Italia turrita

Tetradrachm of Smyrna (160 BC - 150 BC), depicting the profile face of the goddess Cybele, where the turrit crown is clearly evident

The origin of the turreted woman is linked to the figure of Cybele, a deity of fertility of Anatolian origin, in whose representations she wears a wall crown.[18] During the Second Punic War (218 BC - 202 BC), while Hannibal was raging in Italy, the Roman priests predicted that Rome would be saved only if the image of Cybele, that is of the goddess of Mount Ida, had arrived in the surroundings of Troy.[19] The image, a black stone preserved in Pessinus, was transported to Rome and placed inside the Temple of Victory.[20] The Roman army then defeated Hannibal and the city was saved.

Since then Cybele became one of the deities of Rome, the Magna Mater ("Great Mother"), although his cult was opposed because it contained orgiastic rites.[20] The importance of Cybele in the Roman religion became very strong when Virgil wrote the Aeneid (31 BC - 19 BC), telling how the journey of Aeneas was also protected by the goddess, who provided the wood of the trees and saved the ships from the fire of Turnus.[21]

Also thanks to the events of the Social War (91 BC - 88 BC), which saw opposing Rome and the Italic municipia, the figure of Cybele then began to represent the idea of a peaceful and united Italy under Roman rule, as Aeneas had pacified the Latin peoples, as well as the sacred space of the pomerium, now extended to the whole peninsula.[22] It was during the Social War that the allegorical personification of Italy manifested itself for the first time: it appeared on a coin minted by Corfinium, an Italic city antagonistic to Rome, although not yet provided with the turreted crown.[9]

Denarius of 89 BC coined by the Marsi. On the left, the representation of "Italy" with the laurel wreath

Later, during the Roman Empire, the women of the imperial family began to dress, in official depictions, as Cybele, that is, with a turreted crown.[22] This image merged with the previous allegorical personification of the Peninsula, that of Corfinium, increasingly becoming the symbol of Italy, especially in the Anatolian and Eastern Greek provinces. The representation of Italia turrita was proposed under the emperor Trajan, who wanted it to be sculpted on the Trajan's Arch erected in Benevento in 114–117, and also on one of the two Pluteos called anaglypha, four years later.

Afterwards, from 130 AD on, under the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Septimius Severus and Caracalla, Roman coins reproduced the allegorical representation of Italy as a dressed and towered woman who sometimes carries a cornucopia. During the reign of Antoninus Pius a sestertius was coined representing Italy as a turreted woman, sitting on a globe and holding a cornucopia in one hand while in the other the command stick.[10]

The towered crown is the symbol of Civitas romana, therefore the allegory shows the sovereignty of the Italian peninsula as a land of free cities and of Roman citizens to whom a proper right has been granted: the Ius Italicum. This will then become the classic image of the allegorical personification of Italy.[10]

The Italia turrita by Cesare Ripa. We can see, above the allegorical personification, the Stella d'Italia ("Star of Italy"), which symbolizes the shining destiny of Italy

In the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula lost its political and administrative unity, shattering into multiple autonomous state.[23] In the early Middle Ages period, the personification of Italy in a turreted woman almost completely disappeared from the collective imagination, limiting itself to appear rarely but without having those distinctive features, such as the walls or the cornucopia, which had so characterized it in Roman times.[23]

Italia turrita was rediscovered at the beginning of the 14th century, shortly after the Medieval commune, when the first signoria began to be born.[23] From the Middle Ages the allegorical depiction of Italy began to transmit torture and despair:[11] the country, in fact, was no longer the absolute protagonist of those important political and military events that they had characterized ancient Roman history so much, but it was relegated to a simple province of the Holy Roman Empire.[24]

Italia turrita sitting on a globe statue in the Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli, Milan

Allegorical personification of Italy on a 1 lira silver coin from 1909

Poster of the First World War in which the Italia turrita invites to keep quiet so as not to divulge secrets to the enemy ("Shut up! Your silence also hastens Victory")

The representation continued to be nostalgic of past glories even during the Renaissance and Humanism, as well as during the descents of foreign armies in the Italian Wars of the 16th century.[25] In 1490, Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, had an Italia turrita painted on a medallion of the castle in Piazza Ducale, Vigevano. The Caesaris Astrum appeared again in 1574 on the cover of Historiarium de Regno Italiae, a book written by the historian Carlo Sigonio.

The first to resume a figure of Italia turrita more similar to that of the ancient age was Cesare Ripa in the 17th century, who describes it, in his Iconologia, as in the sestertius of Antoninus Pius, also combining them with a star that shines above his head: the reason for this association lies in the fact that in ancient Greece Italy was joined by the Star of Venus, being the Italian peninsula located west of Greece.[26] The Star of Venus is in fact visible on the horizon, immediately after sunset, in the west. Cesare Ripa definitively specified the characteristics of the Italia turrita, characteristics that have come down to us:[11]

[...] A beautiful woman dressed in a sumptuous dress, and rich with a mantle on top, and sitting on a globe, has crowned the head of towers, and walls, with the right hand she holds a scepter, or an auction, which with the one, and with the other, is shown in the aforementioned Medals, and with the left hand a cornucopia full of different fruits, and beyond that we will do again, having a beautiful star above the head [...][lower-alpha 1]

— Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, 1603

In response to the criticisms made by European travelers on the Grand Tour that focused on Italian culture - judged to be retrograde - and on the poverty of the Italians in the face of the country's monumental and artistic wealth, Italian intellectuals of the 18th century they reacted by becoming bearers of a change that led to the birth of less asphyxial movements and richer in cultural ferment.[28] These events also had repercussions on the representation of towered Italy, which became the "protector of the arts".[29]

Italia turrita recovered the solemn aura in the 19th century, becoming one of the symbols of the Italian unification, during which it was often represented as a prisoner, that is, subjected to the foreign powers that dominated the country at the time, or extolling the call to arms with the aim to encourage the Italian people to actively participate in the process of unification of the country; the iconography of the allegorical personification of Italy, during the Italian unification period, was also used in propaganda vignettes for political purposes.[30][31]

It is from this period that most of the marble statues representing Italia turrita were built; the erection of monuments to the allegorical personification of the country continued even after the three wars of independence.[31]

When unity of Italy was completed, the iconography of the Italia turrita was overcome by the myth of the history of ancient Rome; it is not in fact a case that in the group of statues present at the Altare della Patria in Rome the allegorical personification of Italy surrounded by a mural crown with towers is absent.[32]

This tendency to relegate Italia turrita to a supporting role, which began in 1870 with the capture of Rome,[33] was also confirmed during fascism, which made the call of Roman history one of the cornerstones of the regime.[34]

In these decades the allegorical representation of Italy was not particularly widespread in the official architecture, with the placement of statues inside the most important buildings,[34] but was limited to the marble monuments realized in various Italian cities, to the philatelic emission and to propaganda, especially those related to the initial neutrality and the subsequent participation of Italy in the First World War.

The iconography of the allegorical personification of Italy was resumed in the second post-war period: in 1946 the supporters of the republic chose the effigy of the Italia turrita as their unitary symbol to be used in the electoral campaign and on the referendum card on the institutional form of the State, in contrast to the Savoy coat of arms, which represented the monarchy.[35][36]

After the proclamation of the Republic, which saw Italia turrita as the protagonist, the iconography of the allegorical representation of the country returned to sporadic appearances; appeared on stamps (including the series called "Siracusana"), coins, stamp duty and cartoons.[37]