To the Editor

In his otherwise fairly interesting article on Gio Ponti's work for the Montecatini firm (“The Aestheticization of Mechanical Systems: Gio Ponti's Montecatini Headquarters, Milan, 1936–39,” JSAH 77, no. 2, June 2018), Manfredo di Robilant exonerates the architect from active involvement in the Italian Fascist regime by quoting a descendant of the Ponti family as saying that “unlike other architects, including Terragni, who presented their own architecture as explicitly Fascist, Ponti was never considered a camicia nera, or Blackshirt—a Fascist militant” (188). Contrasting Ponti with a “camicia nera à la Terragni” is at best off the mark, and at worst defamatory. The source cited without qualification is...