Italophilia is the admiration, general appreciation or love of Italy, its people, culture, and its significant contributions to Western civilization. Italophilia includes Romanophilia, the appreciation of the Italian capital of Rome and its ancient and Catholic history and culture. Its opposite is Italophobia.
Overview
If the origins of the Western intellectual heritage go back to the Greeks and, less directly, to the peoples of Egypt and the Near East, Rome contributed to spreading it. In fields such as language, law, politics, religion, and art Roman culture continues to affect our lives.Chase, Myrna; Jacob, Margaret; Jacob, James; Von Laue, Theodore. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society (Volume 1). Cengage Learning. pp. 154-160. Web. 23 November 2013. Rome was the centre of an empire that stretched across a large segment of the then-known world and later became the centre of the Christian faith. Ancient Italy is identified with Rome and the so-called Romanophilia.
Despite the fall of the Roman Empire, its legacy continued to have a significant impact on the cultural and political life in Europe. For the medieval mind, Rome came to constitute a central dimension of the European traditionalist sensibility. The idealisation of this Empire as the symbol of universal order led to the construction of the Holy Roman Empire. Writing before the outbreak of the First World War, the historian Alexander Carlyle noted that "we can without difficulty recognize" not only "the survival of the tradition of the ancient empire" but also a "form of the perpetual aspiration to make real the dream of the universal commonwealth of humanity".Jameson, John Franklin; Bourne, Henry Eldridge; Schuyler, Robert Livingston. The American Historical Review. (Full text) American Historical Association, 1914. Web. 09. Dec. 2013.
During much of the Middle Ages (about the 5th century through the 15th century), the Roman Catholic Church had great political power in Western Europe. Throughout its history, the Catholic faith has inspired many great works of architecture, art, literature, and music. These works include French medieval Gothic cathedrals, the Italian artist Michelangelo's frescoes in the Vatican, the Italian writer Dante's epic poem Divine Comedy, and the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem.
As for Italian artists they were in demand almost all over Europe. Torrigiano and Zuccari worked in England, Masolino in Hungary, Luca Cambiasi and Pellegrino Tibaldi in Spain, Jacopo Sansovino in Portugal, Morando and others in Poland. The demand seems to have been greatest in France, more especially at the French court, which employed (among others) Leonardo da Vinci, Rosso, Primaticcio, Niccolò dell'Abbate and Sebastiano Serlio. Italian craftsmen were engaged to work on building sites from Munich to Zamość. Italian actors performed at the courts of France, Spain, Poland and elsewhere.
The Italian language was fashionable, at court for example, as well as Italian literature and art. The famous lexicographer John Florio of Italian origin was the most important humanist in Renaissance England. and contributed to the English language with over 1,969 words.Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED, by John Willinsky, Princeton University Press, 1994 William Shakespeare's works show an important level of Italophilia, a deep knowledge of Italy and the Italian culture, like in Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice. According to Robin Kirkpatrick, Professor of Italian and English Literatures at Cambridge University, Shakespeare shared "with his contemporaries and immediate forebears a fascination with Italy."Kirkpatrick, Robin. English and Italian literature from Dante to Shakespeare: a study of sources, analogue and divergence. Longman, 1995. p. 278. Web. 22 November 2013. In 16th century Spain, cultural Italophilia was also widespread (while the Spanish influence in Southern Italy was also great) and the king Philip IV himself considered Italian as his favourite foreign language.
The movement of "international Italophilia" around 1600 certainly held the German territories in its sway, with one statistic suggesting that up to a third of all books available in Germany in the early 17th century were in Italian.Burke, Peter. "The Uses of Italy," in Roy Porter and Mikulás̆ Teich, ed., The Renaissance in National Context. Cambridge University Press, 1992. p. 13. Web. 21 November 2013. Themes and styles from were adapted endlessly by German artists, including Opitz, who wrote several poems based on Guarini's text, and Schütz himself, whose settings of a handful of passages appeared in his 1611 book of Italian madrigals. Emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold I were great admirers of Italian culture and made Italian (which they themselves spoke perfectly) a prestigious language at their court. German baroque composers or architects were also very much influenced by their Italian counterparts.
During the 18th century, Italy was in the spotlight of the European grand tour, a period in which learned and wealthy foreign, usually British or German, aristocrats visited the country due to its artistic, cultural and archaeological richness. Since then, throughout the centuries, many writers and poets have sung of Italy's beauty; from Goethe to Stendhal to Byron, Italy's natural beauty and her people's creativity inspired their works. Percy Bysshe Shelley famously said that Italy is "the paradise of exiles."Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Narrative Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1). Wildside Press LLC, 2008. p. 27. Web. 21 November 2013.
