World War One Photographs and Graphics in Italy

The collection offers caricatures by the political cartoonist Giuseppe Scalarini (1873-1948) with a pacifist and anti-militarist aim from the newspaper 'L’Avanti'. For example 'The portfolio of war and that of the pensions' shows a well-fed man with a fat wallet smiling while an elderly woman weeps as she looks at her own small purse. It highlights the greedy interests of financiers and industrialists who profited from the war. Caricatures depicting the Adriatic question 'Before the Adriatic - disputing the territories along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea' and Illustrations about impressions and memories of the Italian prisoners of war in Austria.

The collection also contains photographs of the monuments damaged during the war, photographs showing women involved in war production and subjected to backbreaking work under strict military discipline, photograsphs depicting the various phases of manufacture involved in the Italian war industry, photographs of the more ‘glorious’ memories of the war and of battlefields in Italy as well as abroad.

In addition there are posters, for example 'Soldiers of the Magre who fell for their country' which commemorates killed soldiers from Magrè, a small town in Schio, Vicenza. It is an example of publications produced all over Italy in ‘eternal memory’ of more than 650,000 war dead.

Provided by: Central National Library of Florence