The Royal Shop Window in the Nation’s Market Place: Selling the Savoia Narrative

Marchi, Maria Christina

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-84585-8_2

Maria Christina Marchi⁶

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy ((PSMM))

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Abstract

Built around the metaphor of a shop window, this chapter analyses the role of Umberto I and Margherita, as well as Vittorio Emanuele III and Elena, as centres of soft power on the public stage. It follows the construction of their public image, and the shift of the function of the heirs to the throne to help build a visible sense of Italianità, through reproductions of photographic images, the sale of objects and various paraphernalia, as well as through royal visits and events. It delves into the competing narratives of the time—including the Church and Garibaldi—showing the various identities available within the newly created state, and the desire for the monarchy to be seen as an example of Italian-ness, seeking to nationalise the still fragmented peninsula.

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Notes

1.
L’Opinione, 25/04/1868, N.115, 1.
2.
Bruno Tobia, Una patria per gli italiani: spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell’Italia unita (1870–1900) (Rome, 1991), iv.
3.
Nye, Soft Power, 6–11.
4.
Ibid., xiii; Joseph Nye, ‘Get Smart’, Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2009.
5.
Statuto Albertino, Art. 5: “Al Re solo appartiene il potere esecutivo. Egli è il Capo Supremo dello Stato: comanda tutte le forze di terra e di mare: dichiara la guerra: fa i trattati di pace, d’alleanza, di commercio ed altri, dandone notizia alle Camere tosto che l’interesse e la sicurezza dello Stato il permettano, ed unendovi le comunicazioni opportune. I trattati che importassero un onere alle finanze, o variazione di territorio dello Stato, non avranno effetto se non dopo ottenuto l’assenso delle Camere.”
6.
For more on Crispi’s role in defining the monarchy’s agenda see Christopher Duggan, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901: From Nation to Nationalism (Oxford, 2002); Christopher Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, “political Education” and the Problem of Italian National Consciousness, 1860–1896’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 2, no. 2 (1997): 141–66; Francesco Crispi, L’unità nazionale con la monarchia. Discorsi (Rome, 1884); Crispi, Repubblica e monarchia.
7.
Crispi, Repubblica e monarchia, 80.
8.
Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual’, 101–165. Cannadine argues that the ruling élite consolidated their ideological dominance by exploiting royal pageantry as propaganda, instilling ideas of historical continuity and exchanging power in the monarchy’s case for popularity. A similar phenomenon can be seen, to a lesser degree, in the Italian case.
9.
Ogle, The Global Transformation of Time, 20–46.
10.
Nicholas Doumanis, Italy (London, 2001), 10.
11.
Examples across Europe. For Austria see: Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism; Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, eds., The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (New York, 2007); For Germany: Tesoro, Monarchia, tradizione, identità nazionale, Paulmann, Pomp und Politik; For Great Britain: Prochaska, Royal Bounty; Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual.’
12.
Gentile, The sacralization of politics, 10. Also see Matthew Feldman, Fascism: Fascism and Culture (London, 2004), 43; Kertzer, Ritual, Politics and Power, 2. This was also necessary to help the monarchy compete with the power and influence of the Church.