Italiophilia was not uncommon in the United States. Thomas Jefferson was a great admirer of Italy and ancient Rome. Jefferson is largely responsible for the neo-classical buildings in Washington, D.C. that echo Roman and Italian architectural styles.
Spain provided an equally telling example of Italian cultural admiration in the 18th century. The installation of a team of Italian architects and artists, headed by Filippo Juvarra, has been interpreted as part of Queen Elisabeth Farnese's conscious policy to mould the visual culture of the Spanish court along Italian lines. The engagement of Corrado Giaquinto from Molfetta and eventually the Venetian Jacopo Amigoni as the creators of the painted decorative space for the new seat of the Spanish court was a clear indication of this aesthetic orientation, while the later employment of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his son Giovanni Domenico confirmed the Italophile tendency.
The Victorian era in Great Britain saw Italophilic tendencies. Britain supported its own version of the imperial , called . John Ruskin was a Victorian Italophile who respected the concepts of morality held in Italy.Wilson, A.N. The Victorians. Random House, 2011. p. 86. Web. 23 November 2013. Also the great writer Henry James has exhibited Italophilia in several of his novels. However, Ellen Moers writes that "In the history of Victorian Italophilia no name is more prominent than that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning....[She places] Italy as the place for the woman of genius ..."Mahkovec, Linda. Voicing Female Ambition and Purpose: The Role of the Artist Figure in the Works of George Eliot. ProQuest, 2008. p. 33. Web. 23 November 2013.
Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, along with Giuseppe Mazzini and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, led the struggle for Italian unification in the 19th century. For his battles on behalf of freedom in Europe and Latin America, Garibaldi has been dubbed the "Hero of Two Worlds." Many of the greatest intellectuals of his time, such as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and George Sand showered him with admiration. He was so appreciated in the United States that Abraham Lincoln offered him a command during the Civil War, (Garibaldi turned it down).Appy, Christian G. Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966. University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. p. 108. Web. 24 November 2013.
In 1940 Walt Disney Productions produced Pinocchio based on the Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, the most translated non-religious book in the world and one of the best-selling books ever published, as well as a canonical piece of children's literature. The film was the second animated feature film produced by Disney.
After World War II, such brands as Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo became well known for racing and sports cars. Since then Italy has experienced strong economic growth, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, which lifted the country to the position of being one of the most industrialized nations in the world.Fisher, Ian. Italy (Background). The New York Times. Web. 1 December 2013. "Encyclopædia Britannica describes Italy as "less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting." However concise, this description provides a good starting point for the difficult job of defining Italy, a complex nation wrapped in as much myth and romance as its own long-documented history. The uncommonly pleasant setting is clear: the territory on a boot-shaped peninsula in the Mediterranean, both mountainous and blessed with of coast. The culturally related points include many of the fountains of Western culture: the Roman Empire, the Catholic church, the Renaissance (not to mention pasta and pizza)." "It has been central to the formation of the European Union, and after the destruction of World War II, built itself with uncommon energy to regain a place in the global economy." Italian product design, fashion, film, and cuisine and the notion of Italy as the embodiment of for German tourism — all left an imprint on contemporary Italophilia.
Roman era
Rome was the centre of the Roman Empire that stretched across a large segment of the then-known world, and later became the centre of the Roman Catholic faith. Roman civilization was transplanted to many parts of Europe, the Mediterranean basin, North Africa and the Near East in the form of law, architecture, engineering, roads, aqueducts, public baths, sanitation, trade, literature, art, libraries, hospitals and agriculture.Hayes, C., Baldwin, M. and Cole, C.; History of Western Civilization, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1968 It was possible for the people in the provinces to attain Roman citizenship, rise to the Senate, and even to become Roman emperor. The Roman provinces, having received much of the benefit of Roman civilization, became Romanized to a large degree. Winston Churchill states:
The Christian faith was viewed in Rome as contrary to prevailing religious and political beliefs and, consequently, was suppressed. Many Christians in Rome and elsewhere were persecuted. After the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD, Christianity flourished and became an integral part of Roman life. Roman Catholicism, which combined Christianity and Roman administration, emerged in a form easily recognizable today and took root in Rome and much of the Roman Empire.Durant, Will, Caesar and Christ, The Story of Civilization, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1953, pg. 618 The Church adopted many religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian Rome, such as the stole and other vestments, the use of incense and holy water in purifications, burning candles before the altar, the veneration of saints, the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title Pontifex Maximus for the Pope, and Latin as the language of Catholic ritual.Caesar and Christ, The Story of Civilization, pg. 619
The cultural patrimony of Roman literature, architecture and sculpture inspired many of the achievements of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Italy and the rest of Europe. Works by poets, authors and historians, such as Ovid, Horace, Catullus, Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, and Tacitus had a far-reaching impact on the Western world.