The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover new images.
Female homosexual couple, pre-1893.
Giuseppe Vanetti, albumen print on cardboard.
This image was reproduced on the 1893 book by Lombroso and Ferrero Criminal Woman, The Prostitute, and the Normal Woman in the section dedicated to sexual degeneration. Lombroso writes: “Moreover, to show how much manhood can influence, it would be enough (to see) this photograph of a couple I caught in a prison, in which the one dressed as a man had most of both male and criminal characters together (…) so it is hard to believe she is a woman”.
This and other photographs of female criminal subjects were collected by Lombroso to be used in support of his thesis that saw in delinquent women the tendency to masculinize.
On the back we can read the name and the address of the photographer: “Vittorio Emanuele II Re D’Italia Premio di Pittura, G. Vanetti, Pittore e Fotografo, 7, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 1°, N°7. 2, Via Barolo 2 “ and the ink stamp of the “Laboratorio di Medicina Legale della R. Università di Torino Diretto dal Prof. Lombroso” (the Laboratory of Forensic Medicine of the Royal University of Turin directed by Prof. Lombroso).