Ambassadors of Italy: Italian Transatlantic Ocean Liners to the United States, 1946–1958

This article explores the transmission of national identity through the "things" that a nation is capable of producing and the environments that it is capable of creating; the article does this through a specific case study—post–World War II Italy—and a specific vector—large passenger ships. "Things," as Remo Bodei (2015, 42) has stated, are an extension of the human body, able to interact with women and men and to help them understand the meaning in which they dwell and live, suggesting to them "il modo per farle parlare" (the way to make them speak).1In this article, I examine, in particular, the things that are created as part of a unitary project of objects, furnishings, works of art, materials, new technologies, and references to history in the carefully designed rooms of the large vessels that maintained relations, almost exclusively until 1958, between the two sides of the Atlantic: ocean liners. The rooms of these ships collected a multiplicity of elements in livable spaces through a synthesis of different scales of project, skills, and contributions, which ultimately welcomed, even temporarily, a potential user, helping them establish a sense of space. These rooms allow us to look at architecture in its complexity and materiality and, as the Italian scholar Gianni Ottolini (1996, 4) said in his studies on the meaning of architecture, "in un'ottica semiologica che pone congiuntamente lo spazio e le pietre come veicolo corporeo e significante dell'architettura" (from a semiological perspective in which space and stone are jointly seen as the corporeal and signifying vehicle of architecture) and to observe how the design of the elements that equip and envelop architecture makes these spaces bearers of a universal meaning, uniquely interpreted by different peoples and cultures.2After World War II and through strenuous diplomatic efforts, Italy was accepted back into the community of democratic nations with relative ease, compared to other Axis nations. The Allies gave back to Italy its civil fleet, requisitioned during the last years of the conflict, allowing significant works of refurbishment, modernization, and new construction to begin. While the debate around the symbolic meaning of the liners had begun already in the 1930s, it was after the war that architects, engineers, designers, artists, and artisans adopted greater responsibility in their design of the vessels, acting as "ambassadors" of the renewed democratic culture of the nation.This article develops by examining a case study and its evolution during the period immediately following the war. In doing so, it tries to highlight that these ocean liners were realized by a harmonious chorus of different voices, of technicians, artists, and designers, who employed different means of expression. It retraces a variety of uses and gazes, emphasizing a complexity of objectives (of promoting the nation of Italy and shedding the Fascist shadow) and views and establishing the liners' role as messengers.My analysis is concerned with how things and spaces are made. It does not consider a thing to be an "indeterminate obstacle that I face and that I have to knock down or circumvent"; rather, as Bodei (2015, 20) emphasizes, things and spaces exist as "nodes of relationships" in which human beings are involved without needing or desiring "to have . . . exclusive control." Things are a substantial part of the image that Italy projects toward the outside world.3 Observing their form reveals the meaning they carry and enables an understanding of their role as vectors, as means of transport of an identity,4 thereby highlighting other possibilities for interpretation of an already well-known history, such as that of Italian American relations. As in mathematics, the vectors of transatlantic exchange are characterized not only by an intensity, which is solely a numerical value, but also by an orientation, characterized by both a direction and a magnitude,5 which oscillates between both sides of the Atlantic, affecting both American and Italian culture.6The things we are discussing were of different natures, from inhabitable spaces to small objects, books, and movies, or even foods, which rendered them transportable or not from Italy to the Americas. They were received through media that transformed them from what they were in Italy into what they would become on US soil7—directly experienced, used, or even inhabited.8 In their transatlantic movement, moreover, they addressed different audiences, distinguished by culture, way of life, and education, to whom "la stessa cosa si manifesta in modi diversi a seconda della sua diversa posizione nello spazio" (Husserl 2008, 9–10; the same thing manifests itself in different ways according to the different position in space). There were the Italians who designed and built things to proclaim a genuinely experienced Italy and who were driven by the desire to