The title of the new show at the Palazzo Strozzi is a little confusing. Most of the artists in Italy in the 1930s weren’t beyond fascism; they were in it up to their necks. They didn’t really need much persuading by Mussolini to come up with pictures like Luciano Ricchetti’s 1939 painting ‘Listening to a Speech by the Duce’: enraptured, bare-footed Italian peasants in headscarves sit dangling babies on their knees, hanging on Il Duce’s every word.
Today lots of Italians still don’t like to admit it, but much of Florence, and Italy, were really rather keen on Mussolini, and Hitler, too. A fascinating little exhibition of official watercolours at the city archives shows what extraordinary lengths Florence went to in order to welcome the Führer in May 1938. The city was draped in 4,000 fascist and swastika flags, as Hitler made his triumphal progress from Santa Maria Novella Station, via the Pitti Palace, Piazzale Michelangelo and Palazzo Vecchio: 25 million lire — a fifth of the city’s annual budget — was spent on decking out the place for his visit.
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