Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Further reading
Wood, S. (1994) ‘The Silencing of Women: The Political Aesthetic of Dacia Maraini’, in S. Wood
(ed.), Italian Womens’ Writing 1860–1994, London: Athlone.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Mari, Enzo
b. 27 April 1932, Novara
Designer
Enzo Mari is best known for the children’s games, puzzles and plastic artefacts that he
designed for Danese from 1957. Educated initially as an artist at the Academy of Fine
Arts of Brera in Milan, Man went on to work on a range of objects for the Danese
company. From 1959 he worked in plastics; memorable designs include his 1962
cylindrical umbrella stand and his reversible ‘Vase’ in ABS of 1969. Like many of his
colleagues, he succeeded in turning plastics into a set of ‘chic’ sophisticated materials
executed in striking colours. His forms are all strong, and he played a significant role in
establishing the internationally recognized ‘Italian style’ of the 1960s. He has continued
to teach and design since that period, and clients include Zanotta, Driade and Artemide.
See also: interior design
Further reading
Mari, E. (1970) Funzione della ricerca estetica (The Function of Aesthetic Research), Milan:
Communità.
Pedio, R. (1980) Enzo Mari Designer, Bari: Dedalo.
PENNY SPARKE
Mariani, Carlo Maria
b. 25 July 1931, Rome
Painter
A highly competent technician who paints in the neoclassical style of Mengs and David,
Mariani has elevated himself above the throng of copyists by the audacity of his vision.
Not only has he painstakingly depicted Andy Warhol, the prince of banality, as Napoleon
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Bonaparte (1986) but, in what he calls confronting great art head on, he has actually
produced ‘improved’ or ‘corrected’ versions of Leonardo and Raphael.
Mariani argues that he is more than a mere copyist because he understands the ideas
and the aesthetic of neoclassicism and lives them out. In the 1970s he was derided for
working in painting, a medium many at the time considered dead, but Mariani recognized
a parallel between the conceptual nature and melancholy for the past of neoclassicism
and the art of his own day. By the 1980s Mariani was part of a trend of reusing motifs
and styles from the past with a revived attention to technique, a current variously known
as ‘new romanticism’, pittura colta (cultivated painting), ‘hyper-mannerism’ or la Nuova
Maniera (The New Style).
Further reading
Christov-Bakargiev, C. (1987) ‘Interview with Carlo Maria Mariani’, Flash Art 133:60–3.
MAX STAPLES
Marini, Marino
b. 27 February 1901, Pistoia; d. 6 August 1980, Viareggio
Sculptor
Working in bronze, stone, terracotta and gesso, Marini’s favourite themes were the horse
and rider, the female nude, the dancer and portraits, which included those of Kokoschka
and Stravinsky. Rather than creating or destroying, Marini saw the artist as transforming
matter to display new forms. His great achievement was to create a modern art which did
not deny the past but rather was deeply influenced by it, from archaic Greek sculpture
and Etruscan figures to Tang statuettes and the bronze horses of St Mark’s. Much of his
work has the appearance of ancient and weathered remains, with more emphasis on
volume and mass than finish.
After the Second World War, Marini became concerned with the possibility of nuclear
disaster and the extinction of the human race, expressing his sense of foreboding through
the theme of the horse and rider. Over the next twelve years, his increasing sense of
apocalypse is displayed as the rider grows weaker and control over the horse decreases.
The Miracoli (Miracles), executed between 1951 and 1954, show the horse lose balance
and the rider pitch forward over its head. By 1962, with Il Grido (The Cry), the rider lies
on the ground.
See also: sculpture
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Further reading
Hunter, S. (1993) Marino Marini: The Sculpture, New York: Harry N. Abrams (ample discussions
of works; illustrated).
MAX STAPLES
marriage
Whatever their social class, their age or the region in which they live, the great majority
of Italians only inaugurate their own household and family after marriage in church.
Since men do not usually take this step until their late twenties, 80 per cent of unmarried
Italians below the age of thirty live with their parents, partly by preference, partly
because finding independent affordable accommodation is difficult. The very limited
mortgage market makes children dependent on their parents’ savings to buy an
apartment. Only 5 per cent of couples live together without marrying, of whom one-third
are widows and widowers or people unwilling or unable to divorce their former partners.
