L'Illustrazione Italiana

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L'Illustrazione Italiana
L'Illustrazione Italiana Vol.XLI, n.20, 17 May 1914.jpg
Cover of L'Illustrazione Italiana Vol.XLI, n.20, 17 May 1914 reporting 'The Earthquake of 8 May in Sicily'
EditorEmilio Treves
EditorGuido Treves
EditorAldo Garzanti
Editor Gaetano Tumiati
Frequencyweekly, monthly from 1951, irregular 1972–73, bimonthly 1981-1996, 2011> irregular
Format38cm, 20-40 pages
PublisherFratelli Treves, Garzanti after 1939
Paid circulation15,000
FounderEmilio and Guido Treves
Founded1 December 1873
First issueNovember 1, 1875;149 years ago (1875-11-01)
Final issueDecember 31, 1962;62 years ago (1962-12-31)
CountryItaly
Based inMilan
LanguageItalian

L'Illustrazione Italiana was a high-quality illustrated Italian weekly subtitled; 'news, public and social life, science, fine arts, geography and travel, theatres, music, fashion.'

Contents

Based in Milan, the magazine was distributed across Italy and abroad, and published continuously from 1873 to 1962 for a total of almost 5,000 issues. Together with La Domenica del Corriere and La Tribuna illustrata, it was one of the most read illustrated weeklies in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the advent of television. In 1981, publication was resumed under various publishers.

History

The journal was founded in Milan on 1 December 1873, by the Trieste publisher Fratelli Treves, of whom Emilio was also its first editor, under the masthead Nuova Illustrazione Universale. The Treves brothers Emilio and Guido acquired in 1874 a competing magazine which appeared in Roma at the same time and of a similar type and design; [1] L' Illustrazione - Rivista Italiana, edited by the Roman artist Alessandro Foli, [2] and for the merger starting 1 November 1875, the weekly adopted the more incisive title. [3]

The magazine aimed at an upper-class audience [4] for whom it was a 'status symbol', [5] and its cost of 3 lira against 30 cents for La Domenica del Corriere and 10 for another Fratelli Treves publication, L'Illustrazione Popolare, was an indicator of that to would-be purchasers. [6] Bernadini's guide of 1890 records the price of a yearly subscription in Italy to The Illustrated London News at 47 lire, comparable to the cost for The Graphic,Illustrirte Zeitung, [7] thus being, as Finaldi notes, twice that of a subscription to L'Illustrazione Italiana despite its much smaller weekly 15,000 print run. [8]


In the Publishers' circular and booksellers' record of 1885 L'Illustrazione Italiana was advertised as a 'great publication' ranked with:

...the Illustrated London News and The Graphic ...in England, L’Illustration in France, and the Illustrirte Zeilung in Germany. Nine pages are devoted to Illustrations of Current Events and the Fine Arts, designed by the most celebrated artists of modern Italy, and among others by Dalbono, Michetti, Favretto, Bisto, and Paolocci. The Literary contents are also of the highest class; Editorials, Reviews, Notes on Current Events, Poetry and Fiction, being contributed by De Amicis, [Giovanni] Verga, D'Ancona, Stecchetti, Momenti, Castelnuovo, Barrili, and other distinguished and popular Writers. L'illustrazione Italiana always keeps its readers well-informed in all the Political, Literary, Artistic, and Scientific News of the Peninsula. It enjoys the most extensive circulation of any similar publication in Southern Europe. Its readers are not only to be found in the most cultured society, but also in the homes of the middle-classes throughout Italy. It is a favourite with Foreigners, particularly with English and American Visitors, every important occurrence in Italy being recorded in its pages and simultaneously Illustrated by capable artists. [9]

Contributors

During the late 19th century to early 20th century, L'Illustrazione Italiana gained popularity among the upper-middle class for high-quality articles in the genteel, courtly language of its columnists, and the short story format that Treves introduced [10] written by some of the most important names in Italian literature.

