The Curators’ Quaderno - Girls in the Innocenti Archive

the

curators’

quaderno

GIRLS IN

THE INNOCENTI

ARCHIVE

Florence, 1900–1921

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the

curators’

quaderno

GIRLS IN THE INNOCENTI ARCHIVE

Florence, 1900–1921

Publication sponsors: Connie and Doug Clark

Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle

Publisher: The Florentine Press

tcq series editor: Linda Falcone

Book design: Marco Badiani

Book layout: Leo Cardini

Printer: Cartografica Toscana

colophon

ISBN 978-88-97696-41-4

2025 B’Gruppo Srl, Prato

First edition: November 2025

Series: The Curators’ Quaderno

© Calliope Arts Foundation

All rights reserved

Printed in Florence, Italy

This issue is published in conjunction with the Innocenti

Institute in Florence, for the project ‘Girls in the Innocenti

Archive’ and the museum exhibit of the same name

(14 November 2025 to March 15, 2026) at the Innocenti

Museum. The project was created as a partnership between

the Innocenti Institute and the Calliope Arts Foundation,

thanks to the generous support of donors Connie and

Doug Clark and Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle.

What is tcq? The Curators’ Quaderno is a collection of

notebook-style publications, conceived by the Calliope Arts

Foundation, in collaboration with The Florentine Press, to

raise awareness of women’s contributions to the fields of art,

science and social history.

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To participate in the adopt-a-token restoration campaign:

https://www.fondazioneinnocenti.com/adotta-un-segnale

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The Innocenti Hospital’s historical

archive comprises more than 13,000

documents and objects from the

thirteenth to the twentieth centuries,

including ‘tokens’ that parents left

with their foundling children, as proof

of identity. Located in the ancient

refectory, the archive hosts one of

the world’s most unique archival

collections, that of the city’s foundling

children – mostly girls.

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“Not long before Filippo Brunelleschi

began Florence’s Cathedral, he was

commissioned to build a foundling

hospital in Piazza Santissima Annunziata

(1419–1428), and the children it took

in were to live in a lofty and graceful

place that recalled protection, not

abandonment. That was how Brunelleschi

came to design the first-ever example of

Renaissance architecture.”

Linda Falcone

“The cobalt blue and white roundels by Andrea della Robbia

(1487) which feature on the loggia of Brunelleschi’s Ospedale

degli Innocenti – now home to the Innocenti Museum and

Institute – depict ‘realistic’ terracotta babies who squirm

out of their swaddling clothes, suggesting different phases

of development. As a symbol of one of the world’s earliest

foundling hospitals, Della Robbia’s sweet babes fall short in one

little-known but tremendously significant detail: most of them

could have been girls.

In Florence in 1419, the year of the hospital’s commission,

daughters were an expense, not a source of income, and this

fact remained true until the early 1900s. Girls would leave home

at marriageable age, and the dowry wealth they subtracted

from their original household’s purse often took decades to

pinch together. Their brothers could excel in a passed-down

profession, even achieve renown based on some talent they

were born with, but girls were barred from nearly all of society’s

productive sectors, which explains why most of the Innocenti’s

gettatelli, ‘little throwaways’, were female, even in the case of

legitimate children.”

Linda Falcone

Project coordinator and tcq editor

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Baby in Swaddling Clothes,

Andrea della Robbia, 1487

Innocenti Museum

Next page:

The Men’s Courtyard,

Innocenti Institute

Phs. Marco Badiani

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“On my first visit to the Innocenti Museum and Institute, I was struck by a

600-year-old painting, Madonna of the Innocents, which depicts Mary as a

young mother sheltering children of various ages beneath a capacious cloak.