13.
John Agnew, Place and Politics in Modern Italy, (Chicago, 2002), 55.
14.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, (Oxford, 1991), 26.
15.
Siegfried Weichlein, Nation und Region: Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (Düsseldorf, 2004), 342.
16.
Philippe Lauvaux, ‘Monarchies, royautés et démocraties couronées’, Le Débat, 72 Jan-Fev, 103–120, 119; Brice, Monarchie et Identité Nationale En Italie, 50.
17.
Emilio Gentile, La Grande Italia: Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo (Rome-Bari, 1997), 21.
18.
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Principii di diritto amministrativo (Florence, 1891).
19.
Prochaska, Royal Bounty, 169–212; John Plunkett, Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch (Oxford, 2003), 13–67.
20.
Hubertus Büschel, Untertanenliebe. Der Kult um deutsche Monarchen 1770–1830, (Göttingen, 2006), 50.
21.
Reinhart Koselleck, ‘War Memorials: Identity Formations of the Survivors,’ in Reinhart Koselleck and Todd Samuel Presner, eds., The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, 2007), 285–326; Ilaria Porciani, ‘Stato, statues, simboli: i monumenti nazionali a Garibaldi e a Minghetti del 1895,’ Storia, amministrazione, costituzione, Annale ISAP 1 (1993), 211–242; Brice, Le Vittoriano, 9–42.
22.
Riall, Garibaldi, 223–224; Denis Mack Smith, ‘Italy’, in J. P. T. Bury, The New Cambridge Modern History: The Zenith of European Power, 1830–70, vol. X, (Cambridge, 1971), 552–576, 574.
23.
Körner, Politics, 9. Körner has argued that the division pervading Italy were not limited to regional disparities, but rather more specifically local ones, tied to individual cities, that is, campanilismo .
24.
Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 9.
25.
Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990), 13.
26.
Martin Papenheim, ‘Roma o morte: Culture Wars in Italy,’ in Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds., Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2003), 202–226; Manuel Borutta, ‘Anti-Catholicism and the Culture War in Risorgimento Italy’, in Patriarca and Riall, eds., The Risorgimento Revisited, 191–213.
27.
Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven, 2007), 389.
28.
Francesco Crispi, Pensieri e profezie raccolti da T. Palamenghi Crispi, (Rome, 1920), 96–98; Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, the problem of the monarchy, and the origins of Italian nationalism,’ 341.
29.
Duggan, Francesco Crispi, 433–4.
30.
Domenico Farini, Diario di fine secolo, I (Rome, 1961), 247, 07/04/1893; Denis Mack Smith, Italy and Its Monarchy, (New Haven, 1989), 139.
31.
‘Introduction’ in Berenson and Giloi, eds., Constructing Charisma, 1–20, 2.
32.
Alexis Schwarzenbach, Königliche Träume: eine Kulturgeschichte der Monarchie 1789–1997 (Munich, 2012), 61–66.
33.
Kirsch, ‘Die Funktionalisierung des Monarchen,’ 89; 97.
34.
Kristina Widestedt. ‘A Visible Presence: Royal Events, Media Images and Popular Spectatorship in Oscarian Sweden,’ in Müller and Mehrkens, eds., Royal Heirs, 45–62; Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual,’ 101–164; Martin Kolrausch, ‘The Workings of Royal Celebrity: Wilhelm II as Media Emperor,’ in Berenson and Giloi, eds., Constructing Charisma, 52–68; Brice, Monarchie et Identité Nationale, 44–53.
35.
Nye, Soft Power, 6–11.
36.
Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford, 1995), 62.
37.