propel the nation toward a better future; there were also Italians who had emigrated and who received and relished these things through the eyes of those remembering with nostalgia their motherland as it was when they left and who had no experience of its present; and lastly, there were North Americans who looked at Italy and Italians and saw them as they would have liked them to be.The case study for this article is the ocean liners of the Italian Line9 in the decade following World War II, ships at the cusp of the reconstruction efforts of a new, democratic Italy after the dark years of Fascism and serving as symbols of the country's technical and artistic capabilities. The liners were fascinating and complex worlds, as Edmondo De Amicis (1890, 23) wrote in a well-known account of his crossing from Genoa to Montevideo in his novel on emigration, in which he described a liner as both "un'isola che mi porta e che mi serve" (an island that carries me and serves me) and "un frammento palpitante della mia patria" (a pulsating fragment of my homeland). Because of the liners' physical and perceived complexities, they become subjects of in-depth studies, noted for both their great successes and dramatic failures;10 they served as a cross-section of the society in which they were developed, through the outer forms they assumed and their technical and constructive features. Archival documents,11 advertisements and pamphlets, movies and documentaries,12 reconstructions of spaces,13 and historical and contemporary publications all tell of a prosperous world of brief duration, lasting until 1958, a year in which the number of transatlantic passengers transported by air (1,292,000) exceeded the number of those transported by ship (959,325);14 subsequently, the liners were rapidly dismantled or decommissioned and in a few cases transformed into cruise ships.These ships represented an ideal opportunity to demonstrate to passengers (possible future consumers) who were exposed to them for the duration of the crossing the skill and potential of Italian designers, artisans, and industrialists. Once the Marshall Plan15 was enacted and Law 75 of 194916 came into being, both of which helped the Italian government decide to rebuild the fleet, at least three groups dedicated to the outfitting of large ships were formed in Italy, and they were distributed throughout the main shipyards managed by FinMare in Genoa and Trieste.17 In Trieste the group was headed by Romano Boico, Aldo Cervi, Vittorio Frandoli, and Umberto Nordio (Nodari 2018); in Genoa by Gustavo Pulitzer Finali,18 who had returned to Italy with the fall of Fascism (Riccesi 1985); and in Milan by Gio Ponti (Piccione 2007a) and Nino Zoncada (Piccione 2007b). These groups continued the traditions of those operating in the prewar period, as in the Trieste case, where Boico, Cervi, Frandoli, and Nordio continued work Pulitzer Finali had begun before fleeing the country in response to the racial laws set in place during the war.The design and construction of the naval interiors were a collective job as they involved a multitude of skills from a range of different professions, so it was common among contractors to divide up the project and assign its parts to varying groups of designers, artists, and artisans, bringing together a wide assortment of hands and minds. This division had generated some tensions in the 1950s between those who, like Gio Ponti, would have preferred an exclusive contract (Ponti 1950) (as he was involved in the design both as a professional and as the editor in chief of the Italian architecture magazine Domus) and those who instead believed that collectivity was an added value, such as Giulio Minoletti (a Milanese architect who designed some of the most interesting bathing decks and pools on the ocean liners and for whom "dovrebbe quel 'pezzo d'Italia' essere, pur senza disarmonie e senza pretese campionarie, una ben fusa mostra viaggiante della nostra arte e del nostro gusto" Minoletti 1951; that "piece of Italy" should be, though without disharmony and pretensions of trade, a well-blended traveling exhibition of our art and our taste). That "documentazione emozionante del clima culturale, civile e umano del nostro Paese" (Ponti 1950, 3; fascinating documentation of the cultural, civil and human climate of our country), typical of postwar Italy and told "nel carattere degli ambienti e nelle opere d'arte di bordo, nella presenza culturale di libri, di pubblicazioni, di evocazioni figurative di nostri capolavori" (Ponti 1950, 3; in the characteristics of spaces and the works of art onboard, by the cultural presence of books, publications, evocative representations of our masterpieces), emerges precisely from the ability of different personalities and professions to work in harmony toward a collective goal: the design of habitable spaces evocative of their country of origin.The outfitters changed depending on the geographical origin of the design group and the reference shipyard. The