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For the Preservation of Italy, Guardian of the World’s Most Precious Heritage of Beauty. Italian War Relief Poster
For the Preservation of Italy, Guardian of the World’s Most Precious Heritage of Beauty. Italian War Relief Poster

For the Preservation of Italy, Guardian of the World’s Most Precious Heritage of Beauty. Italian War Relief Poster

Italy
,

Object Details

Title:
For the Preservation of Italy, Guardian of the World’s Most Precious Heritage of Beauty. Italian War Relief Poster
Date:
1918
Artist:
Medium:
Lithograph
Dimensions
15 x 1 l in.
Classification
No items found.
Credit Line:
Gift of Patricia Likos Ricci, 2017
Description

In this poster that Oakley designed to help raise money for the Italian relief effort, she reminds Americans that the war threatened the cultural patrimony of the Renaissance. A female personification of “Italy, Guardian of the World’s Most Precious Heritage of Beauty” stands sentinel before a Fra Angelico altarpiece inside Siena Cathedral’s black and white marble striped interior. Attired in scarlet, she holds a halberd, the weapon of the Swiss Guards, on the celebrated intarsia pavement next to the panels of David and Goliath.

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The Violet Oakley Experience is funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
For her expertise and scholarship on The Violet Oakley Experience, Woodmere thanks Patricia Likos Ricci. The foremost authority on Oakley, she is the Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Associate Professor of the History of Art, and a member of the Women and Gender Studies faculty at Elizabethtown College.
Woodmere’s website infrastructure and the digitization of the Museum’s collection are made possible by the generous support of Lisa Kabnick and John McFadden.