The Leopard

The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo, lit. 'The Serval' [il ˌɡattoˈpardo]) is a novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, The Guardian named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels". The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.
Tomasi was the last in a line of minor princes in Sicily. He had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on his great-grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, another Prince of Lampedusa.
Although Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was an avid reader, until the last few years of his life he had written almost nothing for publication. He first conceived the book that became The Leopard in the 1930s but did not follow through on the idea at that time. According to Tomasi's widow, Tomasi first conceived the novel as a story to take place over the course of one day in 1860, similar to James Joyce's modernist 1922 novel Ulysses. In the end, only the first chapter conformed to this plan.
In 1954 Tomasi traveled with his cousin Lucio Piccolo, another late-in-life author, to a literary conference in San Pellegrino Terme. Piccolo had been invited on the basis of his recently published poetry, and brought Tomasi as a guest. Also attending were Eugenio Montale, and Emilio Cecchi, Shortly after this, he began writing; as he wrote in 1955, "Being mathematically certain that I was no more foolish [than Lucio], I sat down at my desk and wrote a novel."
By June 1955 he completed a version of the first chapter, conforming to his original intention of a story set in a single 24-hour period in 1860. At this time, few people around him were aware that he was writing: he had always spent large amounts of time alone; those periods were now spent at his writing desk. He finally showed a four-chapter work in progress to close associates in early 1956, corresponding roughly to the first, second, seventh, and eight chapters of the eventual novel.
In May 1956, Tomasi sent a four-chapter typescript to Mondadori in Milan. That summer he wrote two more chapters (drafts of the third and fourth in the final version) and in October he sent these to Mondadori as well. Mondadori rejected the novel in December 1956, although their rejection left open the possibility of considering a future version of the same work. In early 1957 he wrote two more chapters (the eventual fifth and sixth), revised those he had already written, and sent typescripts to several people. With Tomasi's permission, his student Francesco Orlando sent a copy to literary agent Elena Croce [it], daughter of Benedetto Croce, leaving the author anonymous. Another recipient, bookseller and publisher Fausto Flaccovio, liked the book but was not in the business of publishing fiction; he suggested sending it to Elio Vittorini; unsurprisingly, this rather traditional novel did not appeal to modernist Vittorini, who found it "rather old-fashioned" and "essayish".
Eventually, the copy sent to Croce bore fruit, but not in Tomasi's lifetime. In 1957, he was diagnosed with lung cancer; he died on 23 July 1957 in Rome. Elena Croce sent the manuscript to the writer Giorgio Bassani, who brought it to the publisher Feltrinelli. On 3 March 1958, Feltrinelli contacted Tomasi di Lampedusa's widow to make arrangements to publish the novel. It was published in November 1958 and became a bestseller, going through 52 editions in less than six months. Il Gattopardo was quickly recognized as a great work of Italian literature. In 1959 Tomasi di Lampedusa was posthumously awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for the novel. However, the application was very discussed by the literary people of that time such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia who considered the novel too conservative. When Mario Soldati called Maria Bellonci to submit Il Gattopardo to the competition, his friend Moravia told him:"I will never look you in the face again".
Most of the novel is set during the time of the Risorgimento, specifically during the period when Giuseppe Garibaldi, the leader of the famous Redshirts, swept through Sicily with his proletarian army known as The Thousand.
As the novel opens in May 1860, Garibaldi's Redshirts have landed on the Sicilian coast and are pressing inland; they will soon overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and incorporate it into the unified Italian Kingdom under Victor Emmanuel. The plot focuses upon the aristocratic Salina family, which is headed by Prince Fabrizio. Don Fabrizio is the patriarch of the family as well as the keeper of its strict code of conduct and Roman Catholic ritual. Prince Fabrizio finds marriage with his puritanical wife to be physically unsatisfying, and thus keeps a series of mistresses and courtesans. He also indulges in his hobby of amateur astronomy, when he's not out hunting with his beloved Great Dane, Bendico. He is drawn to his nephew Prince Tancredi Falconeri, whom he sees as having noble qualities. This affection is somewhat diminished when he discovers that Tancredi has joined Garibaldi's Redshirts. On a trip to the Salina estate in the town of Donnafugata the Prince learns that the mayor, Don Calogero Sedara, has become wealthy through dodgy business transactions and political influence, and that his wealth now rivals that of the Salinas. When Sedara introduces his extraordinarily beautiful daughter, Angelica, Tancredi is smitten with her, to the dismay of the Prince's daughter Concetta, who loves Tancredi. Although aware of his daughter's feelings, the Prince accepts the inevitable and helps arrange Tancredi's betrothal to Angelica. The two pass a blissfully innocent period of engagement.
Fabrizio is offered the position of a senator in the new Italian state but turns it down. Angelica is introduced to Palermo society at a sumptuous ball and despite her background slips easily into the role of future countess. The narrative then jumps forward by two decades and finds Prince Fabrizio on his deathbed, surrounded by family. While suffering a series of strokes, the Prince considers that he will be the last true prince of the Salinas, the last leopard.