Among its contributors and regular columnists were Tosca librettist Giuseppe Giacosa, poet Giosuè Carducci, Grazia Deledda, Paola Drigo, Gino Nibbi, Alfredo Panzini, Virginia Tango Piatti, Luigi Pirandello (Nobel Prize for Literature), the Verista writer Giovanni Verga, the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, Luigi Risso Tammeo, the literary critic Luigi Capuana and Edmondo De Amicis, author of the famous novel Cuore, a masterpiece of children's literature, [11] and journalists including Antonio Baldini.

Special holiday numbers featured writers such as Matilde Serao and Ada Negri, while painters such as Eduardo Dalbono, Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Gioele Ferraguti and Arnaldo Ferraguti provided magnificent illustrations. The latter (unrelated to Gioele) married the niece of the Fratelli brothers and was a leading exponent of the Verismo sociale (social realism), a movement Luigi Chirtani called the New School of Truth, its repertoire being bucolic and working-class scenes influenced by fellow artist on the magazine, Michetti. [12] Arnaldo held a passionate interest in the condition of the proletariat and hoped to affect the opinion of the readership–the northern cultural élite–of extreme conditions of life in the camps and of child labour. His aims were shared by the Treves, who sought a 'new iconography' of the newly unified peoples of Italy. Ferraguti's use of photography was scorned by colleagues like Gaetano Previati.

Romani notes the role in the magazine of letters from readers to the publisher, often printed with a reply and prompting further correspondence, in 'creating a dialogic exchange which, in appearances, included all the readers, not only the original sender and receiver.' [13]

Illustration

L'Illustrazione Italiana Masthead, 2 May 1880, engraving L'Illustrazione Italiana Masthead 2 May 1880.jpg
L'Illustrazione Italiana Masthead, 2 May 1880, engraving

As befits its name, L'Illustrazione Italiana made an important feature of its pictorial content. Prominent artists contributed, including Achille Beltrame, Giuseppe Cosenza, Pietro Scoppetta, Luigi Bompard, Dario Querci, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Aleardo Terzi, and Ettore Ximenes.

The magazine's printing of illustrations from wood and steel engravings were of a fine quality, such as to present 'a solid, respectable, mannered Italy, in a continuous homage to the national bourgeois mythology' [5] [4]

Piscitelli notes that the original masthead was resplendent with 'a series of elements that had been consolidated in the collective symbolic imaginary of the Italian Risorgimento,' a reunited Italy in which symbols of Rome and icons of Italy are intermingled; a stylised Michelangelo Delphic Sybil beside a relief of the Capitoline Wolf surmounted by a helmeted bust of 'Italy', against a landscape crowded with significant Italian monuments centred on the Campidoglio. [14] That was abandoned for a less elaborate, more compact and modern design after its first four years. [5]

Photography

Fine quality was maintained in the magazine's photographic illustrations following the appearance of its first photograph printed in ink (i.e. a photomechanical reproduction), in the issue of July 19, 1885; of a 16th-century sword preserved in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, the magazine's headquarters.

1st photomechanical illustration in L'Illustrazione Italiana (19 July 1885), of a XVI century sword hilt, Poldi Pezzoli Museum using the 'photo-electric' system of Count Vittrio Turati SPADA DEL SECOLO XVI, nel Museo Poldi Pezzoli (riproduzione foto-elettrica, dal voro, col sistema V. Turati).jpg
1st photomechanical illustration in L'Illustrazione Italiana (19 July 1885), of a XVI century sword hilt, Poldi Pezzoli Museum using the 'photo-electric' system of Count Vittrio Turati

The technology adopted at first was a version of photozincography, an early photolithography process developed (and patented later, in 1887) by Count Vittorio Turati (1860–1938). [15] [16] The printing is a demonstration of the intricate detail Turati was able to obtain, though the medium was less suited to rendering tonal variation and gradation so was used for a time in the magazine alongside hand-drawn lithography. By the end of the 1880s, halftone printing was being adopted in most countries.

