Pinocchio (1883–2005): an adventure illustrated over more than a century

Eyes sparkling with pride, hands on his hips, nose projecting, clothed in flowery paper: it can only be Pinocchio. And yet: in the background, a snake that looks like a miniature dragon, a cat and a fox realistically drawn, a strange shark (Carlo Collodi’s “pesce-cane”) gaping like a giant tuna-fish, and, far up in the sky, a puppet astride a dove. On the left, an angelic figure looks on: it must be the Blue Fairy (Fig. 8.1). This image effectively sums the novel up, by figuring the protagonists. It is Enrico Mazzanti’s famous frontispiece for Paggi’s February 1883 Pinocchio edition, the first in book form, published just one month after the story’s last episode had appeared in Giornale per I Bambini.1 Yet is Pinocchio a story or a novel? Italo Calvino brilliantly resolved the dilemma by detecting at least three themes and styles central to Collodi’s text. In Pinocchio, he stated, the picaresque novel coexists with black romantic fiction; furthermore, the writing urges us to learn it by heart, sentence after sentence, as if it were a poem in prose, a quality that compares to Alessandro Manzoni’s novel I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) and to some of Giacomo Leopardi’s dialogues, two major nineteenthcentury texts of Italian literature (Calvino 1995, 801–807). The aim of this chapter is however not so much to define Pinocchio’s literary genre as to underline how Calvino’s remarks, resonant with Mazzanti’s rich frontispiece imagery, precisely identify stylistic characteristics which prove to be figurative spurs—from the sombre side (above all, the scene of a strongly wind-shaken Pinocchio hung from the Great Oak) to the vivid, realistic aspect (the bare interior of Geppetto’s house)—and even literary references: illustrators intuitively show Pinocchio’s meeting with the Cat and the Fox to remind us of Don Abbondio’s meeting with “i Bravi” (the braggarts) in the first chapter of Manzoni’s celebrated novel. In this chapter, we will not present all twentieth-century illustrated editions.2 Instead, we will focus on a few specific cases, mostly accessible on theCapti website (www.capti.it). The cases analysed intertwine a chronological research line with a thematic one, showing how temporal stratification also corresponds to layered meaning and an epistemological shift (from time to time Pinocchio has been studied as a sort of fantastic novel, a history novel, or a realistic story, with appropriate images). From the first volume editions of Pinocchio (illustrated by Mazzanti in 1883 and 1890; by Chiostri in 1901), in which the protagonists are firmly rooted in Tuscany, we move to books set in other regions (e.g. the Piedmont village of Vernante for Mussino), to globalization and the (radical) Pinocchio by Walt Disney. From this global and “depersonalized” dimension, Pinocchio will ultimately land in the contemporary art sphere, returning on the one hand to his Tuscan origins (thanks to Roberto Innocenti) and connecting on the other hand with a mythical dimension (thanks to Mimmo Paladino)—not to mention Sara Fanelli’s complex illustrations (2003).3 This varied perspective exemplifies how illustrations, format, and the prestige of illustrators determine and influence not only the reception of the text, but also a larger range of cultural objects that gradually transfigure Pinocchio from an author’s creation to a universally known figure, hardly devoid of archetype, while the book’s commercial “quality pitch” narrows down from broad circulation to reach a refined, select audience. Books seen as cultural objects open up unexpected vistas, and our commonly shared perception of Pinocchio as a children’s book is but one of its many cultural transformations.