The final chapter takes place in 1910. Concetta, now seventy, is still living in the Salina estate with two of her sisters. A story by an old companion of Tancredi reveals to Concetta that he had intended to propose to her, and her memories and life choices are recast. The Vicar-General and a priest visit to examine the relics in the estate’s small chapel. Most of them are determined to be forgeries, and the priest asks Concetta to discard them. Along with the fakes, Concetta asks a servant to dispose of the taxidermied body of Bendico, the long-dead Great Dane. The dusty carcass is thrown out of a window. As it falls, it appears momentarily lifelike.
The novel was met by criticism from people of different political views. The novelist Elio Vittorini, who had rejected an earlier draft of the book for his own press, the author Alberto Moravia, and the poet Franco Fortini, among others, condemned the book as "right-wing". Moravia wrote that it expressed ruling-class "ideas and view of life". The equally leftist Louis Aragon vehemently disagreed, seeing it as a "merciless" criticism of that class; many among the surviving Sicilian nobility certainly saw it as such, and were scandalized that one of their own could write such a thing.
The book embodies multiple opinions. The Savoyard Piedmontese are presented as naive about Southern Italy, full of plans that will never match the reality of the region, while the book's main representative of the old Bourbon regime, Don Fabrizio's brother-in-law Màlvica, is a fool. In his biography of Tomasi, David Gilmour sees Tomasi as criticising the Risorgimento (Unification of Italy) "from both sides, from the viewpoints of both Gramsci ...," describing the failure of the revolutionaries to truly ally with the peasants, "... and the Bourbons," describing a unified Italy's substitution of even worse elements into the island's elite. Despite or because of this controversy, The Leopard ultimately gained great critical acclaim. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize.
The novel contains both historical and autobiographical elements. During the time he was writing, Tomasi stated in a letter to his friend Baron Enrico Merlo di Tagliavia that Don Fabrizio, the "'Prince of Salina is the Prince of Lampedusa, my great-grandfather Giulio Fabrizio", but also (in a letter to Guido Lajolo) "friends who have read it say that the Prince of Salina bears an awful resemblance to myself." While Don Fabrizio's circumstances and many of his traits are clearly those of di Tomasi's great-grandfather, this is not necessarily so true of his opinions. In a further letter to Lajolo, after he had written more of the novel, Tomasi emphasised the autobiographical aspect of the character: "Don Fabrizio expresses my ideas completely." David Gilmour, in his biography of Tomasi, sees the character as mainly autobiographical but adds that there is also a fair amount of "the person the writer would like to have been" in Salina's "arrogant confidence, his overt sensuality, his authority over others..."
Similarly, Tomasi wrote to Merlo di Tagliavia that that "Tancredi is, physically and in his behavior, Giò [Tomasi's adopted son Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi]; morally a blend of Francesco Lanza Spinelli di Scalea and his son Pietro." To Lajolo he wrote that, in terms of appearance and habits, Tancredi is "a portrait of Giò; as for his morals, however, Giò is fortunately very much better than him." In his circumstances and actions, Tancredi also owes a lot to Giulio Fabrizio's nephew, Corrado Valguarnera, and to some of the latter's friends and associates. Some of the reaction against the book by Sicilian aristocrats came from their taking Tancredi and his wife Angelica as "portraits of Corrado Valguarnera and his wife Maria Favara," then being unhappy that they were not accurate portraits. Gilmour remarks that the discrepancies from these historical figures are "not surprising because [Tomasi] had not tried to make them very similar."
Some of the strongest historical and autobiographical elements of The Leopard are in the portraits of the places of Tomasi's life, especially his childhood. The town of Donnafugata is certainly Santa Margherita di Belice (near Palma di Montechiaro) and the palace there the Palazzo Filangeri-Cutò, though considerably larger and more elaborate than the original. Villa Salina outside Palermo is the Villa Lampedusa in Lorenzo outside Palermo. The Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo does not appear in the novel, although several of its rooms do.
Despite being universally known and published in English as The Leopard, the original Italian title for the novel is Il Gattopardo, meaning "The Serval", which refers to a much smaller species of wild cat found in sub-Saharan Africa. The symbol on the Tomasi di Lampedusa coat of arms is a serval.
The Corbera Family:
Others at Salina:
Characters at Donnafugata:
The novel served as the basis for a film directed by Luchino Visconti. Starring Burt Lancaster, it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. 20th Century Fox cut the film dramatically for its original 1963 release, but in 1983 Visconti's vision was re-released with English subtitles and the famous ballroom scene restored to its full 45 minute running time.
The novel was adapted for radio by Michael Hastings and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2008. The radio play starred Tom Hiddleston as Tancredi, Hayley Atwell as Angelica, Stanley Townsend as Don Fabrizio, and Julie Legrand as Princess Stella.
In March 2025, Netflix released a miniseries adaptation directed by Tom Shankland and starring Kim Rossi Stuart as Don Fabrizio Corbera.