Figure 8 - available via license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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Illustrations in the Lidio Cipriani article, 'Razzismo', La Difesa della razza no. 1, 5 August 1938: 12-13.
Source publication
This study analyses the essential question of the role of visual and material culture in the construction of a mass racial ideology during the Fascist colonial empire. The hypothesis behind this essay is that representations of the facial features of colonised populations may be understood as agents that transform what are in fact inconsistent and...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... kind of amalgamation is also omnipresent within the journal. The articles that Cipriani published in it were often illustrated by anthropometric photographs (Figure 8) from his own archive (Iannuzzi, 2021). These images sit alongside other texts by anthropologists and intellectuals which themselves are presented alongside reproductions of paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in particular paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, and promote 'a selfidolatry of the Italian race, celebrating the permanence in time of its somatic and spiritual character'. ...
Similar publications
This essay will consider some key aspects of the imagery of the ventennio regarding the Italian overseas territories through the analysis of the covers of the illustrated magazine Libia , launched in 1937 in the context of the so-called ‘Fourth Shore’ of Italy, ruled between 1934 and 1940 by governor Italo Balbo. Firstly, this essay will address th...
Citations
... Today, however, researchers are rediscovering these overlooked collections, often linked to a colonial origin, seeking to uncover their creators and affiliated institutions, as well as to reassess their significance in contemporary society (e.g., Sysling 2015;Piccioni 2022;Isaac and Colebank 2022;Begerock et al. 2023;Howes and Tocha 2023;Mazzucchelli 2023;Nicolosi et al. 2024). These artifacts were used and exchanged among scholars as objects of study and displayed within major European museums and exhibitions: in this way, plaster casts contributed through their circulation, to convey the typification and classification of human beings into social hierarchies (Sysling 2015). ...
... These, along with other specimens from Somalia, Libya, and Eritrea, were displayed in the pavilion dedicated to Italian East Africa. Presented alongside portraits of Mussolini and other figures from Italian history, the display had the effect of highlighting perceived physical and moral differences between the conquered and the conquerors (Piccioni 2022 suggest that the following casts, housed in the Sergi Museum, were created on this occasion: 3 casts of Abissino Anseba, Ad tekles Tigrè, Ad Temariam, 4 casts of Etiope, 4 casts including 1 Etiope Betguik, 1 Etiope Bileno, 2 Etiope Bileno Taquè-Tigrè, 1 cast of Etiope Mensa, 1 cast of Habab Semimagalli (Fig. 3) and 1 cast of Semimagalli. ...
