A satirical map of the political situation of Europe in 1861

CIMA, Camilo (as Don Pacifico).

L'Europa a volo di Cicala. Strenna della Cicala Politica 1861.
Milan: 'La Cicala Politica', 1860. Chromolithograph, sheet 425 x 555mm.

Binding folds flattened, tear skillfully repaired.

A rare Italian serio-comic map of Europe, published the year that Victor Emmanuel II declared the Kingdom of Italy.
In Italy the new Prime Minister, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, is shown dislodging the Papal mitre from Rome with a crowbar; Garibaldi stands with one foot in Sicily and the other in Calabria, lifting a building block marked 'Napoli'; and the Kingdom of Sardinia is shown as a stonemason, applying cement to a block marked with the names of cities including Milan, Genoa and Turin. Meanwhile Venice attempts to get the attention of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, who is inundated with petitions from Hungary and the Balkan states, as a man blows a trumpet with 'bankruptcy' on its banner.
Elsewhere France is represented by Emperor Napoleon III with a fiddle, leading an orchestra, as one of his soldiers plays a flute to dancing Algerians; Britannia is sitting surrounded by money and bales of cotton; in Spain a dowdy Isabella II prays with a monk and nun; the Germans celebrate their confederacy, although a female figure uses a whip in an attempt to teach the political ABC to Prussian regent Wilhelm (later Wilhelm I); Greece is a Dutch oven marked 'Revolution' over a fierce fire; and a massive reclining Russia knocks an Ottoman over in Eastern Europe.


Stock ID : 23151