In Rome, two beautiful exhibitions have been set up that also concern the history and art of Venezia Giulia, both ancient and contemporary: “Tota Italia” and “Marcello Dudovich”.

The first is located at the Scuderie del Quirinale,  Total Italy , the origins of a nation, takes inspiration from the words reported in the Res Gestae of Octavian Augustus: “in mea verba tota Italia sponte sua iuravit”, with which he attributed to the Italian nation the free and spontaneous choice to fight alongside him in the civil war that pitted him against Mark Antony, expressing the ideal of the totality of Italy… It is a concept that in history appears expressed as never before, in a clear and unequivocal manner, making a political reality what until then was only a geographical expression. The exhibition obviously includes the X Regio “Venetia et Histria, including Liburnia, as clearly appears from the geographical map in which the light that starts from Rome expands as the various Regions are added, up to the end of the 38st century AD. The paragraph by Pliny the Elder, Natural History, III, 39-XNUMX is clearly visible:

“Volscum postea litus et Campaniae, Picentinum inde ac Lucanum Bruttiumque, quo longissime in meridiem ab Alpium paene lunatis iugis in maria excurrit Italia; ab eo Graeciae ora, mox Sallentini, Poeduculi, Apuli, Paeligni, Frentani, Marrucini, Vestini, Sabini, Picentes, Galli, Umbri, Tusci, Veneti, Cari, Iapudes, Histri, Liburni”
(After the coast of the Volsci and distantly across the seas almost from the crescent-shaped ridges of the Alps From here the coast of Magna Graecia, then the Salentines, the Pediculi, the Apulians, the Peligni, the Frentani, the Marrucini, the Vestini, the Sabines, the Piceni, the Campanians, the Picentine territory then and the Lucanian and Bruttian, towards the south where Italy extends further Gauls, Umbrians, Tuscans, Venetians, Carians, Iapudi, Histri, Liburnians).

On display is a collection of incredible works of art, including the very famous bronze of the boxer at rest found by Lanciani right on the slopes of the Quirinale. Also very important is the tablet from Este in Venetic, a language also widespread in Istria, and which facilitated its rapid and lasting Romanization. In fact, Venetic is now commonly included among the Latin-Faliscan languages, so it can be said that the early alliance with the Romans, in an anti-Etruscan function, corroborated by the myth of Antenor, constituted solid linguistic and cultural substrata for the subsequent developments of the Serenissima.

At the Palazzo dell'Aeronautica, a beautiful example of Italian rationalism, built in just two years by Roberto Marino, commissioned by Italo Balbo, 11 works and the frescoes of Marcello Dudovich, (Trieste 1878 – Milan 1962) and his collaborator Walter Resentera. The murals were created by Dudovich from 1931 to 1933 in the premises of the then Ministry of the Air Force. The rediscovery and restoration of these murals, which had until now remained hidden from the public, was possible thanks to the collaboration between the Air Force and the Special Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome. Dudovich was of Dalmatian origins and his father, a fervent irredentist, had fought with Garibaldi during the Third War of Independence, moving to Trieste for work. In 1897, his son Marcello moved to Milan and then to Munich and in those cities he had the opportunity to meet some of the greatest artists of the time. Dudovich remained very attached to his family's homeland, depicting Zara with particular inspiration in the posters advertising Zadar liqueurs. The exhibition represents an ideal journey through the places and impulses of the first three decades of the twentieth century represented by Dudovich in his works through the modernity of female faces that reach the collective imagination for their persuasive elegance, their stylised and fluid movements and for the shapes of their brightly coloured clothes.

Both the Association of Triestines and Gorizians of Rome and the Provincial Committee of Rome of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia have organized, thanks to their presidents, a special visit to the exhibition, which, deservedly, has met with great public success.

Eufemia Giuliana Budcis