La brigantessa
Have no information on this particular photo; however, the style mirrors those taken of Michelina Di Cesare (see comments). Michelina was executed by the "Regio Esercito" -- the army of northern Italy that brought about the single Italian state. Her naked and tortured body was left in the public square of Mignano as a warning to the population.
The photographs of Michelina are clearly propagandistic and there is speculation that they were actually commissioned by the Bourbons (The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) in their struggle against the Regio Esercito, or the House of Savoy. She represents a kind of "italianità", an identity that was being threatened by the "foreign" forces from the north. She is dressed in traditional clothes of the "Ciociaria," the area between Naples and Rome.
The history of the brigands in Italy is immensely complicated. During this period they fought, for the most part, a guerrilla war in defense of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The suppression of the brigands led to some terribly bloody massacres; the residents of Pontelandolfo, near Benevento, very close to my own hometown of origin, were executed or burned alive in their homes.
The defeat of the brigands and the fall of the Bourbons led directly to the first great wave of emigration from Italy to the United States in the 1860's and 1870's.
But since the great majority of these emigrants, including my great-grandfather, returned to Italy, they must have found the America of those times extremely inhospitable.
La brigantessa
Have no information on this particular photo; however, the style mirrors those taken of Michelina Di Cesare (see comments). Michelina was executed by the "Regio Esercito" -- the army of northern Italy that brought about the single Italian state. Her naked and tortured body was left in the public square of Mignano as a warning to the population.
The photographs of Michelina are clearly propagandistic and there is speculation that they were actually commissioned by the Bourbons (The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) in their struggle against the Regio Esercito, or the House of Savoy. She represents a kind of "italianità", an identity that was being threatened by the "foreign" forces from the north. She is dressed in traditional clothes of the "Ciociaria," the area between Naples and Rome.
The history of the brigands in Italy is immensely complicated. During this period they fought, for the most part, a guerrilla war in defense of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The suppression of the brigands led to some terribly bloody massacres; the residents of Pontelandolfo, near Benevento, very close to my own hometown of origin, were executed or burned alive in their homes.
The defeat of the brigands and the fall of the Bourbons led directly to the first great wave of emigration from Italy to the United States in the 1860's and 1870's.
But since the great majority of these emigrants, including my great-grandfather, returned to Italy, they must have found the America of those times extremely inhospitable.