aturnia and Vulcania were the longest-serving ocean liners Italy ever had. Built in Monfalcone in the mid-1920s, they served both in peacetime and wartime for 38 and 45 years, respectively. After the Second World War, they reopened the regular service between Italy and the United States.
By the 1950s, plans were already underway to replace them, but the sudden and unexpected loss of the Andrea Doria and the need to replace it with the Leonardo da Vinci delayed the replacement of Saturnia and Vulcania on the North American route.
When the ultra-modern sister ships Michelangelo and Raffaello finally took their place in 1965, the era of regular ocean liner travel was already coming to an end. The numbers, stark as they are, tell the story: in 1952, 837,719 passengers crossed the Atlantic by sea, while 432,272 chose to fly. By 1960, when construction of Michelangelo and Raffaello began, 867,795 people still took the ship, but a staggering 1,910,725 preferred the jumbo jet. Within a few years, sea routes would succumb to this new mode of transport.
Michelangelo and Raffaello briefly revived the pre-war glories of the Rex and Conte di Savoia, but only for a decade. The speed of photography compared to drawing is like that of the airplane to the ship. For the poster designed to launch these two ocean liners, Dario Bernazzoli chose to use a color photograph.
The closure of the regular transatlantic services marked the end of an era. With them, the tradition of the Italian graphic artists who promoted these ships also came to an end, leaving us with Angelo Battistella as the last and precious witness to this distinguished school.