The Gettatelli: Educational Dimensions of Institutionalized Care for Abandoned Newborns in Renaissance Tuscan Hospitals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7346/-fei-XXII-02-24_15Keywords:
15th century Tuscany, Foundlings and dumped babies, Social history of education, Childhood iconography, Institutionalized Renaissance childcare, Hospital of Santa Maria della ScalaAbstract
Methodological concerns about the use of visual sources in the social history of education prompt a re-evaluation of Ariès’ claim regarding the sentiment of childhood in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. The analysis of late 15th-century German and French illustrations reveals that newborns were cared for with affection, attending to both their health and moral needs. This study questions the extent of such sentiment: did it extend beyond the household to involve society as a whole? After reframing Ariès’ thesis through visual sources drawn on Early Modern French and German illustrations, the paper answers this by examining organized care for abandoned infants in 15th-century Tuscany, a region that pioneered the institutionalization of children surrendered by their families. The collective nature of this childcare is explored through linguistic shifts, the transition from outsourced nursing to residential wet nursing, and the ongoing struggle against poor sanitary conditions. Finally, visual analysis of frescoes from Siena’s Santa Maria della Scala hospital uncovers key insights: (i) care for abandoned children integrated moral, spiritual, and logistical concerns; (ii) advanced educational practices, including literacy, were present; and (iii) gendered divisions of labour and specialized staff played a crucial role. These findings suggest that institutionalized childcare operated as a Foucauldian dispositif, shaped by urbanization and the need for record-keeping, challenging the claim of some Ariès’ interpreters that medieval society was indifferent to childhood.
References
Albini, D. (1896). La questione degli esposti: Il brefotrofio di Roma. Casa Editrice Italiana.
Angelelli, W. (2019). La periodizzazione e i suoi fantasmi. Medioevo, Tardogotico, Rinascimento, riflessioni e case-studies. Hortus Artium Medievalium, 25(1), 120–128. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.HAM.5.118046
Ariès, P. (1960). L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime. Plon.
Ariès, P. (1962). Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (R. Baldick, Trans.). Vintage Books. https://archive.org/details/centuriesofchild00arie/
Barzanti, R. (2013). Review of Petra Pertici, ‘Siena quattrocentesca. Gli anni del Pellegrinaio nell’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala’, pref. Di R. Fubini, con un saggio di M. A. Rovida, Siena, Protagon, 2012, pp. 398. Archivio Storico Italiano, 171(2), 392–394. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26226219
Bell, M. (2021). On display: Poverty as infirmity and its visual representation at the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. In J. Henderson, F. H. Jacobs, & J. K. Nelson (Eds.), Representing infirmity: Diseased bodies in Renaissance Italy (pp. 71–92). Representing Infirmity: Diseased Bodies in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, London New York. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Bent, G. R. (2017). Public Painting and Visual Culture in Early Republican Florence (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316488973
Boldrini, E., & Parenti, R. (Eds.). (1991). Gli indicatori cronologici utilizzati nello studio degli elevati del Santa Maria. In F. Gabbrielli, Santa Maria della Scala: Archeologia e edilizia sulla piazza dello Spedale (pp. 97–112). All’Insegna del Giglio.
Bolzoni, L. (2002). La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena. Einaudi.
Boswell, J. (1988). The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. Pantheon.
Brackett, J. K. (2007). Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (review). The Catholic Historical Review, 93(1), 170–172. https://doi.org/10.1353/cat.2007.0068
Braudel, F. (2021). La dinamica del capitalismo (G. Gemelli, Trans.). Il Mulino.
Bruscoli, G. (1900). Lo Spedale di Santa Maria degli Innocenti di Firenze: Dalla sua Fondazione ai Giorni Nostri. Enrico Ariani. https://ia802706.us.archive.org/13/items/lospedaledisanta00brus/lospedaledisanta00brus.pdf
Calenda. (2021). Visual History: Academic journal ‘IDEA - Interdisciplinary Discourses, Education and Analysis’ [Text/html]. OpenEdition. https://doi.org/10.58079/174L
Cardini, F., & Russo, L. (2019). Homo viator: Il pellegrinaggio medievale. La Vela.