John A. Davis, ed., Italy in the Nineteenth Century: 1796–1900, (Oxford, 2000), 168; Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, “political Education” and the Problem of Italian National Consciousness’, 145.
38.
Introduction to the Statuto Albertino , 1.
39.
Angelo Camillo De Meis, Il sovrano, saggio di filosofia politica con riferenza all’Italia (Bari, [1868] 1927), 9.
40.
Giloi, Monarchy, 7; Richards, The Commodity Culture, 5.
41.
This triumvirate of values was first identified by historian Alberto Mario Banti and they constitute the basis for ideas of Italian-ness. This is naturally a simplified list of values, however it is useful in identifying the core attributes of the time. See La Nazione Del Risorgimento: Parentela, Santità E Onore Alle Origini dell’Italia Unita, (Turin, 2006), passim.
42.
Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London, 1867), 62.
43.
Plunkett, Queen Victoria, 133; 163.
44.
Tullio De Mauro, Storia Linguistica dell’Italia Unita, (Rome-Bari, 1995), 36; Brian Richardson, ‘Questions of Language,’ in Zygmunt G. Baranski and Rebecca J. West, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, (Cambridge, 2001), 63–80, 64.
45.
Riall, Garibaldi, 135–139; Maurizio Isabella, ‘Freedom of the press, public opinion and liberalism in the Risorgimento,’ Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol. 17, N.5, 551–567; Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour, Il Risorgimento (1848).
46.
Alessandro Guiccioli, Diario di un conservatore, (Milan, 1973), 173, 03/12/1892.
47.
Riall, Garibaldi, 128–139.
48.
Paolo Colombo, ‘Una Corona per una Nazione,’ in Tesoro, ed., Monarchia, 24.
49.
Ridolfi, Le Feste Nazionali, 31.
50.
L’Opinione, 7/02/1868, 1.
51.
Körner, Politics, 198.
52.
Irredentismo was a political and cultural movement that was born in the late 1860s. It favoured the extension of the Italian national borders to include regions that were perceived as culturally Italian, such as the Trentino.
53.
Giovanni Prati, Canto di Giovanni Prati, (Prato, 1868), 1.
54.
Cav. Cesare Bonifanti, Epigrafi per le faustissime nozze di S. A. R. il Principe Ereditario con S. A. R. la Principessa Margherita di Savoja, (Pontedera, 1868), iii–v. Ausonia is an ancient Greek term which defines southern Italy; however, poetically it is often applied to the entire country.
55.
L’Opinione, 23/04/1868, 1.
56.
Carlo Casalegno, La Regina Margherita, (Bologna, 2001), 46; Ugoberto Alfassio Grimaldi, Ugoberto, Il re “buono,” (Milan, 1970), 56; Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York, 1983), 201.
57.
L’Opinione, 24/11/1868, 1.
58.
ASCF, CF 4975, Inserto 3.
59.
Onorato Roux, La prima regina d’Italia, nella vita privata, nella vita del paese, nelle lettere e nelle arti (Milan, 1901), 394–395. Parallels between Margherita’s behaviour can be drawn with Empress Elisabeth of Austria, which will be discussed in Chap. 4.
60.
C. De Sterlich, Cronica giornaliera delle Provincie Napoletane dal 1 ̊marzo al 31 dicembre 1869. (Napoli, 1869), 148.
61.
Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, the problem of the monarchy, and the origins of Italian nationalism,’ 343.
62.
ASCF, CF 4975, Inserto 35.
63.
Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, 67.
64.
Körner, Politics, 197.
65.
NA, FO 45/130, 18/01/1868.
66.
John A. Davis, ‘L’Anti-Risorgimento,’ in Mario Isnenghi and Eva Cecchinato, eds., Gli Italiani in Guerra: Conflitti, identità, memorie dal Risorgimento ai giorni nostri, Vol 1, (Turin, 2008), 753–766; 756.
67.
Giacinto De’ Sivo, I Napoletani al cospetto delle nazioni civili (Livorno, 1861), 44; 65.
68.
Domenico Zanichelli, Monarchia e Papato in Italia, (Bologna, 1889), 221.
69.
