The picture shown in this entry is from a fresco in a church in the Italian neighbourhood “le Petit Italie” in Montreal. The church is named “Madonna della Difesa” and was build up in 1919 by Italian immigrants, mostly from Molise. The fresco dates back to 1933 and celebrates “i Patti Lateranensi”, the agreement between the Italian state and the Vatican, when the Vatican finally recognized the Italian State in exchange to a mass of privilege for the Catholic Church in Italy. In the fresco one can see Mussolini riding a horse and, on the left in the back, the Pope XI, who signed the agreement.
I visited the church and took a picture of the fresco in the summer 2018 when I travelled to Canada for the ISA world congress in Toronto. I believe this is the only case of a painting or fresco representing a dictator of the XX that is still visible in a church today.
Interestingly the Pope is somehow in the background. Mussolini is moving away from him (avoiding any possible sense of inferiority implied by a movement of Mussolini toward the Pope) and is in the centre of the scene.
Mussolini is surrounded by the quadrumviri that were in charge of the March on Rome and by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio, an international celebrity at the time. The picture below zooms on these characters. From left to right one can distinguish Bianchi, del Bono, de Vecchi, Balbo (who has his own monument in Chicago and a street after his name) and Marconi.
While trying to identify each character in the fresco, I have found out that the painter made exact copies of photographs of the various characters that were available at that time.
The image of Bianchi seems almost a carbon copy of one of his picture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Michele_Bianchi_Portrait.jpg
and also that of Del Bono:
https://delphipages.live/historia-mundial/lideres-militares/emilio-de-bono
I have also been able to identify the last character on the extreme right as Luigi Amedeo di Savoia, Duca degli Abruzzi, cousin of the Italian King but also known for his artic explorations and mountaineering expeditions ( who was another Italian celebrity at that time):
Interestingly, in 1933 with the exception of Balbo, none of the other three quadrumviri belonged anymore to the Fascist top elite and circle of power. Bianchi had already died in 1930. The choice of including the quadrumviri (and thus of leaders the March on Rome), Marconi and the Duke of Abruzzi (who also died in 1933) in the fresco betrays the aim of celebrating fascism and some kind of Italian “grandeur” by the Italian emigrates.
Beyond its iconographic interest, the fresco of Mussolini is dense of historical meaning. At the time it was painted, 1933, Mussolini was at the apogee of his international popularity. He was highly admired by most of the state leaders who later became palatines of the war against Nazism and Fascism. He was celebrated by newspapers in USA, for instance the New York Time, and had been defined as the “man of the Providence” by the Pope himself. It is against the backdrop of this worldwide popularity that his emigrated compatriots in Montreal commissioned a fresco of him in their church. When liberal democracy champions paid homage to Mussolini, all the authoritarian traits of Fascism were already in place. While the quality of the fresco leaves much to be desired, it represents very well the blindness, complicity and self-destructive attraction of the so-called liberal democracies with Fascism.
During the war the painting was covered with a blanket, somehow to hide the shame of having it in the church, as it happened with classic nude statues in puritan times. After the war the blanket was removed and the fresco has remained where it was until today. Recently there has been some discussion about removing it or adding a plaque that explains the specific historical period when the fresco was commissioned and realized.
Somehow ironically outside the church there is memorial for the second generation of Italo-Canadians grown up in the neighbourhood that died during the second war fighting against the same fascists celebrated in the fresco inside the church. A fresco that had been possibly paid with the donations of their parents and grandparents.
Some of contradictions and tragedy of the XX century are well represented in a corner of the Petit Italien in Montreal.