L’AVVENTURA DISEGNATA - Introduction and texts

Journeys, adventures and sensational tales

in children's book illustrations: 1900-1950

In early 2023, the Archiginnasio Library received from the Biblioteca Circolante dei Cappuccini (Capuchin Circulating Library) in Bologna a substantial donation of children's books published in the first half of the 20th century. Picking up those volumes gave rise to the desire to explore the documentary heritage of Archiginnasio and Casa Carducci Library to select texts that offered significant and interesting examples of illustrations from that period: a research journey that, after having made important steps in the publication of two online bibliographies - Cercare le figure and Un burattino in Archiginnasio - arrives at a further goal with this exhibition that, in addition to a selection of the materials in those bibliographical works, also includes new documents. Suffice it to mention the wonderful Il libro giocattoli illustrated by Edina Altara in 1945, a very recent acquisition of the Library, which you can see in the section dedicated to great adventure travels.

It is precisely the centrality of the adventurous dimension present in many books that has guided the selection of texts and the structuring of an exhibition itinerary that illustrates the theme from different perspectives. In some cases the focus is on an illustrator - Yambo, Lina Buffolente, Rino Albertarelli - or a fundamental character such as Pinocchio, in others a specific mode of adventure - the discovery of distant lands - or a particular form of illustration such as comics. Finally, some examples show how children's publishing had to come to terms with the fascist regime (and its end), because even the most imaginative adventure book has to come to terms with reality.

This exhibition offers a new dimension to the possibility of communicating to the public the journey of exploration undertaken among the illustrated children's books in our heritage.

The two bibliographies sailed through the virtual world of the Net, while today this journey touches the ground and takes on the consistency of the pages of these books, which have found a home on our shelves after spending decades in the hands of children. You can also read the messages with which the Capuchin Circulating Library invited readers to take care of the borrowed books. In spite of this, many of the volumes show physical signs of their adventure: the scribbles and the tears, the creases and the stains. Precisely these, which might appear to be defects, are instead evidence that the books have fulfilled their most important function: they have been read - used, one might say - to create a fantasy world in which young readers could fly on the wings of words and images.

This is why the exhibition opens with a splendid illustration by Gustave Doré, taken from Charles Perrault's Il libro delle fate, which exalts the fascination of reading aloud: a grandmother, a book and, all around, little faces surprised, frightened, enchanted.

The best viaticum to continue this adventurous and wonderful journey.

Buffolente e Albertarelli sulle tracce di Salgari / Buffolente and Albertarelli on the trail of Salgari

In the first half of the 20th century, a veritable industry of Salgari's adventure novels developed, managed by the writer's sons who supervised the republication of their father's texts, signed new works, created apocrypha, and retrieved unpublished works from the family drawers. But if Emilio Salgari was the tutelary deity of this vast literary and commercial operation, the images that enriched the volumes published by the Carroccio publishing house also became a well-recognisable trademark.

Rino Albertarelli's covers and Lina Buffolente's illustrations definitively sculpted Salgari's visual imagery, arousing in the reader that feeling of continuity and familiarity necessary for the success of genre literature. Each illustration tells a story, condensing into a single cartoon the storytelling through images that is a distinctive feature of comics, a medium in which both Albertarelli and Buffolente showed their greatness.

These publications affirmed the innovative and revolutionary aspect of the work of Lina Buffolente, who was not only one of the first female comic strip artists in Italy, but also gave a fundamental contribution to overcoming the stereotype according to which female illustrators could not work on adventurous themes, reserved for male pencils and nibs.

Yambo: Tutto di tutto! / Yambo: Everything about everything!

Yambo, born Enrico Novelli, is a special case within our journey, because he is the author of both the texts and drawings of the volumes on display here.

His best-known character was perhaps Ciuffettino: here we see him “enlisted” to defend Italy during the First World War, in which the author himself fought as a volunteer. Another young boy, Tonino, is even depicted cutting off the head of the Germanic Eagle on the cover of Gorizia fiammeggiante (Flaming Gorizia), the first volume of Il figlio del tricolore (The Son of the Tricolour), later banned by fascism so as not to offend the German allies.

