Pietro Annigoni: The German Occupation

 

Drawings by Annigoni for "Destruzioni di Firenze"

"Like all Italian anti-fascists in the years immediately before the Second World War, I had watched with alarm Mussolini's toadying to Hitler, his involvement of our country in the Spanish Civil War and his annexation of Albania in emulation of the Führer's 'anschluss [connection]' in Austria. With each new madness came the hope that this time he had overreached himself, that disaster and his self-destruction must follow, that Italy would at last be free of Fascism and dictatorship. Such an act of madness came on 10th June 1940, when the country was thrown into the war alongside the Nazis.

I have called myself an anti-fascist but I was no hero. I did not 'go underground' and join the partisans. Indeed, I did no more than resolve to continue to evade military service by every honest or dishonest means it might require. In 1944 partisan activity was intensified all over the city, signalling the approach of the Allied army. Then one day at sunset, shells came whistling over the city and all of us were ordered to barricade ourselves in our homes. But instead of fear, there was jubilation in our hearts. At last the end of the terror was in sight. The possibility that either German or Allied shells might destroy us before that time arrived scarcely occurred to us.

With the arrival of British, American, and other Allied forces, Florence sighed with relief. The water supply was quickly restored to the parched city and work began almost immediately on the clearance of rubble from the streets. At the same time I was called to the Fine Arts Office and asked by a British officer if I would undertake to make a series of drawings recording the damage done to the city. Armed with permits which gave me access to places forbidden to other civilians, I set to work and, during September and October, produced twelve large and detailed drawings, most of them showing extensive areas of the city. Later they were exhibited at the Galleria Botti and published in lithographic reproduction under the title 'Distruzioni di Firenze.' Now they are in the Gabinetto di Studio of the Uffizi Gallery.

Unknown to us, Hitler had ordered the complete destruction of Florence, and the officer commanding the German troops in Fiesole was later shot for not carrying out that order. Even so, many great architectural masterpieces, including the Giotto Tower, were damaged and the whole areas on the edge of the old city were devastated." 

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)