Cavallo, S. (1995). Charity and power in early modern Italy: Benefactors and their motives in Turin, 1541-1789. Cambridge University Press.
Cazes, H. (2009). Baths, Scrubs, And Cuddles: How To Bathe Young Infants According To Simon De Vallambert (1564). In C. Kosso & A. Scott (Eds.), The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance (pp. 149–170). BRILL. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004173576.i-538.32
Chazelle, C. M. (1990). Pictures, books, and the illiterate: Pope Gregory I’s letters to Serenus of Marseilles. Word & Image, 6(2), 138–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1990.10435425
Chiaselotti, P. (2020, October 20). I gettatèlli. La Storia e Le Storie. https://www.lastorialestorie.it/genealogie/gettatelli.htm
Chibuzor Onwubu, S., Singh, S., Vahed, A., & Kanny, K. (2018). Eggshells: From Waste to Medical Applications. In S. Ahmd, S. Kanchi, & G. Kumar (Eds.), Handbook of Biopolymers (1st ed., pp. 263–286). Jenny Stanford.
Cipolla, C. M. (1965). Four Centuries of Italian Demographic Development. In D. V. Glass & D. E. C. Eversley (Eds.), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography (pp. 570–587). Edward Arnold.
Dalena, M. (2021, September 20). I ‘figli della colpa’ nei brefotrofi italiani. Storica. https://www.storicang.it/a/i-figli-della-colpa-nei-brefotrofi-italiani_15324
Dekker, J. J. H. (2021). Dangerous, Seductive, and Innovative. Visual Sources for the History of Education. In S. Van Ruyskensvelde, G. Thyssen, F. Herman, A. Van Gorp, & P. Verstraete (Eds.), Folds of Past, Present and Future (pp. 383–404). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623451-020
Dekker, J. J. H., & Groenendijk, L. F. (2012). Philippe Ariès’s discovery of childhood after fifty years: The impact of a classic study on educational research. Oxford Review of Education, 38(2), 133–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2012.655033
di Bartolo, D. (1441). Accoglienza e educazione dei gettatelli e matrimonio di una figlia dello Spedale (Pellegrinaio) [Fresco]. Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/ArchitecturalOrLandscapeHeritage/0900403336
Drăgan, S. (2023). San Bernardino of Siena and His Local Impact on Italian Iconography: The Case of a Franciscan Intellectual Friar. In M. Cioba & A. Crivăț (Eds.), From Saint Thomas Aquinas to Petrarch and Erasmus: The Identity and Role of the Intellectual in the Middle Ages (pp. 121–142). Bucharest University Press.
Foucault, M. (1961). Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1st ed.). Plon.
Frost, T. (2019). The Dispositif between Foucault and Agamben. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 15(1), 151–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872115571697
Gabowitsch, M., & Topolska, A. (2023). Visual Literacy in History Education: Textbooks and Beyond. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 15(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.3167/jemms.2023.150101
Gavitt, P. (1993). Charity and children in Renaissance Florence: The Ospedale degli Innocenti (1410-1536). University of Michigan Press. https://archive.org/details/charitychildreni0000gavi
Gazzini, M. (2012). Ospedali nell’Italia medievale. Reti Medievali Rivista, 13, 211–237. https://doi.org/10.6092/1593-2214/338
Gioia, F. (2002). L’Opera Pia del Baliatico e il Pio Istituto di Maternità e dei Ricoveri [Università degli Studi di Milano]. https://www.tesionline.it/tesi/lettere-e-filosofia/l-opera-pia-del-baliatico-e-il-pio-istituto-di-maternit%C3%A0-e-dei-ricoveri/14282
Giroux, H. A. (2001). Cultural Studies as Performative Politics. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 1(1), 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/153270860100100102
Hopwood Griffiths, H. (2020). Self and Society. In R. Milliken (Ed.), A Cultural History of Hair in the Middle Ages (pp. 37–52).
Hunecke, V. (1988). I trovatelli di Milano: Bambini esposti e famiglie espositrici dal XVII al XIX secolo. Il Mulino.
Klapisch-Zuber, C. (1987). Women, family, and ritual in Renaissance Italy. University of Chicago Press.
