Add to cart

A passionate excursion through the world of Italian stamps from the Unification of Italy to the end of the Second World War

A passionate excursion through the world of Italian stamps from the Unification of Italy to the end of the Second World War. A Bible for Italian stamp collectors.

The postage stamp, alongside its more practical and immediate function of indicating the payment of a fee for the delivery of a correspondence to its recipient, also gives precise information about political and cultural situations as well as being a figurative medium, despite its concise and concentrated format, for propaganda, widely distributed through the different layers of society.
Through the pages of this extensive essay, Federico Zeri covers the history of Italian postage stamps from the 1860s through to the foundation of the republic: the postage stamps that commemorated the heroes of the Risorgimento (the celebrated Mazzini series of 1922) those portraying the Italian monarchs (Vittorio Emanuele II); stamps issued to commemorate  occasions and political events (the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unity); civil events (the rebuilding of St. Marks campanile in Venice); propaganda from the fascist era devoted to the supremacy of the literature and civilisation of Latin culture and the great monuments of ancient Rome; the celebration of agriculture and the values of the land, and also the importance of science and scientific research, music, literature and sport.

Federico Zeri (1921-1998) is considered one of the greatest Italian art historians. A Visiting professor at Harvard University of Cambridge and the Columbia University of New York, he edited, among others, catalogues for the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore (1976) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York (1971, 1973, 1980, 1986); his contribution to the creation of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles was decisive. Among his numerous published works are Pittura e Controriforma (1957), Due dipinti, la filologia e un nome. Il maestro delle Tavole Barberini (1961), Diari di lavoro (1971, 1976), Dietro l’immagine (1987), Orto aperto (1990). In 2004 Skira issued the hitherto unpublished published L’Arco di Costantino. Divagazioni sull’antico, a series of conversations on the world’s civilisations and their forms of artistic expression.
As a renowned connoisseur and attentive, unconventional defender of the Italian cultural heritage and a historian dealing also with the actual material of artworks, Zeri was nominated vice-president of the National Council for the Cultural Heritage in 1993 and in 1997 he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux Arts.

The volume is available at the bookstore in via Torino 61, Milan and from August 30 2006 in all Italian bookshops.