On a much more popular level, there's a vast speechless capability in Italy to communicate by standard expressions and gestures, with a common core and regional add-ons. You may very synthetically express complex concept and their nuances and even silently make statements.
I cannot say if ancient Latins, with their most effective and condensate use of language, had also a similar, wide and precise gesture vocabulary, (probably they did considering their military needs and effectiveness), but we still have a most developped gesture language core surviving across generations.

Now here's a funny video with a sort of lesson number one of basic Speechless Italian for Tourists.
I cannot say if it may be useful for expressive paintings or comics but I think it's worthless to enjoy and laugh at it, if You like.
I can grant this vocabulary little sample it's correct and there's no bad word. LOL
It's therefore neither a picturesque and completely wrong representation of Italian gesture speaking (as on foreign movies) nor the ostentatious and conceptually poor conventional gesture language common to many comedies and commercial productions in US or ridiculous/ handicap-like gestures I often see as shared by rappers and hi-hopper all over the world by emulation and, sometimes, to integrate some sort of personality gap.

http://www.lastampa.it/2016/05/02/mu...II/pagina.html