A hand between the torso and the abdomen covered by a vest or jacket: this posture, diffused on the official effigy of personalities lived at the turn of past centuries, evokes the gesture joined to the prayers uttered by the Athenian rhetorician Eschine or the intention to extract something from the pocket never sewn to the trousers in the Napoleonic era. This folklore inspired the priest Jean- Baptiste de La Salle, sanctified by Pope Leo XIII (24 May 1900), to compose the work “Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne” (1702). The gesture was taken up by the General and the entrepreneur Felice Bensa (Genoa, 22 January 1878 – 20 April 1963), authorities united by the Marengo plateau. It was 1906 and the Ligurian industrialist founded the anonymous company “Marengo” to produce the copper sulfate, the fungicide for the vines. The company founded on the capital of five hundred thousand lire, then raised to 15 million, grew on the site of the battle first almost lost by the French militias and then raised to the stature of nodal triumph for the Napoleonic epos. The chemical center of Marengo, still active, was then extended to the production of sulfuric acid and chemical fertilizers: The sales boom heralded the second place on the podium driven by Caffaro pasta and the German monopoly of artificial camphor covered by Italian production. Bensa, president of Confindustria Alessandria (1927 – 1932) and founder of “Portland-Casalesi” (the Monferrato cement and lime producer built on the capital of 1.5 million lire then raised to 20 million) was senator of the Kingdom of Italy in the eighteenth legislature (20 April 1929 – 19 January 1934).