Such de facto unions are not legally recognized, and thus partners have very limited
claims on each other or on public services.
Notwithstanding the considerable immigration since the late 1970s, Italians continue
to choose their spouses among fellow Italians. In the mid-1990s, no more than 4 per cent
of marriages each year were ‘mixed’, most consisting of marriages between Italians and
North Europeans or between members of different immigrant communities.
Getting married—celebrated in church by four of every five couples—is likely to be
very expensive: in Naples in the mid-1990s, even lower middleclass parents were
spending around 230 million lire on the ceremony, reception, honeymoon and new home
for the bride and groom (Piselli, 1996:90–4). Despite such a spectacular investment,
Italian marriages are ever less frequently stabilized by the partners’ common interest in
children or property. Procreation rates are among the world’s lowest, and most spouses
opt for individual property arrangements against the default presumption of common
property established in 1975. Divorce became possible in 1970 but, despite an easing of
its stringent conditions in 1987, it remains much less common than legal separation. Both
endings are twice as common in the North as in the South, but for most Italians their first
marriage is for life.
See also: family
Further reading
Pinnelli, A. and De Rose, A. (1995) ‘Italy’, in H-P. Blossfeld (ed.), The New Role of Women:
Family Formation in Modern Societies, Boulder, GO: Westview.
Piselli, F. (1996) ‘Esercizi di network analysis a Napoli’ (Exercises in Network Analysis for
Naples), Rassegna italiana di sociologia 37 (1):83–106.
Saller, R. and Kertzer, D. (eds) (1991) Families in Italy, New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.
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DAVID MOSS
Marsilio
Founded in the early 1960s by a group of professors from the University of Padua,
Marsilio soon moved to Venice where, under the direction of Cesare De Michelis,
Professor of Italian at the local university and a group of specialists of different
disciplines, it grew from a small scholarly enterprise to become one of the most
renowned and widely distributed publishing houses in Italy. A very positive and
commendable aspect of Marsilio’s commercial growth has been the maintenance of its
highquality essay series in many different disciplines (film studies, Italian literature,
sociology, art history and so on) as well as its continued production of scholarly editions
of the classics of ancient and modern literatures. Marsilio also devotes several different
series to narrative, aiming to promote new writers as well as maintaining already
established and critically acclaimed authors.
See also: publishers
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Martinazzoli, Mino
b. 30 November 1931, Orzinuovi, Brescia
Politician
A lawyer and local politician in Brescia, Mino Martinazzoli entered the Senate for the
DC in 1972. He became prominent as chair of the bicameral committee which lifted two
ministers’ parliamentary immunity, thus allowing corruption allegations to proceed
against them. He progressed rapidly to senior ministerial office, benefiting from his
membership of the ‘Base’ faction and the secretaryships of Zaccagnini and De Mita. In
October 1992 he became party secretary following Forlani’s resignation, his distance
from clientelist politics, his devout Catholicism and his generally recognized honesty
being seen as valuable assets for his party’s relegitimization. Strategically, Martinazzoli
reasserted the DC’s centrist identity, attempting to exercise the balance of power in the
new party system. However, in the 1994 election the newly named PPI fared
disastrously, and Martinazzoli resigned. Thereafter he supported the PPI’s leftward
tendency, becoming mayor of Brescia for a centre-left coalition which foreshadowed the
Ulivo (Olive Tree) alliance.
MARK DONOVAN
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Martini, Cardinal Carlo Maria
b. 15 February 1927, Turin
Cardinal archbishop
Jesuit scholar and Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini is effectively the
leader of the liberal opposition to Pope John Paul II in the Italian church. Martini
entered the Jesuit order 1944 and was ordained at twenty-five, an unusually early age for
a Jesuit. His doctoral theses in theology at the Gregorian University and scripture at the
Pontifical Biblical Institute were so brilliant that they were immediately published. He
was first dean of the Faculty of Scripture at the Biblical Institute, rector from 1969 to
1978, and then rector of the Gregorian University. He was appointed Archbishop of
Milan in December 1979 and was made a cardinal in February 1983. He has published
over fifty books since 1980, mostly pastoral letters, with annual sales of over a million
copies worldwide. In contrast to John Paul II, he is ‘soft’ on sexuality and strong on
ecumenism. He is widely regarded as a possible successor to the papal throne, though
perhaps too liberal to ultimately succeed.
