Fotografo non identificato, stampa all’albumina

The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover a new image.

The russian anthropologist Pauline Tarnowsky, portraited in Saint Petersburgh at the end of the 19thcentury.

In 1889 Pauline Tarnowsky published the first book ever written on female delinquency. Lombroso drew on her work for his treaty “La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale”, coauthored with Guglielmo Ferrero and published in 1893. Tarnowsky kept with the scientist a relationship of collaboration and exchange sending him many photographs of Russian female criminals now present in the museum’s photographic archive.

The picture reveals an inscription by Tarnowsky to Nina, wife of Lombroso: “A la chère, charmante et très aimable Madame Nina Lombroso, souvenir affectueux P. Tarnowsky. St. Petersbourg, 19 Novembre 1891”.