A First World War air pilot, a grieving Contessa, a genius engraver: these are the key elements in a fascinating story that eventually produced the Ferrari Prancing Horse, one of the world’s most recognised corporate symbols. And it all began at a road race in northern Italy a century ago this very year
When the 25-year-old racing driver removed his goggles and brushed off forty-four kilometres of road dust all he had in mind was receiving the trophy for the 1923 Circuito del Savio GP in northern Italy.
It was the very first victory at the wheel for a little known young racer: Enzo Ferrari.
But the Savio GP would also prove pivotal in his life and career for other reasons. It was the event where he first met a certain Count Enrico Baracca.
The two men immediately struck up what would become a lasting friendship, and at some point in the following years it was the Count's wife, Contessa Paolina Biancoli, who personally urged the up-and-coming young racer to adopt the symbol that had been famously sported upon the bi-plane of her beloved son, Francesco. He had been a revered First World War air pilot, killed in action in 1918.
The, still grieving, Contessa assured Enzo that it would bring him good fortune. That dramatic fuselage symbol was a rearing black stallion.
A triptych of metal badges reveals the variety of graphic features and symbolism that were considered along the way (all images courtesy of O.M.E.A. archives)
A version of the symbol did appear on an Alfa Romeo competing for the Scuderia Ferrari team at Spa Francorchamps in 1932, reportedly designed by Gino Croari. But it wasn't until 1947, some twenty-four years after that serendipitous meeting at the Savio GP, that Enzo Ferrari saw his new factory’s first car, the now legendary 125 S, emerge from the Maranello gates sporting the distinctive prancing horse upon its badge. It would go on to race for the first time that May in Piacenza.
Two years earlier, in 1945, when Enzo had begun establishing his factory, he had been determined that the new company would have a distinctive emblem. There were likely some early in-house designs.
But, ever the perfectionist, Enzo sought out one of Italy’s greatest twentieth-century artistic engravers, Eligio Gerosa, in Milano.
Their paths had undoubtedly already crossed when Enzo raced for Alfa Romeo, for whom Gerosa’s firm supplied its enamel twisted-snake badges. Plus, the two men shared an admiration for Baracca, with Gerosa founding a Baracca Association to keep the pilot’s memory alive. Indeed, Gerosa had already evolved the Baracca black horse symbol for the Association, notably giving it an upturned tail.
The final version, mounted on the legendary 125 S of 1947, the first ever Ferrari car
In 1949 Gerosa’s company was taken over by O.M.E.A. – Officine Meccaniche E Artistiche – owned by the Milanese Candiani family, the famous designer still on board. Today, O.M.E.A. company archives reveal just how close the collaboration was between Ferrari and Gerosa, who died in 1978, and contain fascinating evidence of the evolution of what would become the famous Ferrari corporate emblem. Now in his eighties, company chairman Emilio Candiani well remembers Enzo’s visits to the workshop, and many a lunch with the Ferrari founder at the ‘Il Cavallino’ restaurant at Maranello during a thirty-year collaboration.
One key archive document is a Gerosa sketch whose delicate hand-drawn detailing has a distinctly Da Vinci-esque aspect to it.
Older hands at the Candiani workshop say it was Enzo Ferrari himself who personally requested a handwritten note be added to the drawing. The crucial instruction, that can still be seen in the bottom right corner of Gerosa's design, reads: 'Invertire il cavallo’– 'turn the horse around’. It captures the very moment that the embryonic corporate symbol was definitively set forever facing left, as it had done from the earliest years and has proudly done ever since on Ferrari road and racing cars around the world.
“The design evolution saw the horse gradually become slimmer, more elegant,” explains company Vice-Chairman Luigi Candiani, Emilio’s son. “It moved away from an earlier, much chunkier horse, the ‘Romagnolo’ version you might say,” he laughs, referencing the famously irresistible cuisine of Maranello’s home region of Emilia-Romagna.
The original metal mould from which the badge was first created
Indeed, the nascent badge’s background purposely adopted a distinctive bright yellow to associate itself with the official civic colour of nearby Modena. “But mostly it was Enzo’s ideas that drove things,” recalls Emilio Candiani today. For example, an early proposal for the 125 S badge showed three curved lines at the top, in Italian national colours. “But I remember Enzo told Gerosa, ‘No, I don’t want curves, they remind me of Bugatti grilles. Give me straight lines!’”
The horse’s face also gradually became more finer featured. “At one point, Enzo wanted the hoof to be up in the air, not resting on the lettering. He demanded of Gerosa: ‘me la faccia che voli’ – make it fly for me’,” chuckles Emilio. A wall plaque now recognises those talented Candiani artisans, outside the historic workshop in Via Albani, Milan. Emilio Candiani’s own career has been recognised with the honorary title of ‘Cavaliere’ – Knight of Industry.
Emotion is his voice, Cavaliere Candiani says: “For our part, we are very proud to have contributed to one of the most famous symbols in the world. And it’s an all-Italian story. Enzo as a man was always very professional, well prepared. The thing I remember about him was how much he believed in his project. It was touching. And he was always looking ahead.”