The Dictator Stays in the Picture: The Forgotten History of a Controversial Mural

• Published in: The international journal of the image 2014, Vol.4 (2), p.43-51
• Main Authors: DiMaggio, Kenneth, Antonucci, Carl
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Murals
• ISSN: 2154-8560; 2154-8579
• DOI: 10.18848/2154-8560/CGP/v04i02/44101

Italian-Canadian painter Guido Nincheri painted over two hundred church murals and church-paintings during his lifetime. The Canadian Encyclopedia notes how “Nincheri’s frescos are also now winning more attention.” Yet one of Nincheri’s frescos will always cause him controversy. On the cupola of the Church of the Madonna della Difesa in Montreal, Nincheri was commissioned to paint a mural celebrating The Lateran Treaty, for which Mussolini recognized the Vatican as a separate state. As a result, Mussolini features prominently in this mural, as a man on horseback no less (though as his grandson notes, appearing more befuddled than grand: “Look at the expression of Il Duce. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘What am I doing here?’”) Nevertheless, Nincheri’s fresco did briefly cause him to be placed in an internment camp during World War II. Having convinced Canadian authorities he was pressured to paint in Il Duce, he was released and would then go onto a career painting numerous religious paintings throughout churches in North America. Curiously, his fresco depicting Mussolini would survive—a contrast with another mural that featured a controversial leader in Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, initially commissioned to hang at New York City’s Rockefeller Center. But when the Mexican painter refused to take out the image of Lenin in this mural, his work was destroyed. Why was Nincheri’s controversial political leader allowed to remain, and not Rivera’s? More importantly, do art works depicting controversial historical figures, have a right to remain in their original creations, as their artists intended? Is posthumous censorship or destruction of such works, more harmful and even dangerous, than allowing such controversial works to be exhibited without alteration that might have valid justifiable reasons?