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| Scène de Juillet 1830 (Les Drapeaux), 1830, Léon Cogniet, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans. Painted to glorify the July Revolution, Cogniet portrays the white Bourbon flag pierced, bloodied, and reborn as the French Tricolour. The artist intended to celebrate the revolution's victory. I see the painting instead as a vivid record of its assault on monarchy, tradition, and the historic symbols of France. |
“The tricolor! Tricolor indeed! They fill their mouths with these words, the rascals. What does that ugly geometric sign, that aping of the French mean, compared to our white banner with its golden lily in the middle? What hope can those clashing colors bring them?” — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)Not long ago, someone offered me a complimentary Italia shirt emblazoned with the Italian Tricolor. I thanked him for the gesture but politely declined. Puzzled, he insisted that I take it anyway, as though I had not understood the offer. When I refused a second time, his confusion turned to irritation, and he became increasingly determined to press it into my hands. Only when I finally replied that I would not be caught dead wearing that rag did he abandon the effort and storm away in a fit of indignation. The exchange reminded me just how differently people can view a flag. To many Italian Americans, the tricolor is an unquestioned emblem of heritage and ethnic pride. To me, it represents something altogether different.
Few symbols leave me as cold as the tricolor. Not merely the Italian tricolor, but the entire family of tricolors that swept across Europe in the wake of revolution. Whenever I see them, I think less of nations than of ideologies: republicanism, egalitarianism, and the deliberate rejection of the older order.
The banners of kingdoms spoke a different language. They bore dynastic arms, sacred emblems, ancient crosses, lilies, eagles, lions, and crowns. They proclaimed continuity rather than rupture and inheritance over construction. A royal standard represented a people shaped through centuries of history, faith, and tradition.
The tricolor, by contrast, symbolizes the triumph of universal abstractions over inherited patrimonies and of utopian ideals over civilization. From one republic to another, their three interchangeable bands differ little except in whether they are tierced in pale or in fess.
I recognize that millions look upon these flags with sincere patriotism, and I do not question their affection. Yet I cannot share it. My allegiance belongs to older symbols: the Bourbon lilies, the imperial eagle, the Cross of Burgundy, the crowned escutcheon, and the heraldic language that once clothed Europe in visible memory.
To me, a flag should evoke more than a state. It should remind us that a nation is an inheritance rather than a political project, a sacred trust received from our ancestors rather than an experiment devised by legislators and ideologues. That is why, whenever I see a tricolor fluttering in the wind, I cannot help but feel that something immeasurably older, richer, and more beautiful was lowered from the mast to make way for it.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 2nd, Feast of the Holy Martyrs of September
Further Reading:
L’Italia non esiste. «Una d’arme, di lingua, d’altare»? Considerazioni sull’identità italiana pre- e post-risorgimentale, Anales de la Fundación Francisco Elías de Tejada, Year XXV (2019).