A rare Italian serio-comic map of Europe in 1871

MANFREDO, Manfredi.

L'Europa Geografico-Politica Veduta a Volo d'Oca.
Bologna, c.1871. Chromolithograph. Sheet 470 x 670mm.

Minor restoration, laid on canvas.

An extremely scarce Italian serio-comic map of Europe, with the multitude of figures explained in archaic verse styled on the work of Petrarch (1304-74).
Published in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, it shows a German gorging himself on the spoils of Alsace and Lorraine; Bismarck wearing the victor's laurel wreath and playing a violin; and Wilhelm I leaning against a cannon marked 'Divine Providence', ruling over the new German Empire. However Austria looks away. Meanwhile, in France, the three-headed Hydra of the Spanish Commune lies dead. In North Africa a French soldier is being spanked by a figure in Arab dress, representing the initially successful revolt in Algeria led by Muhammad al-Muqrani. In Italy the Pope has been knocked from his throne by the unification of Italy.
As usual the map is dominated by Russia, this time depicted as a Cossack with a bloody knife raised high, with poor Poland at his feet, chained to the Cossack, a German wearing a pickelhaube, and a 'Constitution' banner held by the Austrian.
One Englishman sits on a pile of merchandise, gnawing on a bone marked India. A Scot blows paper boats, one marked 'Alabama': this is probably Sir Alexander Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, who ruled that CSS Alabama, a warship built in Liverpool for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, did not violate Britain's neutrality. He also sat on the post-war tribunal that debated the claims for reparations from Britain for the damage caused in Alabama's two-year campaign, settled in 1871.

BAYNTON-WILLIAMS: Curious Map Book, p.176, 'One of the most unusual and rarest of the satirical European Political maps'.
Stock ID : 23283