The world narrated by Yambo is suspended between adventure and the comedy of characters whose names - Raolo Florimondo di Castelnegrotto, Capitan Fanfara - already betray the ironic side of their adventures, whether they take place on a sailing ship or aboard a new, futuristic means of transport: a car.

From the book Tutto di tutto. Novelle, fiabe, giuochi, comedie, scherzi, poesie, leggende, curiosità (Everything about everything. Tales, fables, games, comedies, jokes, poems, legends, curiosities) - which, as the title says, is a miscellany of facts and curiosities - the plates in which Yambo illustrates the story of the exploits of the Bolognese Count Francesco Zambeccari, a pioneer of balloon travel, are unforgettable.

Quando finisce una dittatura… / When a dictatorship ends...

LEFT

Even the publications for the young had to adapt first to the fascist dictatorship and then to its end.

«Ragazzi d’Italia» («Boys of Italy»), a magazine founded in 1923 in Bologna, was short-lived due to competition from magazines more in line with the regime's directives. «Il Piccolo Risparmiatore» («The Young Saver») on the other hand, published by the Federation of Savings Banks of Emilia, adopted the regime's symbols and slogans. For the Balilla Gruzzolino, in addition to the book and musket, a savings booklet became indispensable. 

Saettino purosangue meneghino (Saettino trueborn Milanese) by Guido Chelazzi, which also in the cover declared full adhesion to fascism, was removed from the catalogue of Salani publishing house after 1945 and replaced, in the series La Biblioteca dei miei ragazzi (The Library of my boys), by Sussi e Biribissi by Collodi Nipote.

CENTRE

Il circo Barletta (The Barletta Circus) by French author Myriam Catalany (pseudonym of Marie Barrère-Affre), published in its first edition in 1938, unlike Saettino purosangue meneghino survived the end of the fascist regime and was republished in the series La Biblioteca dei miei ragazzi in 1953. The cover by Maria Augusta Cavalieri was changed while the interior illustrations by Henry Morin remained. Even the translation was not changed except in a few places like the one shown here: the «musketeer balilla» of 1938 was replaced, in 1953, by a «courageous Scout patrol leader».

RIGHT

The changes made to Avanti ad ogni costo! (Forward at all costs!) by Alfredo Confidati in the 1947 edition, compared to the 1941 edition, were more substantial. In the first edition the young protagonist, after a dangerous adventure, was invited by Mussolini himself to join the Balillas. The final chapter Il premio del Duce (The Duce’s Reward) was almost entirely deleted in the post-war publication, including the last illustration in which the boy greeted the Duce with a «virile and frank Roman salute».

But throughout the text the fascist propaganda elements were removed: in the example given here, references to Italo Balbo and Mussolini himself disappeared.

Le avventure di un burattino / The Adventures of a Puppet

When in 1883 the publisher Paggi of Florence published the first volume edition of Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio) by Carlo Collodi, the puppet already had a rather complex editorial history behind him, since in the previous two years it had come out serialized without regularity in the «Giornale dei bambini» («Children’s Magazine»). Enrico Mazzanti's illustrations, the only ones that Collodi - who died in 1890 - was able to see, were undoubtedly one of the added values of the Paggi edition: finally Pinocchio and the other characters acquired a visual dimension that the readers couldn’t find on the pages of the magazine.

From that moment on, hundreds of illustrators would try their hand at the puppet's adventures, giving interpretations that were often very different from each other. If that of Attilio Mussino remained the best known and most widespread for a long time, the illustrations by Alessandro Cervellati and Libico Maraja are particularly fascinating.