JOHN POLLARD
Martone, Mario
b. 20 November 1959, Naples
Theatre and film director
Martone made his debut in the theatre in 1977. He earned his reputation by creating the
avantgarde theatre group Falso Movimento (False Movement) in 1979 and the ensemble
Teatri Uniti (United Theatres) in 1987, both of which staged a number of significant
works in the 1980s. Having worked in video from 1980 on and produced Nella città
barocca (In the Baroque City), a 16 mm film on sixteenth-century Naples in 1984,
Martone directed his highly-acclaimed first film, Morte di un matematico napoletano
(Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician) in 1991, winning the Special Jury Prize at the
Venice Film Festival. In 1995 he produced a second powerful and much-acclaimed film,
L’amore molesto (Troublesome Love), based on the first novel of Neapolitan author,
Elena Ferrante, which explores a complex mother-daughter relationship against the
pulsating, sensual background of Naples. In 1998, Martone brought together his
experience in both theatre and cinema in Teatro di guerra (Theatre of War), a film which
uses the eventual failure of a Neapolitan theatrical company to take a production of
Aeschylus’s play, Seven Against Thebes, to war-torn Sarajevo as the vehicle for exploring
social violence in even apparently ‘civilized’ societies.
ANTONELLA FRANCINI
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Marzotto
Luigi Marzotto founded his wool-making business in 1836 in Valdagno Veneto, a region
with a rich tradition in the textile trade. The small family-run mill eventually expanded
into a spinning plant which, under the direction of Gaetano Marzotto, Jr, evolved into a
minor textile empire. Surviving the crises of the lira and of Wall Street in the late 1920s,
Gaetano turned his business into a community by surrounding the industrial plant with
residences and other amenities for the workers and their families. Fascism’s restrictions
on the import of wool as well as direct political pressures forced Gaetano into exile in
1944, but he returned after the war to greatly expand the company, much aided by free
trade policies. In the mid-1980s Marzotto entered a period of international growth as it
acquired a number of companies both in Italy and abroad, including Lanerossa (1987)
and Hugo Boss (1991). Today, with sales in more than eighty countries, the family
business has become a worldclass textile and clothing manufacturer, specializing in wool
yarns and fabrics and fine linens as well as in classic men’s wear, women’s wear and
sportswear. Despite its expansion abroad, the philosophy of Marzotto remains family-
centred with a strong attachment to the community where it was born.
BERNADETTE LUCIANO
Masina, Giulietta
b. 22 February 1921, Giorgio di Piano; d. 23 March 1994, Rome
Film actress
Often referred to as the ‘female Chaplin,’ Giulietta Masina started her career in theatre
and radio in the 1940s. She then appeared under Lattuada’s direction in Senza pietà
(Without Pity) (1948) and Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) (1950), the latter codirected
by Federico Fellini, whom she had married in 1943. Although she would also work with
other directors, her screen and public persona would from then on be tied to Fellini and
his cinematic creations. The characters she brought to life under his direction are
unforgettable and vital to an understanding of Fellini’s work: Gelsomina, the fragile
heroine of La Strada (The Road) (1954), Gabiria, the cartoon-like prostitute destroyed by
her petit-bourgeois romantic ideal in Le notti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria) (1956),
the oppressed and tormented Giulietta in Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits)
(1965) and the ageing yet flamboyant Ginger/Amelia revisiting her past in Ginger e Fred
(Ginger and Fred) (1985). Significantly, she died only months after Fellini’s own death.
DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL.
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Mastroianni, Marcello
b. 28 September 1924, Fontana Liri, Frosinone; d. 19 December 1996, Paris
Film actor
With 170 films to his credit, Marcello Mastroianni easily ranks as the most prolific and
most accomplished actor in Italian postwar cinema. Although he also worked well with
almost all the other major directors, from Visconti, Antonioni and De Sica to Pietro
Germi and the Taviani brothers, he became particularly inseparable from Federico
Fellini, with whom he made seven films and for whom he became the recognized alter
ego. Convincingly personifying the weariness and the doubts of a whole generation in his
first Fellini film, La Dolce vita (1960), Mastroianni also became famous for his
performances as a comic actor, along with Sophia Loren, his ideal co-star from the mid-
1950s.