Laufenberg, H. von. (1491). Versehung des leibs (HAB Wolfenbüttel ; Incunable). Erhard Ratdolt; Herzog August Bibliothek. http://diglib.hab.de/inkunabeln/167-9-poet/start.htm
Laumonier, L. (2017). De l’allaitement à l’éducation: Prendre soin d’enfants dans la région de Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge (1250-1500). Annales de Bretagne et Des Pays de l’Ouest, 124, 135–156. https://doi.org/10.4000/abpo.3700
Lemire, B., & Riello, G. (2006). East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Eurasia in the Early Modern Period (Working Paper 22/06; Working Papers of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN), p. 40). Global Economic History Network. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/22468/1/wp22.pdf
Leontidou, L. (1990). The Mediterranean city in transition: Social change and urban development. Cambridge University Press.
Lugarini, R. (2011). Il capitolo dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala: Aspetti istituzionali e riflessi documentari (Siena, fine XII-XIV secolo). Protagon.
Magenta, P. (1838). Appendice sui pubblici stabilimenti di beneficenza della città di Pavia. In Ricerche su’ le pie fondazioni e su’ l’ufficio loro a sollievo dei poveri: Con un’Appendice sui pubblici stabilimenti di beneficenza della Città di Pavia (pp. A1–A80). Bizzoni; Archive.Org. https://archive.org/details/ricerchesulepie00magegoog
Maître de Philippe de Gueldre. (1500). La mort de la nourrice entraîne celle de l’enfant. In M. d’Auvergne, Danse macabre des femmes (Français 995; p. 36/47). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits. http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc51257v
Marcelli, A. M. (2023). Charting the Entrudo: Ecopedagogy of Cultural Heritage in the European Outermost Region of the Azores. Pensa MultiMedia. https://www.pensamultimedia.it/libro/9791255680383
Melli, A. (2021). Emozioni tra le righe: Una lettura intima degli epistolari di Dora Del Bene, Margherita Datini e Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (secc. XIV-XV) [Università degli Studi di Padova]. https://thesis.unipd.it/handle/20.500.12608/29889
Miglionico, M. (2019). Dalla Luna all’alba: Memorie di famiglia e ruota degli esposti. Mathera, 7(3), 17–20. https://www.rivistamathera.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Miglionico-Dalla-Luna-all-alba-memorie-di-famiglia-e-ruota-degli-esposti-min.pdf
Minello, R. (2013). Itinerari di storia sociale dell’educazione occidentale—Volume Primo. Nuova Cultura. https://doi.org/10.4458/1846
Moriani, A. (1997). Fonti per la storia dell’assistenza e della sanità in territorio aretino: L’archivio dell’Ospedale di S. Maria Sopra i Ponti di Arezzo. Annali Aretini, 5, 81–98.
Moscati, B. (1772). Lettera di Bernardino Moscati all’Imperatrice d’Austria (Luoghi Pii, Parte Antica, busta 389). Archivio di Stato di Milano (ASM).
Musacchio, J. M. (2004). Florence and the Medici. Art History, 27(2), 305–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.02702006_1.x
Musti, F. (2023). Women, Piety, and Charity in the Brancacci Chapel Frescoes [Georgetown University]. http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1087030
Norman, D. (Ed.). (1995). Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400. Yale University Press in association with the Open University.
Ntani, G., Day, P. F., Baird, J., Godfrey, K. M., Robinson, S. M., Cooper, C., Inskip, H. M., & the Southampton Women’s Survey Study Group. (2015). Maternal and early life factors of tooth emergence patterns and number of teeth at 1 and 2 years of age. Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, 6(4), 299–307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2040174415001130
Origo, I. (1955). The Domestic Enemy: The Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Speculum, 30(3), 321–366. https://doi.org/10.2307/2848074
Orlandini, A. (1997). Gettatelli e pellegrini: Gli affreschi nella sala del Pellegrinaio dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala di Siena: Itinerario didattico su una summa figurativa dell’assistenza ospedaliera fra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Nuova immagine.
Palombarini, A. (2005). Gettatelli e trovatelli: I bambini abbandonati nelle Marche (XVI-XX secc.). Affinità elettive.
