COSEANO. Maria Giuseppina Battilana, 89, was not seriously injured in a head-on collision while returning to her home in Coseano aboard a Fiat Idea driven by her seventy-nine-year-old partner, Amerigo Ghioldi.
The woman died on Wednesday 14 July at the Santa Maria Della Misericordia civil hospital in Udine, where she had been hospitalized since 7 July, the day on which – as anticipated – she had been the victim of a serious road accident that took place at Ciconicco, a hamlet of Municipality of Fagagna: a crash into a Fiat Punto that was moving in the opposite direction to the direction of travel of the car of the two elderly people.
Maria Giuseppina Battilana’s conditions immediately appeared very serious: following the violent impact, the woman was thrown out of the car, while her companion was stuck between the metal sheets. The man is still hospitalized at Santa Maria di Udine and his health conditions, from what has been known, are not serious.
Maria Giuseppina Battilana led a reserved life in Coseano, in the house in Largo Municipio where she had lived since 2005. She had chosen to live in a quiet town after having had a brilliant life as a writer, painter and university teacher.
She was a person with a sweet, cultured, generous character: she had chosen the pseudonym of Marilla Battilana to sign her paintings, some of which are at the Mart in Rovereto, and her fiction books, various collections of verses and many other edited works and translated by her.
Milanese, but of Venetian origins, she was a lecturer in English at the University of Venice and holder of Anglo-American literature at the faculty of literature in Padua.
He had lived for years in the United States: there he had taught Italian language and literature at Southern Illinois and Queen’s University.
He had chosen to live in Coseano because it is a “calm town” – he said – “with clear houses of rough stones that wash their faces every morning, the flowers are revived and the pergolas pin the shutters with hairpins that the wind does not ruffle”.
The mayor of Coseano David Asquini recalls how the woman led a reserved life: she loved this town for its tranquility, for the greenery, for the hilly area in which it is set.
“We were honored to have had as a fellow citizen a representative of Italian literature and contemporary art. The community is saddened by his disappearance. ”
The date of the funeral has not yet been established, which will be held in the cemetery of Udine when the magistrate gives the authorization after the autopsy ordered by the Public Prosecutor of Udine.