The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover new images.
Geltrude from Recanati, Santa Croce psychiatric hospital of Macerata, 1894.
Unidentified photographer, albumen print on cardboard.
Geltrude is institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital at the age of 78. The doctors describe her spending her days reciting psalms and litanies, whilst with a needle and thread, she embroiders religious scenes on fabric scraps and clothes. In this photograph she is portrayed at the age of 84, dressed in the clothes and handbag she created during her internment. The director of the psychiatric hospital of Macerata (central Italy), Gianditimo Angelucci, has given her the permit to dress as she wants although the hospital regulation obliges patients to wear uniforms.
The museum’s photographic archive preserves over 250 pictures coming from different psychiatric institutions all over Italy (Imola, Macerata, Racconigi, Reggio Emilia, Torino, Voghera). In the second half of the 19th century, photography becomes for psychiatrist one of the most important tools for the observation and the diagnosis of mental illness.