Often regarded as the quintessential ‘Latin lover’, especially outside Italy,
Mastroianni’s boundless range of talents as an actor also allowed him to expose this
persona to fruitful subversion, as in the impotent husband in Bolognini’s Il bell’Antonio
(1959) or the anti-fascist homosexual in Scola’s Una giornata particolare (A Special
Day) (1977). Mastroianni’s death in 1996 inevitably marked the closure of a long chapter
in the history of Italian cinema.
DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL.
Mattei, Enrico
b. 29 April 1906, Acqualagna; d. 27 October 1962, Milan
Industrialist and entrepreneur
Of humble and provincial origins, Enrico Mattei was to become universally
acknowledged as the most powerful man in Italy in the immediate postwar period. After
commanding a squad of Catholic partizans during the Resistance, Mattei became at the
end of the war a leading member of the national council of the Christian Democrat Party
(DC) and sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1948 to 1953 (see also Parliament).
Known as an efficient industrialist, Mattei was appointed vice-president of AGIP, the
Italian Petroleum Agency, with a brief to wind the company up since it was regarded as
unviable. Contrary to instructions, Mattei used the discovery of small quantities of
petroleum and methane in the Po region not only to relaunch AGIP itself but also to
lobby for an expanded national agency with monopoly control over fuel exploration and
marketing throughout all of Italy. Against strong opposition from within his party,
including from the party’s founder, Don Luigi Sturzo, Mattei nevertheless managed to
carry the day and in 1953 became president of the newly constituted Ente Nazionale
Idrocarburi (ENI).
Entries A–Z 507
Although scrupulously honest in his private life, Mattei proceeded to utilize the public
finances of the company for bribing politicians of all political persuasions to support a
massive expansion of ENI’s operations, both nationally and internationally. An energetic
and astute entrepreneur, he strongly resented the market influence and high prices of the
major American oil companies and so moved quickly to explore other sources for Italy’s
oil supplies. He initiated secret discussions with the Algerian National Liberation Front
and, although these proved unsuccessful, in 1955 he signed an accord with Egypt which
granted that country an unprecedented share of profits from oil revenues. In 1957 Mattei
went further in breaking all the rules by signing an exclusive agreement with Iran,
whereby ENI financed all oil operations but took only a quarter of the profits. There
followed a similar accord with Morocco and, in 1960, ENI began to import Russian oil.
This increased the hostility of the American oil companies, who were seeing their profits
continually undermined, and also prompted alarm at the highest levels of the American
government which feared that Mattei’s machinations would eventually lead to Italy’s
withdrawal from NATO.
At the very height of his power and influence, Mattei was killed when his private
plane crashed just outside Milan. His death has remained one of Italy’s many unsolved
mysteries. In 1972, Francesco Rosi made a disquieting documentaryfiction entitled Il
caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair) which brought together all the suspicious evidence
regarding the crash, including eyewitness accounts that the plane had exploded in mid-air
before plunging into an open field. A parliamentary inquiry in 1976 heard evidence
which suggested mafia involvement in the crash but, inexplicably, the matter was
shelved indefinitely. In June 1995 the case was re-opened in two separate investigations
prompted by information from mafia superinformer, Tommaso Buscetta, but no further
light was shed on the untimely disappearance of this key figure of the Italian economic
miracle.
Further reading
Frankel, P.H. (1966) Mattei: Oil and Power Politics, London: Faber & Faber.
Lawton, H. (1996) ‘Enrico Mattei: The Man Who Fell to Earth’, in C. Testa (ed.), Francesco Rosi:
The Poet of Civic Courage, Westport, CN: Greenwood Press (an analysis of Rosi’s film but
with much useful information and discussion about Mattei’s life and politics).