Luca Comerio's photographs of demonstrators, barricades, and the military, in the Bava Beccaris massacre of May 1898 were also published in L'Illustrazione using the early photomechanical processes. [17] Adopting further improvements in ink reproductions of photographs, the magazine introduced rotogravure and coated paper, which guaranteed better image quality, which Cinelli proposes constructed a precise fascist identity and 'self-recognition' stimulating a very strong sense of belonging to the nation. [18]

The magazine commissioned some of the best national photojournalists; Armando Bruni, Carlo Bavagnoli, Mario Crimella, Mario Dondero, Pietro Marubi, Giulio Parisio and Emilio Sommariva; and internationals, like portraitists Eva Barrett and Ghitta Carell [19]

Advertising

L'Illustrazione Italiana ranked itself as having 'large circulation [that] renders it most valuable as a means for giving publicity to the larger as well as to the smaller Manufacturing Industries and for Works of Art, Books, &c.' [9] The ample advertising, some in 'full-page ads, some in color,' writes Ipsen, provides an index of Italy's nascent consumer culture. [20] Barron notes that the mouthwash Odol was endorsed in verse on its pages by opera singer Giacomo Puccini on 13 July 1902. [21] Arvidsson sees its mix of 'human interest with infotainment and stories on the wonders of science and industry,' and advertisements popularising new consumer goods by such companies as Borsalino, Cinzano and Campari by French-inspired artists like Adolfo Hohenstein, Leonetto Cappiello, Adolfo de Carolis or Leopoldo Metlicovitz, as presaging that of the 'magazine boom' half a century later. [22]

Decline

From 1909 the brothers Treves were co-directors, but Emilio Treves's death in 1916 marked the beginning of a gradual decline for the magazine under brother Guido from 8 February 1916 until 12 May 1932, [23] despite contributions by high-caliber writers Eugenio Montale, Elio Vittorini, Salvatore Quasimodo, Riccardo Bacchelli, Italo Pietra, Niccolò Giani, Sergio Solmi, and Marco Praga who served as theatre critic from 1919 until his death in 1929, [24] From 1926 Calogero Tumminelli, founder the publishing house Bestelli e Tumminelli in Milan in 1913 and who produced the magazines Dedalo, and Architettura e Arti Decorative, succeeded Giovanni Beltrami was co-director.

Under fascism

As an example of the magazine's shift to the political right, Lasansky identifies a 1934 article by Giovanni Franceschini which compared Mussolini's lavishing 320,000 lire on the restoration of the walls and two castles of Marostica, with the program of the della Scala family during the late 13th and early 14th centuries to expand and fortify small towns, including Marostica, to make them commercial-industrial centres for a transformed demographic. Subtitling his article 'the Fascist Protection of Works of Beauty', Franceschini claimed for Mussolini a populist response to Italians' love of their mediaeval heritage, appropriating it into the Fascist vision of Italic glory. [25]

Dino Alfieri, Minister of People's Culture from 1937, promulgated the fascist racial laws implemented in Italy in 1938 which stripped Jews of their civil rights and removed them from various industries. In September 1938, in preparation for legislation on the 'Jewish question' by the Grand Council of Fascism , Alfieri required every publisher to identify personnel di razza ebraica ('of the Jewish race'). Books by Jews were seized and by February 1939 nine hundred had been banned, and publishing houses were ordered to adopt 'Aryan' names, resulting in the suicide of one, Angelo Fortunato Formiggini.

In 1939 Treves had to sell the company to the Aryan Aldo Garzanti, [26] resulting in its embracing the right in political content. [27] Niccolò Giani, an Italian Fascist was amongst the war correspondents for the magazine, while photographer Ghitta Carell contributed pro-fascist imagery, despite her Jewish heritage. Towards mid-1942, due to events of the Second World War, L'Illustrazione's publication slowed.