Milanese group often worked with Officine Allestimenti Riparazioni Navali (OARN) in Genoa and with the Cantieri Navali dell'Adriatico in Monfalcone, partnering with the Brianza-based Cassina,19 the Milanese Enrico Monti–Cantieri Milanesi,20 and companies operating in the sector from the beginning of the century, such as the Palermo-based Ducrot.21 During the 1920s, Ducrot realized some of the most impressive neoclassical and art nouveau naval interiors, like those designed by the Casa Artistica Coppedè, those of the Conte Biancamano, and the Colonna Hall on the Conte di Savoia, inspired by the decoration of the homonymous Roman palace. For the creation of unique pieces straddling the border between fine craftsmanship and industry, especially in textiles, these companies turned to more specialized ones such as the Manifattura MITA in Nervi (Fochessati and Franzone 2016), which transposed the drawings of great artists onto coverings, linings, and curtains, or Arazzeria Scassa in Asti, which produced similar work with tapestries (Bo 2013).Stringent safety regulations, developed during the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention in 1948,22 required the member countries to use fireproof insulation and self-extinguishing materials, and the ships soon became a testing ground for the technical and formal capacities of these new materials. As early as 1949, fire-retardant paints for wood, coatings in light alloys, thermal insulators, and nonflammable plastic and vinyl materials were experimented with, as in the refurbishment of the Conte Grande, one of the liners seized by the US Army at the beginning of World War II and then returned to the Italian fleet at the end of the war (Piccione 2007a). Some of these innovative materials were then transferred to land projects: in his design for the Conte Grande, Ponti perfected the use of one of his materials of choice, anodized aluminum, "una materia bellissima, leggera che non vuole manutenzione: una materia navale" (Ponti 1951, 20; a beautiful, lightweight material that does not require maintenance: a naval material), which, anodized in gold and silver, embellished the first-class dining room.These design groups benefitted from the fundamental involvement of artists whose creations completed the projects. Individual artworks were exhibited a few at a time and in rotation—prints and small paintings and photographs—but most of the art was part of the overall design as decoration intended as an "sottolineatura espressiva della forma" (Ottolini 1996, 55; expressive emphasis of the form).23 The positioning and sizing of the artwork served to enhance the full length and breadth of a surface,24 creating a scenography that specified the activities of a space, such as Piero Fornasetti's playing cards on the ceiling and walls of the first-class game room on the Giulio Cesare or Lucio Fontana's fantastic sea creatures on the walls of the lido in cabin class on the Andrea Doria. The expertise and skill exemplified in the artworks also helped establish rooms as landmarks, such as that of the counter created by Paolo De Poli, which was lined with blue-and-white enameled slabs, in one of the first-class bars also on the Andrea Doria (Filippini 2016), or the panel embroidered by Zoran Mušič with the story of Marco Polo for the first-class lounge on the Augustus. These artworks could also emphasize a specific place, drawing attention to a point or a gesture, such as the two-colored ceramic siren figures affixed to metal supports that Fausto Melotti created for the central staircase of the dining room on the Conte Grande. These two marine figures are reflected in the glass plates, painted by Edina Altara (based on a sketch by Ponti depicting an epic allegory of sea travel), which line the wall behind them. Decks, promenades, common rooms, and luxury apartments demonstrated a careful curation of works created by established as well as up-and-coming Italian artists. These designers were chosen according to the competence and taste of the design groups or else were suggested by consultants, such as the historian and art critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who was appointed in 1960 by the Italian Line to supervise the selection of artists and pieces for the last two state ocean liners, the Michelangelo and the Raffaello.Argan had been called previously in 1958 to be part of the art curation committee for the Leonardo da Vinci. Reviewing this work, Argan (1958) recalled how he had been asked not only to provide works but "di collaborare strettamente con gli architetti e i tecnici alla soluzione di un problema; e questa collaborazione è cominciata fin dalla fase iniziale della progettazione" (to collaborate closely with the architects and technicians in the solution to a problem; and this collaboration started right from the initial design phase).This system resulted in a synthesis that at first glance can be seen in the integration between architecture and the other arts, whose works were an essential part of an articulated whole, confirmed at every point. This occurred in the design of a space in which it was possible to live25 and with which you could identify so as to establish "un rapporto significativo tra un essere umano e un ambiente dato" (Norberg Schultz 1984, 13; a meaningful relationship between a human being and a given environment) regardless of its position on the earth and the oceans.This synthesis was typically Italian, with deep roots in the history of the country and its slow and territorially uneven industrial development. