Italy, Anniversary of the Dante Society, 1932
Italian Fascism was rooted in the glories of the past. It harked back to the grandeur of the ancient Roman Empire and the cultural achievements of the Renaissance. And it hoped to cover the modern state in the same glory.
The stamp programme was very much involved in this long backward look. From 1922 to 1937, roughly half of Italy’s commemorative sets featured historical figures: Cardinal Mazzini, Volta, Virgil, some of them with the inscriptions in Latin.
The 1932 Dante Society set features some of the country’s most important poets, writers and thinkers. It comes in two parts, with twelve stamps for surface mail and seven for airmail. Stylistically, the two sets are very different (and are often found in different sections of a
