The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover a new image.
A criminal man defined “atavistic” by Lombroso for his typical features of the face, end of the 19th Century.
Unidentified photographer, albumen print.
This portrait depicts a man incriminated for murder, rape, theft and robbery, life-sentenced to forced labour.
In his book The Criminal Man (1876), Lombroso presents his theory of the “born” or “atavistic” criminal, a sort of modern savage identified by a series of physical features such as a protruding head, particularly large ears, the asymmetry of the face and the skull, long arms, the prominence of the jaws or the jaws’ bones.