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the roles of artists and artisans tended to overlap, defining a unique figure capable of not only designing and realizing a work of art but also discussing its uses and meanings. "Continui scontri dialettici e retorici" (continuous dialectical and rhetorical clashes), together with "la continua verifica sperimentale . . . hanno plasmato una figura ideale di 'artigiano-filosofo'" (Bosoni 2010; experimental testing . . . shaped an ideal figure of the "craftsman-philosopher"), which was offered to the North American audience as a representation of Italianness. This idea of synthesis influenced the shape of all design products and their processes in Italy. It formed the basis of the success and recognizability of the Made in Italy label, used from the 1980s to indicate Italy's international uniqueness in the traditional fashion, food, furniture, and mechanical engineering industries and defined a "country of origin effect" that used to its advantage "la rappresentazione, la reputazione, lo stereotipo che gli uomini d'affari e i consumatori associano ai prodotti di uno specifico paese" (Guerini 2002, 88; the representation, the reputation, the stereotype that businessmen and consumers associate with the products of a specific country).The ability of engineers, artists, and designers to stage and control all this complexity and to translate every component (including the technical complexities of the systems of industrialized and fireproof materials and of the safety devices) into an overall design that controlled and harmonized the different scales "to form the very nature of the thing" (Molotch 2003, 69) represented the identity of Italy and its beauty.These ships, very intricate vectors of italianità (Italianness) and essential means of transport for ten years, were well known to the populations of the two continents through very different experiences. Some people boarded the ocean liners and, during stays of various lengths, explored the private rooms and collective halls, while others were limited to daydreaming about them, transported through images on the pages of magazines, in advertisements, and in films.Emigrants on the move to North America in pursuit of greater opportunities and travelers headed to Europe and Italy for pleasure, history, and art shared accounts of the experience of these spaces during the crossing, depicting the surprise and beauty of the journey. These reactions can be found in a range of books and digital collections. Each of the reports describes the beauty of the ships' spaces and the wealth of opportunities offered to all travelers, regardless of class, as in this comment from a passenger traveling third class26 on the Michelangelo: "Come potete immaginare, la tariffa 'studentesca' che pagai corrispondeva ad una sistemazione di classe turistica e la mia cabina era sotto la linea di galleggiamento. Tuttavia, il cibo e il servizio ricevuto erano proprio favolosi!" (Owens, n.d.; As you can imagine, the "student" rate I paid was equivalent to tourist-class accommodation, and my cabin was below the waterline. However, the food and the service received were fabulous!).The popularity of the liners is made even more evident by scanning the passenger lists, which were saturated with names of well-known personalities in cinema, politics, and business with whom it was possible to share experiences and conversations. Some of these names include Kim Novak, Anna Magnani,27 Rita Hayworth, Cary Grant, Dustin Hoffman, and Alberto Sordi, among many other actors and actresses, as well as musicians and artists like Leopold Stokovski, Nikolai Sokoloff, and Renata Tebaldi; prominent politicians and industrialists are also represented, such as Giulio Andreotti, General George Marshall, and Clare Boothe Luce (Settimana INCOM 1953a). The trip was a worldly and fascinating experience; parties and events were held in the ballrooms of all classes, and the ladies boarded with trunks full of clothes to ensure adequate elegance.The speed in which the four luxury apartments on the Andrea Doria were booked (the favorite being the Appartamento dello Zodiaco, designed by Pietro Fornasetti, with surfaces completely covered with celestial constellations) highlights the popularity of first-class accommodation. The ship's first eight trips sold out in just a few days, and to stay in one of the apartments it was necessary