Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, on his first visit to Italy, brazenly wore a picture of a legendary resistance hero whom Italian occupiers hanged in 1931, but later hailed the former colonial ruler for apologising for its past.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi personally welcomed Gaddafi on Wednesday on a trip Rome hopes will close a painful chapter in the two countries' past, and the Libyan leader obliged by praising Italy's efforts and a $5 billion reparations deal.
"Italy is the only former colonial state today, the only state, that we cannot reprimand any more," he said at a news conference where he spoke at length about colonial-era crimes.
"It has cleaned up, purified, its imperialist past."
The visit by Gaddafi, his first to Italy since taking power in a 1969 coup, is one of the few to the West since economic sanctions were lifted after Libya vowed to stop sponsoring terrorism.
Rome has pulled out all the stops for Gaddafi, whose North African country supplies a quarter of Italy's oil and is a source of much-needed capital for Italian companies suffering from the global financial crisis.
But, to the chagrin of some of his Italian hosts, Gaddafi arrived with a picture pinned to his chest that was a stark reminder of Italy's past as a repressive colonial power.
To the right of a battery of multi-coloured insignia on his military jacket was a picture of Libyan resistance hero Omar al-Mukhtar in chains alongside his Italian captors.
"For us, that image is like the cross some of you wear," he later told the news conference, likening it to the cross that Jesus Christ bore.
Just for good measure Gaddafi brought along al-Mukhtar's son, now an elderly man who had to be helped off the plane by a bevy of security men.
"A long, painful chapter with Libya has been closed," Berlusconi told reporters at the airport before Gaddafi went to a state lunch with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.
Berlusconi said the two leaders had agreed that Libya would supply more oil to Italy, while Italian firms would be "in pole position" to win infrastructure contracts in Libya.
Symbolically, Italian television will screen on Thursday "Lion of the Desert", a 1981 film on al-Mukhtar which has until now been banned in Italy.