Post-war demise

Livio Garzanti took the decision to issue the magazine only monthly from 1951. The fifties saw the dizzying growth of other popular weekly news magazines and television which encroached on the market-share of L'Illustrazione until Garzanti was forced to close it in December 1962.

Revivals

A brief revival attempt was made between 1972 and 1973. The publisher Guanda resumed the newspaper in October 1981 as a bimonthly magazine of graphics, current affairs and new trends. The attempt did not bring the desired financial returns and the magazine ceased again in 1996.

From 2011 publisher My Way Media produced monographic issues of L'Illustrazione Italiana as annotated facsimile editions on a bimonthly basis. As of February 2025, such issues were being published irregularly.

Directors

References

  1. ↑ Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita Cultura (2012). Accademie & Biblioteche D'italia 1-4/2011; Trimestrale Di Cultura Delle Biblioteche E Delle Istituzioni Culturali[Academies & Libraries of Italy 1-4/2011; Quarterly of Culture of Libraries and Cultural Institutions] (in Italian). Gangemi Editore. p. 10.
  2. ↑ "Varietà: L' Illustrazione - Rivista Italiana". Il Raffaelo Ufficiale Per Gli Atti Della Regia Accademia Raffaello. VI (3): 11. 30 June 1874.
  3. ↑ Saviano, Carmela (2022). "L'illustrazione Italiana: A Source For Museological Research". The European Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (3): 3–9. doi:10.29013/ejhss-22-3-3-9. ISSN   2414-2344.
  4. 1 2 Ajello, Nello (1976). "Il settimanale di attualità". In Castronono, Valerio; Tranfaglia, Nicola (eds.). La stampa italiana del neocapitalismo['The Weekly News' in 'The Italian press of neo-capitalism'] (in Italian). Roma: Editori Laterza. p. 180.
  5. 1 2 3 Piscitelli, Manuela (2023), Villa, Daniele; Zuccoli, Franca (eds.), "The Image of Touristic Italy in the Magazines of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century", Proceedings of the 3rd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Image and Imagination, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol. 631, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 809–818, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-25906-7_89, ISBN   978-3-031-25905-0 , retrieved 2025-02-06
  6. ↑ Mignemi, Adolfo (1984). "Immagine e consenso per un impero: Tipologie visive della stampa illustrata italiana (1934-1936)". In Mignemi, Adolfo (ed.). Immagine coordinata per un impero. Etiopia 1935-1936[Image and Consent for an Empire: Visual Typologies of the Italian Illustrated Press (1934-1936) in Corporate image for an empire. Ethiopia 1935-1936] (in Italian). Turin: Gruppo Editoriale Forma. p. 18.
  7. ↑ Bernardini, N. (1890). Guida alla stampa periodica italiana[Guide to the Italian periodical press] (in Italian). Salentina: Lecce. p. 638.
  8. ↑ Finaldi, Giuseppe (2009). Italian National Identity in the Scramble for Africa: Italy's African Wars in the Era of Nation-building, 1870-1900 (Paperback ed.). Bristol: Peter Lang. p. 88. ISBN   9783039118038.
  9. 1 2 The Publishers' circular and general record of British and foreign literature. London: Sampson Low. 7 December 1885. p. 1464.
  10. ↑ Nicosia, Roberto, ed. (2018). The Italian short story through the centuries : the met(a)morphoses of the novella. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 83. ISBN   978-1-5275-2118-6.
  11. ↑ Aleramo, Sibilla; Baldini, Antonio; Maria Clotilde (1997). Carteggio (1915-1955 (in Italian). Napoli Edizioni scientifiche italiane. pp. 4, 7, 8, 13, 31, 32, 36, 68, 111, 182. ISBN   978-88-8114-485-3.