to book months in advance.One could also tour the liners during their stay in port; the first time the Andrea Doria docked in New York City, at least twenty thousand visitors came on board (Ryan 1953). These opportunities were advertised in national newspapers and monthly magazines with national circulations (New York Times 1957). The ships were also open to designers nationwide attending national conventions of architects and interior designers, as occurred in 1954 with the opening of the Cristoforo Colombo for gala evenings and special events. The purpose of these visitations was precisely to allow people to familiarize themselves with, admire, and desire Italian style with respect to travel and leisure (Horne 1954).The beauty and identity of the ocean liners and, by way of association, of Italy were suggested by the presentation of a beautiful and desirable object, distant yet at the same time potentially achievable, an attainable daydream.And it was through the leveraging of this daydream that Italian Line marketed these voyages in advertisements posted in lifestyle and fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. In 1951, the object of desire was the Italian peninsula itself, showcased in both of these magazines in a collection of symbolic ad images, of Venice, the Colosseum, the Tower of Pisa, and Florence with the motto "There is more to see . . . more to enjoy . . . on the Mediterranean Cruiseway to Europe!" (Vogue 1951)—and as early as 1952, people began to speak in the same way about the ship itself. An ad from that year features the image of a Renaissance-style workshop in which the painter Salvatore Fiume is surrounded by his assistants and painting The Legend of Italy for the Andrea Doria, "These men are building a ship" (Vogue 1952a); it was followed the same year by an ad headlined with the motto "The lovely new Andrea Doria" (Vogue 1952b), presenting an image of the ocean liner sailing in a blue Mediterranean sea. In 1953, the advertising concentrated on women, such as one image presenting an elegant passenger in a sparkling evening dress: "Aboard the lovely Andrea Doria . . . The exciting NEW ship . . . with a heritage of centuries" (Vogue 1953a), and food, showing a vast buffet captioned with "A little something between meals . . . on the Andrea Doria" (Vogue 1953b). The advertisements emphasized the pleasantness of the crossing through the mottoes "Beauty sails the Sunny Southern Route" (Vogue 1954) and "especially if you are going for pleasure . . . sail Italian Line" (Vogue 1955b).Fashion moved in tandem; these ships influenced a notion of elegance and sophistication that was translated into garments available for the American market. The articles of clothing offered were suitable for special events, such as dresses for young brides spending their honeymoons on board (Harper's Bazaar 1953), sports outfits and costumes for sunbathing on the beach or by the pools on deck (Harper's Bazaar 1954), or ensembles for lounging (Harper's Bazaar 1973). The same ideas of elegance were expressed in magazines regarding men's fashion; an edition of Vogue for men in 1955 featured images of fashion models aboard the Cristoforo Colombo, in the Alitalia showroom, and in front of a model of the Andrea Doria with a caption reading "a lot of comfort and a lot of style, well this side of dandyism" (Vogue 1955a).Newspapers reviewed maiden voyages and described the triumphal welcome new ships received from both authorities and the public upon arrival, with receptions and visits on board, such as that on January 24, 1953, on the Andrea Doria, attended by the Italian American mayor of New York Vincent Impellitteri, who later received Italian Line director Carlo A. Lynch at City Hall (La Settimana INCOM 1953b). At the end of the fifties, when it started to become clear that liners were no longer the main mode of connection between Europe and the Americas, it was proposed to convert them into cruise ships to serve as touristic means of transportation, allowing Americans to both take advantage of transatlantic navigation as well as visit different European countries and cities, appending sea voyage with inland train travel (Cohen 1959).Publications documented the outfitting of the ocean liners and spoke with great enthusiasm above all about the Andrea Doria, highlighting Italian expertise in the design of its interiors and emphasizing the role of art as a remarkable decoration of public space.28 The large painting La leggenda d'Italia, by Salvatore Fiume, in the first-class lounge was reproduced in magazines and newspapers, accompanied by explanations of all the artistic elements employed by that master (Vogue 1953c). The text, first used by Gio Ponti in the pages of Domus, resounded in its US descriptions with evocations ofPeople from different and distant worlds daydreamed about or used the spaces aboard the complex machines that were Italian Line passenger ships: the Italians who designed and built them and the Americans and