Brice, Monarchie Et Identité Nationale En Italie, 47.
70.
L’Opinione, 24/11/1868, 1.
71.
MRM, Archivio Bertarelli, Busta G. Capitelli.
72.
Il Pungolo, Anno X, 28/11/1869, 2.
73.
Ibid., 27/11/1869, 1.
74.
Il Pungolo, Anno X, 8/09/1869, 1.
75.
Ibid., 27/11/1869, 1.
76.
Porciani, La Festa Della Nazione, 161–162.
77.
ASC, Archivio generale, Titolo 15, Busta 1, Fascicolo 48, A/2.1.
78.
Luigi Morandi, Come fu educato Vittorio Emaniele III ricordi (Turin, 1901), 72.
79.
Catherine Brice, ‘Queen Margherita (1851–1926). “The Only Man in the House of Savoy”’, in Regina Schulte, The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500–2000 (New York, 2006), 195–215; 210.
80.
Karl Ferdinand Werner, ‘Fürst und Hof im 19. Jahrhundert: Abgesang oder Spätblüte?’, in Karl Ferdinand Werner, ed., Hof, Kultur und Politik im 19. Jahrhundert, (Bonn, 1985), 11; Büschel, Untertanenliebe; Büschel is very sceptical about the notion of the public ‘cult’ of monarchy and whether love for the crown can be proved.
81.
James Retallack, ‘The Authoritarian State and the Political Mass Market’, in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds., Imperial Germany Revisited Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (New York, 2011), 83–96; 88.
82.
Plunkett, Queen Victoria, 163.
83.
Heinz K. Henisch and Bridget Ann Henisch, The Photographic Experience, 1839–1914: Images and Attitudes (Pennsylvania, 1994), 244–265; 338–363; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, 2006), 17–28; P. di Bello, ‘The female collector: women’s photographic albums in the nineteenth century’, Living Pictures, 1/2 (2001), 3–20.
84.
Plunkett, Queen Victoria, see chart on 157.
85.
Giloi, Monarchy, 134.
86.
See R. J. B. Bosworth, Italian Venice: A History (Yale University Press, 2014), 1–51; Paul Ginsborg, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49 (CUP Archive, 1979), 364–379. ‘The Prince of Naples was dressed in a sailor dress’ according to Mary Alsop King Waddington, when she met him for the first time in Rome. In Italian Letters of a Diplomat’s Wife, (New York, 1905), 86.
87.
Banti, La Nazione Del Risorgimento, 66–72.
88.
Gentile, Politics as Religion, 141; Gentile and Mallett, ‘The Sacralisation of Politics,’ 18–55.
89.
Porciani, La Festa Della Nazione, 153.
90.
Ridolfi, Le Feste Nazionali, 12.
91.
Isnenghi, I luoghi della memoria, 12.
92.
Green, Fatherlands, 189–222.
93.
Giloi, Monarchy, 243.
94.
Schama, ‘The Domestication of Majesty,’ 158.
95.
Ibid., 158.
96.
Homans, Royal Representations, 6. The Queen brought her children and the Prince Consort to the opening of the Great Exhibition, highlighting royal allegiance to middle-class values of family.
97.
Richards, The Commodity Culture, 5.
98.
ACS, Real Casa, Casa di SAR il Principe di Napoli, Busta 1, Fasc. 2017; Busta 4, Fasc. 24; Bust 15, Fasc. 1; Busta 17, Fasc. 1—these are only a few of the instances in which the prince’s photograph is sent to regiments, schools and private individuals.
99.
Zachary Nowak, ‘Folklore, Fakelore, History: Invented Tradition and the Origins of the Pizza Margherita,’ Food, Culture and Society, Vol.17, Issue 11, March 2014, 103–124; Letizia Argenteri, Il re borghese: costume e società nell’Italia di Vittorio Emanuele III (Milan, 1994), 66–67.
100.
Lipparini, Lettere, 64, 5/06/1883.
101.
Bernhard von Bülow, Memorie, (Milan, 1931), 662.
102.
Carlo M Fiorentino, La corte dei Savoia, 1849–1900 (Bologna, 2008), 123; Ruggero Moscati, ‘Da Vittorio Emanuele II a Umberto I’, in Stato e Società dal 1876 al 1882, Atti del XLIX Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, Viterbo, 30/09–05/10/1978, (Rome 1980), 128–129.
