A classical statue lifts an arm over a sea of photographs: warship silhouettes on the horizon, gun barrels in the foreground. The slogan on this one is borrowed from the mining sheets — «PER L’AUTARCHIA DEL MINERALE» — because a warship, reduced to its essence, is refined mineral.
The montage is the argument: antiquity in marble presiding over modern armament, the same formula the campaign used when it set a Roman charioteer over a bank or a Venus over artificial silk. At the foot, spaced wide, the three surnames that made the company: ODERO TERNI ORLANDO.
Three names, one naval group
Odero-Terni-Orlando — formally the Società per la Costruzione di Navi, Macchine ed Artiglierie — operated as a private group from 1927 to 1933, when it passed into the orbit of IRI and state control. It joined the Odero and Orlando shipbuilding dynasties of Genoa and Livorno with the steelworks of Terni: hulls, machinery and artillery under one roof, which is exactly the inventory the photomontage displays. The Odero name also connects this sheet to another in the collection — the San Giorgio precision works of Genova-Sestri, founded by Attilio Odero, whose own sheet from this campaign we publish separately.
Marks and date
The collector attributes the design to Erberto Carboni, reading an EC monogram near the guns; on our scan the only small mark that resolves is the series’ circular agency roundel with «MILANO» beneath it. The sheet is published without an attribution and carries no printed date; the campaign and its naval subject sit in the late 1930s.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- Odero-Terni-Orlando — private group 1927–1933, then under IRI and state control
- Our companion article on the San Giorgio works founded by Attilio Odero
- The sheet itself, for the slogan and the montage.
