Album di famiglia n.2
The second Family Album is published here
To the collection of photographs preserved at the Civico Archivio Fotografico in Milan and dedicated to the memory of Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano – following last year’s initial notebook introduced by Alessandro Mendini. The series of photographs presented here concerns the couple’s youthful years, before and after their marriage, and has as its common subject leisure time: sports, holidays, cars.
The holidays are mainly represented by images of seaside resorts; divided equally between the most popular tourist areas in the 1920s and 1930s: the Romagna Riviera and the Ligurian coast. The genial author of some of the group photographs (reminiscent of the cinema of the transition period between silent and sound) remains unknown: the images are witty and tender, and Marieda is also portrayed on a bicycle against a backdrop of flags, on the Riccione seafront, or next to a skate bearing her name. In another photograph, Marieda swims in front of a large seaplane: it is one of the famous Savoia-Marchetti S.55s, which were the protagonists on various occasions during the same period of the famous oceanic crossings.
Mountain memories cannot fail to include Sestriere, with the background of the base of the very modern cylindrical tower hotel, recently inaugurated (Christmas 1935); while a photomontage showing Marieda in the Dolomites, engaged in an off-piste evolution, is from the following year. A particular presence are the photographs that have tennis as their subject, a great passion of Marieda’s that she practised as long as she could, often together with her friend Migno Amigoni. The years between the two world wars of the 20th century were perhaps the period in which tennis best manifested the admirable balance between aristocratic elegance of gestures and agonistic technique.
At the beginning of the 1930s, the players’ lightweight leather shoes were abandoned for the more functional and elastic canvas and rubber footwear; the flat berets disappeared too. There remained, of course, the tradition of the all-white uniform (les gestes blanches), with long trousers for the men (at least until the 1940s), and knee-length skirts for the players.
In tennis, after all, outward elegance was merely the expression of an inner discipline and values of character: loyalty, the ability to endure suffering and fatigue while remaining imperturbable, the humility to try again after mistakes, the pride of a solitary independence. Other images are dedicated to automobiles, among which several Bugatti models stand out in the foreground, another of the myths of the 20th century in the period between the two world wars. Its founder, the Milanese Ettore Bugatti, had built something larger and more complex than a car factory in Molsheim, Alsace.
The large estate, which gradually expanded with the success of production, included, in addition to the industrial buildings, the large patriarchal house surrounded by a vast garden, the horse stables and further south the Château de St. Jean, where the owner received princes and sultans, attracted by the perfection of the extraordinary cars. Ettore Bugatti is almost always photographed on horseback (and is portrayed as such in a sculpture by Troubetzkoy); perhaps he also remained in the saddle when he controlled the various stages of production in the factory. The cars are predominantly sporty: they evoke hair in the wind and reckless speed as in a well-known poster by Dudovich (with the motto: ‘There’s a Bugatti, you can’t pass!’). The myth is still alive today, as testified by the Bugatti Club Italia and the annual register, with the pedigree of the cars still in circulation: contended for by collectors, restored as works of art and often rebuilt from a single original piece such as a rusted chassis, reborn to new life with glossy paintwork and brilliant colours.
It was thanks to the friendly cooperation of Federico Robutti, curator of the ‘Quattro Ruote’ collection of historic cars, and the notary Francesco Guasti, president of the Bugatti Club Italia and in charge of the register, that we were able to identify two of the three Bugattis from the number plates that were legible (the fourth car is a 1930 Renault Monasix, with its characteristic front end). Notary Guasti wrote to us: ‘In particular, the car with registration number 12638 MI, chassis 40544, is a Type 40, a middle-class, 4-cylinder, 1,500 cc car that was registered to Antonio Boschi between 1930 and 1934. Traces of this car have been lost and it does not appear to have survived the war. The other car whose number plate can be seen is a type 43, chassis 43199.
It is a car of great technical and historical interest, 8 cylinders in line, 2300 displacement with supercharger, the first production car in the world to reach 160 km per hour. From the P.R.A. visura you can see that the first owner was Aymo Maggi, a well-known 1920s racer and founder of the 1000 Miglia. The car’s third owner was Agostino Di Stefano between 1932 and 1933. Unfortunately, not even this important car has survived to the present day. Agostino Di Stefano was Marieda’s brother, and was also a keen racing driver.
Ezio Antonini