GINO MOLITERNO
MaxMara
The MaxMara company was founded in Reggio Emilia in 1951 by Achille Maramotti as
the first good quality yet affordable women’s ready-to-wear manufacturer in Italy,
specializing in coats and suits. By the end of the 1960s MaxMara had established a new
co-ordinates label called Sportmax, and had begun to employ a succession of ‘consultant
designers’, including Luciano Soprani and Kurt Lagerfeld. At the same time, they
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 508
developed an image-conscious philosophy, an expanding export market and a retail
network. Although the high-quality tactile coat remained the backbone of the business,
MaxMara concentrated on creating different collections through autonomous companies.
Sixteen clothing lines were established including Marella, Weekend and Marina Rinaldi,
with a flagship store on Madison Avenue, but no licences were issued, not even for
perfume. Generally, MaxMara’s international success derived from an understated style,
careful market targeting, advanced technology and excellent relations with the Italian
textile industry.
See also: fashion
NICOLA WHITE
Mazzacurati, Carlo
b. 2 March 1956, Padova
Director
Mazzacurati began his career in 1979 by making Vagabondi (Vagabonds) in 16mm. After
numerous collaborations in television productions, he made his directorial debut in 1987
with Notte italiana (Italian Night), a powerful and disturbing psychological thriller
produced, significantly, by Nanni Moretti’s then newly formed company, Sacher Film.
An unsuccessful second feature, Il prete hello (The Handsome Priest) (1989), was
followed by the impressive Un’altra vita (Another Life) (1992). Here Mazzacurati
displayed his full potential as the film, with its nocturnal and desperate atmosphere,
presents all the uneasiness of a society in transition within which the love story of a
Roman dentist and a Russian girl unfolds to its ill-fated end. A reversal at the level of the
plot—as the journey moves from Italy to Hungary—but a repetition at the level of the
story can be found in Il toro (The Bull) (1994). His Vesna va veloce (Vesna Runs Fast)
(1996) is in many ways a creative reprise of the 1992 movie, as a young Czech woman
struggles to find a new life in Italy.
MANUELA GIERI
Mediobanca
Established in 1946, Mediobanca is Italy’s leading industrial bank. Its main original
shareholders were IRI’s three deposit banks, Banca Commerciale, Credito Italiano and
Banco di Roma, which also acted as its agents for the placement of long-term bonds.
During the 1950s Mediobanca typically provided long-term finance and assisted client
companies in bond and equity issue. It was only with the nationalization of the electric
power companies in the early 1960s (see ENEL) that Mediobanca, led by one of Italy’s
Entries A–Z 509
legendary financial figures, Enrico Cuccia, acquired an undisputed leadership as
industrial bank and provider of sophisticated schemes of financial engineering. Its critics
argue that, through such schemes, Mediobanca was instrumental in perpetuating Italy’s
outdated corporate governance system, based on holding companies which allowed a
handful of families with relatively little capital to control a disproportionately large share
of big businesses. Its supporters stress the positive role played by Mediobanca in
upholding the private sector at times of overextension of public-owned companies and of
state intervention in the economy, in creating positive externalities and cost-cutting
integrations (both vertical and horizontal) within the industrial sector and in providing
sorely needed industrial banking services.
GIANNI TONIOLO
il menabò
Published irregularly between 1959–67 by Einaudi and edited by Italo Calvino and Elio
Vittorini, the cultural journal il menabò equalled in importance the earlier and very
different periodical edited by Vittorini, Il Politecnico. The choice of title—the print trade
term meaning a ‘paste-up’—indicated an attitude to literature as process rather than
product. Featuring fiction and poetry by the postwar generation of Italian writers,
canvassing ‘issues’ (such as the ‘Southern Question’), and even inventing them (as in
the case of the famous ‘Literature and Industry’ question in nos 4–5), il menabò adopted
an international perspective with issue no. 7 (1964), hosting texts by Roland Barthes,
Maurice Blanchot and Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
The division of editorial input remains unclear. The publication did not outlast
Vittorini, except for the final commemorative issue (no. 10) in the year following his
death, entirely devoted to his work. Calvino later described his own contributions to the
journal as minimal, although he published some of his most important essays there.
Further reading
Fiaccarini Marchi, D. (ed.) (1973) Il menabò (1959–1967), Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.
SUZANNE KIERNAN
Mendini, Alessandro
b. 16 August 1931, Milan
Designer
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