History and background of Roberto Cavalli. Roberto Cavalli was born in Florence, Italy, in 1944. He attended the Florence Art Academy. He is a Scorpio. He is the grandson of Guiseppe Rossi, the great Florentine impressionist painter. Cavalli started his career in 1965 when he was 21 years old, painting T-shirts with a girl he knew from art school. Then he set up a factory to do the printing, with a few young men