FROM THE PUBLISHER

This ambitious collection treating the Italian Fascists￯﾿ﾽ appropriation of the past for political purposes focuses on the role of the visual in the aim of fusing the past and the modern world in Mussolini￯﾿ﾽs Italy. With contributions by art historians and classicists, literary and intellectual historians, Donatello among the Blackshirts demonstrates that the Fascist regime appropriated not only Italy￯﾿ﾽs ancient Roman past but also the medieval, Renaissance, and even baroque eras, as well as its own recent history, in constructing a new myth of the nation.

Every aspect of visual culture￯﾿ﾽfrom monumental architecture, sculpture, painting, and gardens to exhibitions, spectacles, films, medals, household items, and stamps￯﾿ﾽhelped to link the past with modernity. As a result, Italy￯﾿ﾽs artistic traditions became familiar to all social classes throughout the peninsula. While this richly illustrated book concerns Fascist Italy, at the same time it also shows how Italy￯﾿ﾽs premodern artistic traditions have been passed down to the present through the filter of the Fascist era.