Forestry Guard, Italy, 1886, from the Military Series (N224) issued by Kinney Tobacco Company to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes 1888

This is an advertising card made in 1886 by Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. These cards were collected and traded, and this one depicts an Italian Forestry Guard. What can an image like this tell us about Italian society at the time? Well, 1886 was a time of great change in Italy. Just fifteen years earlier, in 1871, Rome had become the capital of a newly unified Italy. The Forestry Guard, then, would have represented the authority of this new nation state. The uniform, and the gun, stand for the power of the Italian government. But we might also ask what it means to show this figure against an abstract background, rather than in an actual forest. Does this abstraction further idealize the role of the guard? To understand this image, we need to know about the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, about Italian history, and about the function of advertising at the time. The meaning of this image changes depending on its historical context.