FLORENCE — Tall candles twinkled in glass vases on the steps in front of the altar in the Santa Trinita church here filled to capacity and surrounding a delicate bouquet of colorful orchids, as a string quartet played Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.” A month after the death of Wanda Ferragamo at 96, a mass in her memory was held at the 13th-century basilica she helped restore and that stands opposite Palazzo Fini Speroni, headquarters of the Salvatore Ferragamo company.
The moving ceremony reflected Ferragamo and her legacy, attended by her children, Ferruccio, Giovanna, Leonardo and Massimo, their own numerous families and company employees. There were also former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi; the mayor of Florence Dario Nardella; Salvatore Ferragamo chief executive officer Micaela Le Divelec Lemmi and former group ceo Michele Norsa; Carlo Capasa, head of the Italian Camera della Moda; Pitti Immagine ceo Raffaello Napoleone, and the British Ambassador to Italy Jill Morris, as Ferragamo had received the Order of the British Empire recognition.
“My mother had become a grandmother at an early age, at 40, and she preferred to be called zia [aunt in Italian], which led her first grandson
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