A new campaign by Italy’s tourism ministry (ENIT) is grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reasons after locals said it not only denigrated the nation’s proud cultural history but promoted tired stereotypes of the country.
Called “Open to Meraviglia” (Translation: Open to Wonder), the €9 million ($A15 million) campaign features a digital reimagining of the Roman goddess Venus as depicted in Sandro Botticelli’s 15th century renaissance masterpiece Birth of Venus; however, this time the ultra modern Venus is wearing a mini-skirt, holding a smart-phone and eating pizza.
The campaign also comes with an Emily in Paris-style Instagram account with 340,000 followers and counting. The page features photos of 2023 version of Venus posing in front of various Italian landmarks, such as the Colosseum and Pantheon.
Sandro Botticelli’s 15th century renaissance masterpiece Birth of Venus
With the Instagram handle @venereitalia23, an animated Venus tells her followers: “I’m 30… ok, maybe just a little bit older.”
She introduces herself as a “virtual influencer” and says: “I will be the image of Italy in the world”.
Worse still, an accompanying TVC (which you can watch below) shows a group of young people smiling on a sunlit patio and drinking vino in what is presented as a typical Italian scene.
However, eagle-eyed viewers spotted that the patio in question is actually in the Cotar region of Slovenia, close to the Italian border, and the bottle on the table has a Cotar wine label.
The offending work is via an agency called Armando Testa Communications Group and is set to make its international debut at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) tourism show in Dubai from May 1 to 4.
There are also concerns the agency didn’t secure the rights to use Sandro Botticelli’s image of Venus. Only recently the French designer Jean Paul Gaultier was sued for misusing the image on his garments.
According to Marco Testa, the campaign’s developer, “we hope that Botticelli’s Venus will become very popular with young people through this combination of art and digital technology. It’s a slightly different way of representing Italy and targeting younger tourism.”
Despite not even making to its official launch date, the campaign is already being ridiculed by Italians in a series of memes and social media posts. Many Italians already feel the country is being swamped by tourists (Venice, as an example) who are often ignorant and disrespectful to the nation’s incredible cultural history.
Art historian Tomaso Montanari labelled the campaign “grotesque” and said it was an “obscene” waste of money, while the culture ministry’s undersecretary Vittorio Sgarbi told La Repubblica, “I don’t want to contradict my colleagues too much. But ‘Open to Wonder?’ What is that? What language is that?”
Art historian Livia Garomersini told ArtNet: “Where is the art, where is the promotion in this hackneyed jumble of clichés?” She said the campaign “trivialises our heritage in the most vulgar way.”
However, Italy’s tourism minister Daniela Santanchè, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy Party, defended the work and labelled its critics “snobs” and said the depiction of Venus as an influencer was aimed at attracting young people.
Santanchè said that the project sells “our nation in an unseen way that has never been done before”.
“I consciously chose Botticelli’s Venus, an icon known throughout the world and a symbol of our Italian spirit,” she said.
Santanchè also speculated about why people have criticised the use of pizza in the computer generated images. “I don’t understand the criticism, pizza is famous all over the world, it is part of the Mediterranean diet and of our cuisine, which is appreciated, imitated, and copied all over the world,” she said. “Perhaps it is criticised by the slightly snobby and radical chic people who eat caviar and salmon.”
