Gabriele Galantara

Gabriele Galantara (1865–1937), who signed his work Rata Langa – an anagram of his surname – was Italy's most influential political caricaturist around the turn of the twentieth century and the visual voice of Italian socialism.

In 1892 he co-founded the satirical weekly L'Asino with Guido Podrecca. The title came from the saying that the donkey is like the people: useful, patient and stubborn. His drawing is bold and poster-like, built on heavy contour and flat colour so the joke lands before a word is read. The magazine grew from about 22,000 copies in 1893 to 100,000 by 1907.

Il Papato in America appeared in L'Asino on 19 May 1908; the original is held at Cornell University Library. That same year a papal nuncio had the magazine banned from entry into the United States. The last cover Galantara drew before the fascists shut the paper down in 1925 was a caricature of Mussolini titled simply Lui – Him. He was arrested shortly afterwards.