The 1944 edition illustrated by Benito Albi Bachini - who had prepared the drawings in 1942 when he was just 15 years old - long forgotten, was rediscovered a few years ago by the Archivio Storico della Libreria editrice “La Tifernate” e della casa editrice “Il Solco” (Historical Archives of the “La Tifernate” publishing house and the “Il Solco” publishing house), which has reconstructed the story of this book in detail.

Pinocchio oltre Collodi / Pinocchio beyond Collodi

Pinocchio's success took off especially in the 1920s. Translations became more frequent - here we see an American one published in 1932 - and the puppet became a character with an independent life from his creator, Collodi: other writers in fact borrowed him and made him live new adventures in situations very different from those in which we are used to thinking of him. These are the famous “Pinocchiate”'. Even Omar Salgari, Emilio's son, signed one, Hanno rapito Pinocchio (They kidnapped Pinocchio), written, however, by another author, who remained unknown.

Pinocchio was even enlisted in the partisan fight. In 1944, the anti-Nazi work Confidenze di Hitler (Hitler's Confidences), written by Hermann Rauschning, was printed in Veneto anti-fascist circles. In order to facilitate its clandestine circulation in occupied northern Italy, the volume was hidden by an innocuous dust jacket, illustrated by Amleto Sartori, with the title Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio) and the author C. Collodi.

Surely the fact that Pinocchio was a very popular book made it easier for this forbidden publication to go unnoticed. Very few copies of that edition have survived. The one on display is an anastatic reprint published in 1974, on the 30th anniversary of its publication.

In giro per il mondo (e oltre) / Around the world (and beyond)

You can experience adventures just outside your front door, like Pinocchio, or take a journey to the other side of the globe. The images on these two showcases are enough to take you on a real round-the-world trip: the oceans and Russia by Attilio Mussino, Gastone Rossini's tribal Africa, Lina Buffolente who - thanks to the experience gained illustrating Salgari's novels - reconstructs with her own unmistakable trait distant worlds, from North America to the Antilles archipelago.

Il giro del mondo (Around the World) by Mino Doletti, illustrated by Alessandro Cervellati with a cover and a drawn preface by Sto, sums up all these journeys of the imagination in a single volume. This is why the child riding the world has become the guiding image of this exhibition.

But in some cases the Earth is not enough and you want the Moon. Il libro giocattoli (The toy book), which presents a wonderful lunar landscape and introduces us to the Selenite population, is one of the most recent acquisitions of the Archiginnasio Library. A surprising volume that in 1945 gave children wonderful pages illustrated by Edina Altara. Pages to cut out in order to build, following the enclosed instructions, splendid and amusing paper models.

Sometimes, to experience an adventure, two dimensions are not enough.

Sulle nuvole(tte) / In a balloon

In 2013, Antonio Faeti recounted his «sentimental education accomplished through, or perhaps because of, comics» in La storia dei miei fumetti (The History of my Comics). Umberto Eco had done the same thing in a 2004 novel, La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana (The mysterious Flame of Queen Loana). Like them, thousands of young Italians in the first half of the 20th century were educated by reading comics. Magazines like «L'Audace» («The Daring») and publishing houses such as Nerbini brought the heroes of American comics to Italy, sometimes Italianised in name. Tim and Spud for example, the protagonists of Lyman Young's strips - including the same Queen Loana mentioned by Eco - became Cino and Franco.

But there was no shortage of Italian comics. La setta verde (The Green Sect) - written by Alco d'Assan and drawn by Gino Pallotti - is one of the best known of the many comics published in the «Giornale delle avventure» («Adventures’ Magazine»), a supplement to the most important local newspaper, «Giornale dell’Emilia» («Emilia’s Magazine»). Fascism also used the comic medium in the «Giornale dei Balilla» («Balillas’ Magazine») to reach younger readers.

Disney characters also soon arrived from the United States. The Land of Long Ago (in Italian Topolino all’età della pietra), written by Merril De Maris and drawn by Floyd Gottfredson, is one of the best known stories of the Disney universe in the first half of the century.

And what could be better to end this journey than to learn how to draw Mickey Mouse?