Italia a colori. Storia delle passioni politiche dalla caduta del fascismo ad oggi.

Approaching Maurizio Ridolfi’s Italia a colori. Storia delle passioni politiche dalla caduta del fascismo ad oggi as an art historian rather than as a historian brings the reviewer into contact with a unique volume. As a historian, Ridolfi follows a chronological narrative, but—again as a historian—he employs a multifocal lens to trace national events from the foundation of the Republic to the present day from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on sociological, anthropological, cultural and visual insights. Given that Ridolfi aims to shed light on the politics of passions, I do not think he had any alternative. Nevertheless, his weaving of such a dense and elaborate storyline on the model of Anglo-Saxon cultural, or more precisely, visual studies may not have been the only approach he could have taken. Examining the emotional role that colour has had in political matters, Ridolfi argues for the centrality of vision; that is to say, a visual subject that he interprets from within a cultural system in which various languages (written, rhetorical, metaphorical, iconographical) compete.