Tempo (Italian magazine)

Tempo (Italian: Time) was an illustrated weekly news magazine published in Milan, Italy, between 1939 and 1976 with a temporary interruption during World War II.

Tempo

Cover of the first issue, June 1939
Former editors	Alberto Mondadori Indro Montanelli
Categories	News magazine
Frequency	Weekly
Founded	1939
First issue	9 June 1939
Final issue	1976
Company	Mondadori Palazzi
Country	Italy
Based in	Milan
Language	Italian
ISSN	1128-2959
OCLC	436686743

History and profile

Tempo was first published on 9 June 1939,^[1][2] being the first full colour illustrated Italian magazine.^[3] It was subtitled as Settimanale di politica, informazione, letteratura e arte (Italian: Political, informational, literary and art weekly).^[4] The founding company was Mondadori.^[2] The magazine was modelled on the American magazines Life^[2] and Newsweek.^[5]

The headquarters of Tempo was in Milan.^[6] By 1942 The magazine had editions published in eight different languages,^[2] including Albanian, Croatian, French, Greek, Rumanian, Spanish, German and Hungarian.^[7] The German edition existed between 1940 and 1943 and was also published by Mondadori.^[4]

On 8 September 1943 Tempo stopped publication following the occupation of northern Italy by German army during World War II.^[3][8] Mondadori sold the magazine to Aldo Palazzi in 1946.^[9] Then the magazine was relaunched and was both owned and published by Palazzi.^[6][10] During this period it held a centrist political stance.^[6] In the 1950s Tempo was less sentimental and adopted a progressive and secular political stance.^[11]

Tempo sold 500,000 copies in 1955 making it one of the most read magazines in Italy.^[12] In the 1960s the magazine frequently carried political and news articles with moderate and conservative tones.^[13] In 1976 the magazine ceased publication.^[14]

Editors and contributors

Tempo was edited by Alberto Mondadori, son of Arnoldo Mondadori.^[7][15] Indro Montanelli was the first editor-in-chief of the magazine.^[7] From its start in 1939 to September 1943 Bruno Munari served as the art director for the magazine and for another Mondadori title, Grazia.^[16][17] The early contributors for Tempo were Massimo Bontempelli, Curzio Malaparte,^[9] Lamberti Sorrentino, and Salvatore Quasimodo.^[8] In the late 1960s Pier Paolo Pasolini was the editor of an advice column named Il caos (Italian: Chaos).^[18] The magazine also included the work by photographers John Philiphs who previously worked for Life, and Federico Patellani.^[8]

Content

Major sections of the magazine included politics, news, literature and art.^[3] Although it was modeled on Life, unlike it Tempo covered much more political topics.^[3]

The cover of its 22nd issue (dated 16–22 June 1946) became the symbol of the freshly-proclaimed Italian Republic. The photo, taken by the magazine's photographer Federico Patellani (1911–1977), features a smiling young woman holding an issue of Corriere della Sera newspaper with the headline "È nata la repubblica Italiana" (Italian: The Italian republic is born), with her head sticking out through the newspaper.^[19] The woman was identified in 2016 as Anna Iberti (1922–1997), who at the time worked as a clerk in administration in the socialist newspaper Avanti!.^[20][21]

In 1948 Tempo published the interview with the Italian bandit Salvatore Giuliano by the American journalist Michael Stern which was originally published in True magazine in 1947.^[11]