Alex
was first nicknamed 'Pinturicchio' by the late Juventus club owner Gianni
Agnelli. At the time, Roberto Baggio, who was a Juventus player, was called
Giotto, a more famous and experienced painter than Pinturicchio.
"Before Agnelli called me
like this, 90 percent of the people didn't know who was Pinturicchio. Even
I looked for information and found out that, although he is a little known
artist, he had his own importance in the history of art. At the auctions
his paintings are sold by a billion, a billion and a half lire", Alex said
once. He added that he has never thought of getting one of Pinturicchio's
pieces as he doesn't know enough about art.
In
August, 2000, a new nickname came up, made up by the same Gianni Agnelli.
This time, Alex is 'Godot': the character of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting
for Godot". The character represents someone who is waited but never really
arrives.
Surely a new nickname will
come up in the future: something like da Vinci or Michelangelo...
There are also the two nicknames
that have nothing to do with his career: Alex and Ale. According to Del
Piero himself, as a kid, he preferred Alex because it sounded American.
But nowadays, he likes Ale better, since it's how his family and close
friends call him.
Here's some information on
the "real" Pinturicchio (from Encarta Encyclopedia):
Pinturicchio, real name Bernardino
di Betto di Biago (1454-1513), Italian painter of decorative frescoes.
He was born in Perugia. It is likely that he served as an assistant to
Italian painter Perugino, and worked on the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel
at Rome. He then painted frescoes in Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome illustrating
the life of Saint Bernardino of Siena around 1485. From 1492 to 1494, after
executing two works in the cathedral at Orvieto, he painted six frescoes
in the Borgia apartments (now the library) of the Vatican. From 1502 to
1507 he painted his last and most important works—the ten frescoes in the
Piccolomini Library of the Cathedral of Siena. They depict the life of
Pope Pius II, a member of the Piccolomini family, in brilliant color and
realistic detail. Among Pinturicchio's few surviving easel paintings are
the Madonna in Glory (1510, Municipal Museum, Barbiano) and Christ Carrying
the Cross (1513, Borromeo Collection, Milan).
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