies

Notorious murderer Simone Pianetti, who is regarded as a hero by some Italian and American anarchists, was born on 7 February 1858 in Camerata Cornello in the province of Bergamo.

In July 1914, Pianetti went out with his rifle one day and shot and killed seven people living in his local area who he believed had wronged him. He then went on the run and after firing at some Carabinieri officers who tried to arrest him, escaped into the mountains above Bergamo.

A search was carried out by more than 200 officers, from the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri and an infantry regiment, to try to capture him, but Pianetti managed to stay hidden in the mountains near the villages of Olmo al Brembo and Cassiglio.

Despite a 'Wanted' poster being published and circulated by the local Prefetto, offering a 5000 lire reward, Pianetti was never caught and his body was never found.

It is known that when he was young, Pianetti had fired his rifle at his father without injuring him, after an argument over a legacy. He was not charged with any offence as a result and, with the agreement of the local head of the Carabinieri, he left Italy and went to the USA.

Years later, he returned to Italy, his journey being paid for by his father, and he went back to live in Camerata Cornello, where he got married and fathered seven children.

He opened a small restaurant where customers were also allowed to dance, but because the local parish priest and other church officials did not approve of the dancing at his restaurant, he was eventually forced to close it by the municipal authorities.

A reward of 5,000 lire was offered
for help with the search for Pianetti

He then opened an electric powered mill, but this later also turned out to be an unsuccessful business venture because his reputation was blackened by his enemies and he lost all his money and became impoverished.

As the only person in the area who did not attend church, Pianetti steadily grew to believe that everyone hated him, which led to his murderous rampage in 1914.

On the morning of 13 July, Pianetti went out with his rifle and a list of the people who he believed had contributed towards his business failures and his poverty by either closing him down, or cheating him. His eventual victims were the local doctor, Domenico Morali, the manager of the municipality, Abramo Giudici, and his daughter, Valeria, Giovanni Ghilardi, a shoemaker, Stefano Filippo, a priest, Giovanni Giupponi, a layman, and Caterina Milesi, a farmer.

It is thought his actions in 1914 could have been inspired by those of Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian student, who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the previous month, the famous killings that set off the events that led to the start of World War I.

Pianetti was known to have survived in hiding in the mountains for some time and it is not known, when, or where, he eventually died. It is thought it may have been in 1952 in Milan, but this has never been proved. There were also reported sightings of him in the Bergamo mountains, as well as in America and Venezuela.

Some of the local people began to see the fugitive Pianetti as a liberator, and wrote on walls, praising him, with slogans such as ‘Long Live Pianetti, we need one in every town’.

It is thought people helped him stay hidden from the authorities by giving him food. Some residents were later sentenced to terms of imprisonment for helping him.

The village of Camerata Cornello, where
Pianetti carried out his killing spree

In his absence, Pianetti was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was accompanied by a sentence of five years in continuous solitary confinement.

Many theories have been put forward about how he escaped justice. Some people claim to have met him years later in America, and there is a theory that in his old age he returned from there and lived with his son, Nino, in Milan, until he died in 1952.

In later years, Pianetti’s story came to be admired by some Italian and American anarchists because of the actions he took against what was perceived to be the bigotry of those in authority in Italy, in the religious establishment and the society of his time.

He is remembered in towns in the Brembana Valley as a sort of avenger, often referred to as a righter of wrongs, and a hero opposed to the people in authority. The “romantic” aspect of his story endures, leaving aside the tragic and criminal side, and the threat of “doing like Pianetti”, (in the Bergamo dialect fà de Pianetti) is sometimes used.

Pianetti’s death has never been recorded and the case against him has never been dropped, so he is now officially on the run aged 168.

His birthplace, Camerata Cornello, a comune of Bergamo, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city, is one of the oldest villages in the Brembana Valley.

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Bergamo sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni

Artist who lived in Rome but stayed in touch with ‘home’ city

Benzoni's self-portrait bust resides
at the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai

The 19th century sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni, who was born in a mountainous village about 35km (22 miles) north of Bergamo, spent the whole of his working life in Rome and achieved considerable fame there, yet always regarded Bergamo as his spiritual home and often returned to the city.

He became a member of the University of Bergamo and accepted commissions to create busts of famous citizens. His own self-portrait bust resides in the Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai, on Piazza Vecchia in the Città Alta. 

Benzoni became so famous in Rome in the first half of the 19th century that collectors and arts patrons in the city dubbed him the “new Canova” after the great Neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova.

Born on 28 August, 1809 - 214 years ago today, Benzoni moved to Rome as a teenager to take a job in another sculptor’s  workshop and to study his craft at the prestigious Accademia di San Luca, later setting up his own workshop in the capital, where he produced hundreds of allegorical and mythological scenes as well as busts and funerary monuments. 

Yet he was regarded by Romans as a bergamasco - one of a celebrated group of bergamaschi based in Rome in the early 19th century, including the composer Gaetano Donizetti, the philologist Cardinal Angelo Mai and the painter Francesco Coghetti.

He was later commissioned to sculpt a monumental tomb for Cardinal Mai in the Basilica of Sant’Anastasia al Palatino in the centre of Rome.

The frescoed Torre dell'Orologio in the town
of Clusone, hear Benzoni's home village

Benzoni was born in Songavazzo, a village in the province of Bergamo just outside Clusone, a beautiful small town nestling on a plain against the backdrop of the Alpi Orobie - sometimes translated as the Orobic Alps. 

His parents, Giuseppe and Margherita, were poor farmers. Giovanni Maria worked briefly as a shepherd, but his father died when he was around 11 years old, after which he was sent to work in his uncle’s small carpentry shop at Riva di Solto, on the western shore of Lago d’Iseo, around 40km (25 miles) from Bergamo.

He began to show a talent for carving religious statues which came to the attention of a wealthy patron called Giuseppe Fontana, who was impressed enough to speak about him to Count Luigi Tadini, who would later open the Tadini Academy of Fine Arts in Lovere, another town on Lago d’Iseo.

Tadini asked Benzoni to make a copy of the Stele Tadini, the sculpture made for him by Antonio Canova in memory of the count’s son Faustino, who had died at a young age.

He was so impressed by Benzoni’s attention to detail and the accuracy of the reproduction that he arranged for him to attend a college in Lovere. 

Benzoni's bust of his patron, Count
Luigi Tadini, by the lake in Lovere

When he reached the age of 18 or 19, having failed to obtain a place for him at the Brera Academy in Milan or at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Tadini took Benzoni to Rome, where he would work in the workshop of Giuseppe Fabris - an artist who would later became director general of the Vatican museums - and attend the prestigious Accademia di San Luca, where his fees were paid by Count Tadini.

Benzoni’s elegant marble sculptures had echoes of Canova’s work and collectors in Rome soon began to speak of him as “il novello Canova” - the new Canova. 

After earning some money for his work, he opened a small studio in Via Sant'Isidoro, in the centre of Rome, off the street now called Via Vittorio Veneto. 

He later moved to bigger premises in Via del Babuino, between the Spanish Steps and Piazza del Popolo, where he employed more than 50 assistants. Among his most famous works were Cupid and Psyche, the Veiled Rebecca and Flight from Pompeii. 

Benzoni, who married into a noble Roman family and had six children, sculpted a statue of his first patron, Count Luigi Tadini, which stands on a plinth in a lakeside garden opposite the Tadini Academy in Lovere.

Tadini established the Accademia di Belle Arti Tadini in the lakefront Palazzo Tadini in 1829 and it has become one of the most important art galleries in Italy. 

Benzoni died in Rome in 1873.

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