103.
Christopher Duggan, ‘Francesco Crispi, the problem of the monarchy and the origins of Italian nationalism,’ 340.
104.
Raffaello Ricci, ed., Memorie della baronessa Olimpia Savio (Milan, 1911); Il salotto della contessa Maffei e la società milanese: (1834–1886), Raffaello Barbiera, ed., Con scritti e ricordi inediti di Balzac, Manzoni, Verdi, ecc., (Milan, 1895); Edmondo De Amicis, Un salotto fiorentino del secolo scorso (Florence, 1902); Fiorentino, La corte dei Savoia, 1849–1900, 123–154.
105.
Francesco Cognasso, ed., Le lettere di Vittorio Emanuele II, (Turin, 1966), Vittorio Emanuele a Menabrea 17/05/1868, 1319.
106.
Romano Bracalini, La Regina Margherita, (Milan, 1983), 113. This rejection of Parisian-dictated fashion was started in the mid-1800s, in a move on behalf of the women of the Risorgimento, to take control of their Italian identity. See Gabriella Romani, ‘Fashioning the Italian nation: Risorgimento and its costume all’italiana,’ Journal of Modern Italian Staudies, (2015), Vol. 20, 1, s10–23.
107.
Patriarca, Italianità, 22.
108.
Eugenia Paulicelli, Fashion under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt (Oxford, 2004), 121–127.
109.
Silvia Franchini, Editori, lettrici e stampa di moda: giornali di moda e di famiglia a Milano dal Corriere delle dame agli editori dell’Italia Unita, (Milan, 2002), 39.
110.
Guiccioli, Diario, 25/07/1877, 23; Margherita di Savoia, Lettere (1862–1924), ed. Aldo di Ricaldone, (Rome, 1989), 52.
111.
Bracalini, La Regina Margherita, 11.
112.
Giloi, Monarchy, 15.
113.
Homans, Royal Representations, xxi.
114.
Weichlein, Nation und Region, 342.
115.
Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, 67.
116.
Paolo Colombo, Le Esposizioni Universali: I mestieri d’arte sulla scena del mondo (1851–2010), (Venice, 2012), 69–96; This will be discussed in more depth in Chap. 5.
117.
Esposizione italiana tenuta in Firenze nel 1861 Relazione generale (Florence, 1867), 6–7.
118.
Yorick, Vedi Napoli e poi: ricordo dell’Esposizione nazionale di belle arti (Naples, 1883), 25, A/2.2.
119.
This will be further discussed in Chap. 3.
120.
L’Opinione, 24/04/1868, 1.
121.
ADN, Luigi Re, 34
122.
ASCF, CF 4976, ‘Festeggiamento Nazionale da celebrarsi in Firenze dal 1 al 4 Maggio 1868 ad onoranza delle auguste nozze di S. A. R. il principe ereditario d’Italia Umberto Ranieri di Piemonte con S. A. R. la principessa Margherita di Savoia.’
123.
Francesco Crispi, Discorsi Parlamentari di Francesco Crispi, Vol.1, (Roma, 1915), 716–717 (8 May 1866), A/2.3.
124.
ASCF, CF 4975.
125.
ACS, Ministero della Real Casa, Gabinetto di S. M., 1869, Fasc. 58, 461–540.
126.
Schwarzenbach, Königliche Träume; Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs: Emotions for the People’, Contemporary European History 13, no. 3 (2004): 255–280.
127.
Giloi, ‘Copyrighting the Kaiser,’ 440; Büschel, Untertanenliebe, passim.
128.
Massimo Baioni, La religione della patria: musei e istituti del culto risorgimentale : 1884–1918 (Quinto di Treviso, 1994), 39–70.
129.
Riall, Garibaldi, 203.
130.
Ugo Pesci, I primi anni di Roma capitale. 1870–1878. (Rome, 1971), 60.
131.
Paolo Paulucci, Alla corte di Re Umberto: diario segreto. (Milano: Rusconi, 1986), 148, 24/09/1895.

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Marchi, M.C. (2022). The Royal Shop Window in the Nation’s Market Place: Selling the Savoia Narrative. In: The Heirs to the Savoia Throne and the Construction of ‘Italianità’, 1860-1900. Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84585-8_2

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