Italian Americans who received them. These were distant populations, although increasingly close, by place of birth, language, culture, and expectations about life and the places in which life unfolds.Italians considered ocean liners not only a means of transport but, above all, a tool for presenting to an audience of potentially interested parties a renewed country, one that could prove to be not only an interesting tourist destination but also an economic partner.All the Italians involved lent themselves to the process of renewing the image of the Italian state and, consequently, the removal of the memory of Italy's responsibilities for atrocities of war and twenty years of Fascist dictatorship; according to a US officer arriving in Italy in 1945, "Italians seem to want to be freed from the war, Fascism, and themselves."29 Fascism is described, through a simplification of the words of Benedetto Croce, as a virus, a dark and foreign body that infected the healthy body of Italy;30 in order to collaborate in the reconstruction of the Italian economy and nation and to present Italy as a suitable partner for the Allies and the United States in particular, it was absolutely necessary to be clear about this stance.The Italy that Italians wanted to convey was an evolving country, one not yet imagined beyond its reconstruction, and a country in the process of overcoming recent darker years by recalling a legendary and rich past, the Middle Ages of the municipalities and the Renaissance of the lordships (Golan 2007), the past of art and craft workshops, of the evolution of art and science, and of the discovery of perspective31—all of which was evoked in the form of architecture and in its ability to systematize people, scales, and skills.A heated debate about the role of ocean liners and of the arts in describing Italy and remaking its image developed in newspapers and in naval and architecture magazines, particularly Domus, where Gio Ponti served as editor at the time. From the 1930s through the 1950s, during which time Ponti was personally leading the design of multiple liners, Domus presented numerous exhibitions,32 projects, and themes related to naval architecture.33 Ponti (1950, 3) noted that a ship "è non solo un mezzo di trasporto per il turismo in Italia, ma qualcosa di più. Essa deve essere—nel carattere degli ambienti e nelle opere d'arte di bordo, nella presenza culturale di libri, di pubblicazioni, di evocazioni figurative di nostri capolavori—una documentazione emozionante del clima culturale, civile e umano del nostro Paese" (is not just a means of transport for tourism in Italy, but something more. It must be—in the character of the environments and the works of art onboard, in the cultural presence of books, publications, figurative evocations of our masterpieces—an exciting documentation of the cultural, civil and human climate of our country).Americans looked at Italy—and Europe as a whole—with a certain amazement as a world toward which they felt both kinship and distance. The bel paese was described many times and by many means, including movies, articles, and books, always from a perspective of astonishment and wonder at so much beauty and history. Italy was remote but also a very familiar idea, unknown but overexposed, as John Fante (1999, 4) observed during a stay in Rome, writing to his wife, "I don't know what I could say about Rome that could make a big impression: I've probably already seen too much of it in the movies."All these qualities—the great beauty, the passion for the past, and the ability to relate it to the present, visible not only in urban and building projects but also in art, movies, and published texts—were for Americans both an element of great charm and a meter of distance from their own culture, which was generally more attentive to technicality and production than imbued with the past and arts.The superiority of Italian manufacturing and production skills was well understood by the US public, so much so that in 1953 the Andrea Doria was praised as a synthesis between the US concept of well-being (attentive to the mechanics and the provision of services) and the Italian and European one (which looked more to finish and beauty).34 This was Italy—a growing country, capable of both harmonizing different technological and humanistic facets in its identity, as had already occurred in the Renaissance, and of evolving its historical traditions with new means made available by industrial development.35The attitude changed again as Italians began making the crossing to the United States as migrants and later becoming Italian American. The Italy they saw was the country of their memories, otherwise unknown to them as a product of time and distance.They held a more uncertain view, a view through which they were afraid of finding a landscape in which they no longer recognized themselves. John Fante shared in this sentiment: Baldo Fiorentino interviewed him for Roma in August 1957 while Fante was in Italy to