  12. ↑ Amatangelo, Susan (2024). "Chapter 10. Viewing the South: The Role of Verismo and the Illustrative Arts in Shaping Post-Unification Italian Culture". In Cadel, Francesca; Nastri, Paola (eds.). Italy in the Second Half of the 19th Century: Bridging New Cultures. Vernon Art and Science Incorporated. pp. 207–8. ISBN   9781648898310.
  13. ↑ Gabriella, Romani (2013). Postal Culture. Writing and Reading Letters in Post- Unification Italy (Hardcover ed.). Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. pp. 15, 69, 209, 210, 241, 243, 244, 270, viii. ISBN   9781442647084.
  14. ↑ Ministero Per I Beni E Le Attivita Cultura (23 May 2012). Accademie & Biblioteche D'italia 1-4/2011;Trimestrale Di Cultura Delle Biblioteche E Delle Istituzioni Culturali[Academies and Libraries of Italy 1-4/2011; Quarterly of Culture of Libraries and Cultural Institutions] (in Italian) (eBook ed.). Gangemi Editore. pp. 10–11. ISBN   9788849273809.
  15. ↑ Tassoni, Maurizio. "I palchettisti della Scala 1778-1920—Palco di proscenio, I ordine, settore sinistro—Uno scambio tra Visconti". Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
  16. ↑ Mazzariol, Mariachiara (April 2002). "Ferdinando Ongania editore-libraio a Venezia (1842- 1911)" [Ferdinando Ongania publisher-bookseller in Venice](PDF). FOTOSTORICA: Gli Archivi della Fotografia (in Italian) (17118): 60–61.
  17. ↑ Hannavy, John, ed. (2013-12-16). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Routledge. p. 757. doi:10.4324/9780203941782. ISBN   978-0-203-94178-2.
  18. ↑ Binelli, Barbara; Fergonzi, Flavio; Messina, Messina; Negri, Antonello, eds. (2014). Arte moltiplicata. L'immagine del '900 italiano nello specchio dei rotocalchi, , 2014, p. 326[Multiplied Art: The Image of the Italian 20th Century in the Mirror of the Rotogravure Magazines] (in Italian). Milano: Bruno Mondadori. p. 326. ISBN   9788861598577.
  19. ↑ "Carlo Bavagnoli's and Mario Dondero's Photojournalism in the Neorealist Italy in the Post-second World War (1950-1959): An Uncensored Gaze". Journal of Literature and Art Studies. 5 (2). 2015-02-28. doi:10.17265/2159-5836/2015.02.006. hdl: 11584/81318 .
  20. ↑ Ipsen, Carl David (4 May 2016). Fumo: Italy's Love Affair with the Cigarette (e-book ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 28. ISBN   9780804799577.
  21. ↑ Barron, Emma (2018), "Puccini, Botticelli and Celebrity Endorsements: The Art of Magazine Advertising", Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 177–213, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_6, ISBN   978-3-319-90962-2 , retrieved 2025-02-06
  22. ↑ Arvidsson, Adam (2003). Marketing Modernity: Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity (1st ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor and Francis. p. 16. ISBN   9780415270441.
  23. ↑ Grillandi, Massimo (1977). Emilio Traves (in Italian). Torino: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese. pp. 308–319.
  24. ↑ Bondanella, Peter E.; Bondanella, Julia Conaway (1979). The Macmillan dictionary of Italian literature. Macmillan. p. 416. ISBN   978-0-333-26837-7.
  25. ↑ Lasansky, D. Medina (2004). The Renaissance perfected : architecture, spectacle, and tourism in Fascist Italy. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press. p. 224. ISBN   9780271023663.
  26. ↑ Bonsaver, Guido (2007). Censorship and literature in facist Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. p. 179. ISBN   978-0-8020-9301-1.
  27. ↑ Ben-Ghiat, Ruth (2001). Fascist modernities : Italy, 1922-1945. University of California Press. pp. 240n, 249n. ISBN   978-0-520-22363-9.
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