Paolillo, P., Di Palma, F., & Picone, S. (2020). The ‘baby hatch’ from history to the third millennium. Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine, 9(1), e090124. https://doi.org/10.7363/090124
Pellegrini, M. (2014). ‘More filiorum’: Il problematico inserimento dei giovani esposti in una familia ospedaliera del tardo medioevo. In I. Lori Sanfilippo & A. Rigon (Eds.), I giovani nel Medioevo: Ideali e pratiche di vita (pp. 59–88). Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo.
Pellegrini, M. (with Bartoli Langeli, A. & Santa Maria della Scala). (2006). La comunità ospedaliera di Santa Maria della Scala e il suo più antico statuto (Siena, 1305). Pacini.
Pozo Andrés, M. D. M. D., & Braster, S. (2020). The Visual Turn in the History of Education: Origins, Methodologies, and Examples. In T. Fitzgerald (Ed.), Handbook of Historical Studies in Education (pp. 893–908). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2362-0_53
Presciutti, D. B. (2011). Dead Infants, Cruel Mothers, and Heroic Popes: The Visual Rhetoric of Foundling Care at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome. Renaissance Quarterly, 64(3), 752–799. https://doi.org/10.1086/662849
Presciutti, D. B. (2013). Picturing Institutional Wet-Nursing in Medicean Siena. In J. G. Sperling (Ed.), Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, Practices (p. 129). Ashgate.
Pullan, B. S. (1971). Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State. Harvard University Press.
Pullan, B. S. (2016). Tolerance, regulation and rescue: Dishonoured women and abandoned children in Italy, 1300-1800. Manchester University Press.
Rossi, M. C. (2012). Storie di affetti nel Medioevo: Figli adottivi, ‘figli d’anima’, figli spirituali. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, 124(1). https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrim.230
Ruhräh, J. (1932). Heinrich von Louffenburg 1391–1460. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 43(1), 187. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.1932.01950010194018
Sá, I. dos G. (1992). The Circulation of Children in Eighteenth Century Southern Europe: The Case of the Foundling Hospital of Porto [Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute]. https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/5784/S%C3%A0_Isabel_DosGuimaraies.pdf?sequence=1
Sailko. (2017a). Pellegrinaio di Santa Maria della Scala—Detail of the Marriage of Daughter of the Hospital [Canon EOS 6D Photograph]. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Domenico_di_Bartolo,_Accoglienza,_educazione_e_matrimonio_di_una_figlia_dello_spedale,_1441-42,_09.jpg
Sailko. (2017b). Pellegrinaio di Santa Maria della Scala—Detail of the Rearing of Children [Canon EOS 6D Photograph]. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Domenico_di_Bartolo,_Accoglienza,_educazione_e_matrimonio_di_una_figlia_dello_spedale,_1441-42,_03_balia_e_istruzione.jpg
Sperling, J. G. (2013). Introduction. In J. G. Sperling (Ed.), Medieval and Renaissance Lactations: Images, Rhetorics, Practices (pp. 1–20). Ashgate.
Subramaniam, T., Fauzi, M. B., Lokanathan, Y., & Law, J. X. (2021). The Role of Calcium in Wound Healing. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 22(12), 6486. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22126486
Takahashi, T. (2003). Il Rinascimento dei trovatelli: Il brefotrofio, la città e le campagne nella Toscana del XV secolo. Edizioni di storia e letteratura.
Terpstra, N. (2005). Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.60316
Tilly, L. A., Fuchs, R. G., Kertzer, D. I., & Ransel, D. L. (1992). Child Abandonment in European History: A Symposium. Journal of Family History, 17(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/036319909201700101
Vauchez, A. (1978). Assistance et charité en Occident, XIIIe-XVe siècles. In V. Barbagli Bagnoli (Ed.), Domanda e consumi: Livelli e strutture (nei secoli XIII-XVIII) (pp. 151–162).
Wallentine, A. (2024, February 13). A history of art in hospitals. Wellcome Collection: Stories. https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/ZcDDSBAAACAAKL-_
Warr, C. (2004). Clothing, charity, salvation and visionary experience in fifteenth‐century Siena. Art History, 27(2), 187–211. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.02702001.x
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Federica Gualdaroni, Andrea Mattia Marcelli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Formazione & insegnamento is distributed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
For further details, please refer to our Repository & Archiving Policy, as well as our Copyright & Licensing Terms.
