Fragment of the ensign of the Kingdom of Italy.
The remaining portions of this hand-sewn wool Italian ensign date from last third the 19th century. This fragment is a variant because it omits the blue border around the Savoy arms of the official version of the flag the Kingdom of Italy adopted in 1861. The ornate embellishments on the crown and vernacular construction indicate private rather than official use.

The Italian colors have their genesis during the Napoleonic Wars, but took the vertical orientation of the stripes from the tricolor of France when the Cisalpine Republic adopted the flag in 1798. The Kingdom of Italy continued to use the red, white and green tricolor of the 1848 Kingdom of Sardinia.

In the 19th century green was a fugitive dye, harsh, unstable and very difficult to make fast. Green color often faded and degraded and could cause fabric to disintegrate. The chemicals used to make the color Emerald green, also known as Parisian Green, were very poisonous and were sometimes used to kill rats in the sewers of Paris. As a result of this textile denigration caused by green dye, there are many 19th century Italian flags in museum collections, which are missing the green portion. Today the Italian flag on land is the unadorned tricolor.

Provenance: Acquired as is, with one third of the flag missing in Venice in 1982.

ZFC Noteworthy Flag

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