Margherita Sarfatti & Italian Cultural Nationalism

Abstract

From the early 1920s when Benito Mussolini first came to power through the end of the first decade of the fascist rule, Margherita Sarfatti played a dominant role in the formulation of a new variety of Italian cultural nationalism. A cultural advisor, art critic, socialist turned fascist, and Mussolini's lover, she both directly and indirectly shaped the cultural policies of the Italian regime. As Victoria de Grazia suggests, Sarfatti "wielded immense personal power through her capacity to bring together intellectuals, artists, and the political personnel of the regime." Over time, she "manipulated the regime's burgeoning patronage networks to promote the Novecento as a 'national school,'" helped to found the review Gerarchia, largely created the public image of the Mussolini in her authorized biography Dux (1925), and "reigned, doyenne of official intellectual life."1 In their biography of Sarfatti, Philip V. Cannistraro, and Brian R. Sullivan have argued that "Margherita had brought a degree of cultural respectability to a movement that otherwise appeared to be nothing more than a gang of violent, anti-intellectual thugs."2 Nancy Harrowitz has addressed Sarfatti's complicated identity as a Jewish woman (she later converted to Catholicism) involved in a largely masculinist and later anti-Jewish regime. Sarfatti, she writes, "was to a great degree the author of fascism itself and thus also the author of those conditions which produced such profound identity shifts within herself."3 Despite her importance to this period of cultural history, however, Sarfatti's writings remain unavailable in English translation: a situation that the present dossier sets out to remedy in the form of a brief but representative sampling of her early writings on art for Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. [End Page 889] Margherita Grassini Sarfatti was born in Venice in April 1880 to wealthy, unassimilated Jewish parents. Thanks to her private teachers Pietro Orsi, Pompeo Molmenti, and Antonio Fradeletto, whose careers combined investment in art with political engagement, her education included significant exposure to art and art criticism. Despite her parents' social position, she became a committed socialist early on, in 1898 marrying the socialist lawyer Cesare Sarfatti, the member of another prosperous Venetian family. The Sarfattis moved to Milan in 1902, and about this time Margherita began her career as an art critic. In 1903, she was awarded a prize for her articles on the Fifth Venice Biennale, published in Gazzetta degli Artisti (Venice) and La Patria (Rome). From 1903 to 1908, Margherita contributed art criticism to such periodicals as Avanti! (Milan), Avanti della Domenica (Florence then Rome), L'Adriatico (Ancona), Varietas (Milan), and the Gazzetta di Venezia, securing a regular post at the socialist daily Avanti! in 1908.4 These early years demonstrate the extent to which her thinking about art was from the beginning intertwined with her ideas about politics and social change. Sarfatti's influence in the art world was greatly aided by her political and amorous involvement with Benito Mussolini. Mussolini was a rising star in the socialist party, and in December 1912, he took over the editorship of Avanti! This was the period in which Sarfatti first cemented her ties to the avant-gardes, and such figures as Achille Funi, Leonardo Dudreville, Carlo Erba, and Antonio Sant'Elia became frequent guests of her salon.5 Although they still identified themselves with futurism, Sarfatti saw in them the beginnings of a calmer classicizing trend in the modern movement. In 1914, she reviewed their "New Tendencies" exhibition for Avanti!, celebrating the work of Funi and Dudreville in a review that marks a transition in her career from being a mere observer of the art world to that of advocate and promoter.6 As the political situation shifted—in Italy in general, and in the socialist party in particular—Sarfatti gained additional clout. In October 1914, Mussolini broke with the socialist party over the question of Italian neutrality in World War I: although the socialists opposed the war, he believed Italy should intervene. Sarfatti...