Prestito Nazionale

This Italian World War I poster for the "Prestito Nazionale" (National Loan) campaign employs classical imagery—a female allegorical figure representing Italia wearing a crown and draped in the Italian tricolor flag, positioned before marching Bersagliere infantrymen. Multiple variants of Italian war bond posters by artists including M. Borgoni showed Italia as a classical warrior figure holding sword and shield, while other versions depicted the personified cities of Trieste and Trento (both then held by Austria-Hungary) kneeling before Italia with soldiers marching to their liberation. These designs mixed classical Roman imperial iconography with modern nationalist aspirations, particularly the irredentist goal of recovering Italian-speaking territories still under Austrian control.

Italy entered World War I in May 1915 after the secret Treaty of London promised territorial gains including Trentino-Alto Adige, Trieste, Istria, and parts of Dalmatia in exchange for joining the Allied powers against its former Triple Alliance partners Germany and Austria-Hungary. The National Loan campaigns financed Italy's war effort, which proved far more costly in lives and resources than anticipated—over 600,000 Italian soldiers died, often in futile offensives against Austrian mountain fortifications. The posters' emphasis on recovering Trento and Trieste transformed a war of imperial expansion into a narrative of national reunification, with Italia depicted as an ageless goddess reclaiming her scattered children rather than a relatively young nation-state pursuing territorial aggrandizement. This visual strategy exemplifies how World War I propaganda across all nations employed historical mythology and personified abstractions to make modern industrial warfare seem like continuation of ancient heroic traditions, disguising the reality that soldiers were dying not for timeless principles but for specific geopolitical arrangements negotiated in secret diplomatic protocols.