Cangrande the Master of Verona at Venice Film Festival 2013

Once upon a time there was a brave knight, famous for his exploits. A magnanimous master who made Verona the capital city of a large territory and the starting point of a great dream. His name was Cangrande, Cangrande della Scala: the Master of Verona. Canfrancesco della Scala, known as "Cangrande," lived in that bloody period between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when, no longer ruled by the emperor, Italy was a "hostel of sorrow, [a] ship without a pilot in a great tempest". So wrote Dante Alighieri, who, twenty-six years older than Cangrande, as an exile, knew all too well the tragedies of that period. After the democratic experiment of Medieval communes Commons, in which north-central Italy, divided into numerous city-states, was evermore at war: pro-imperial Ghibellines against the Guelphs, who were allies of to the Pope. Cangrande, the master of Verona, was a key player in this contention, protagonist of the leading events in the Northern Italy.