My interest in, and admiration for, the institution grew as I came to understand

that this ‘logo’ was not merely a beautiful image, but a representation of

the humanist philosophy guiding its work. The first abandoned infant to

be admitted to the Ospedale degli Innocenti was Agata Smeralda on 5

February 1445. We know this because the Innocenti meticulously recorded

the name and date of every child who passed through its ‘foundling wheel’,

or was tearfully handed over by a desperate mother. Despite being a

secular institution, the Innocenti gave the children a Christian baptism

soon after their arrival. This would ensure their ultimate acceptance into

society, with full rights of Florentine citizenship. The institution provided

for all the foundlings’ material needs, from medical care and nutrition to

basic education and (for boys) some training in trades. Over the centuries,

the practices of the Innocenti evolved. The detailed records kept by the

institution not only reflected social transformations, they provided a basis

for developing new ways of thinking about child abandonment and how best

to meet the needs of children whose families were unable to raise them.

Today, the Innocenti organises day-care centres, provides help for children

in crisis and offers support to keep families together. It is not an accident

that an institution which, from its earliest days, recognised the individuality

of each child in its care, is now a leader in promoting children’s rights

throughout the world, in part, through its collaboration with UNICEF. This

project reminds us that the value we place on the most vulnerable members

of society is a measure of our humanity.”

Margie MacKinnon

Co-founder, Calliope Arts Foundation

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“The Innocenti Archives is among

the most precious and complete in

Florence, and the children’s arrival

and subsequent lives are not the

only ones worth documenting. In its

ledgers for Balie e bambini and Affari

per creature, there are details of the

women who breastfed, cared for

and mothered their wards over the

course of centuries, and this precious

documentation makes this archive

– tokens and all – one of the earliest

repositories of women’s social history

in Italy and the world.”

Linda Falcone

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“Foundling children came with tokens comprised of bits of jewellery

and carefully cut pendants. They arrived with a tied ribbon, a shred of

shiny fabric or a halved button. Sometimes, the only evidence of their

identity was half a walnut shell or a bit of cork. These tokens were the

first-ever ‘identity cards’, and potentially allowed parents to reclaim the

child someday, by presenting their token’s ‘other half’. They were quasimagical

talismans thought to guarantee their child’s protection, and

hopefully, survival. Minute religious images were a favourite, as were

baubles laced with certain kinds of beads or stones – such as fragments

of coral, well-known for warding off the evil eye. With the advent of

photography, some of the children were given folded paper ‘tokens’

torn in two. Family photographs were very rare, printed pictures more

common. ‘Rich or poor’, the tokens are afforded the same inherent value

at the Innocenti, as it was with the children it cared for.”

Linda Falcone

Project coordinator and tcq editor

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Identity token

Basilissa, 1902

Phs. Marco Badiani

“Many early twentieth-century parents

who brought their children to the Innocenti

had no idea that foundling tokens were

no longer ‘necessary’. Perhaps they were

told by their female elders about age-old

traditions linked to turning one’s children

over to the Institute’s care.

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Lucia Ricciardi

Archival curator, Innocenti Institute

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“‘Girls in the Innocenti Archive’ is designed as a research

and conservation project, that also involves digitalising

and exhibiting a sampling of the collection, for purposes

of preservation, awareness and enjoyment. Our support

aims to provide the museum and institute with a

framework, through which to gain knowledge about

their archival holdings, as well as to help them find ways

to share this treasure trove with the public. We hope

people come away with enormous respect for how the

Innocenti impacted the lives of those most in need of

protection. Museum curators and directors were keen

on starting with the 1900s, a century that receives

minimal attention in Florence, especially from donors.

We are delighted to support the exploration of the city’s

cultural history – these tokens – as a token of the love we

feel for Firenze, from its great art, to its lesser-known

treasures, even those that fit in the palm of one’s hand.”

Connie and Doug Clark

Project donors

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Identity token, Lida, 1910

Ph. Marco Lanza

“The project is focused on the Innocenti’s girls and its initial phase has

involved the census of our early twentieth-century tokens, dating from

1900 to 1921. Among the documents associated with the 120 tokens,

there are questionnaires filled out by medical personnel in the early

1900s. Inclusion of the mother’s data was considered mandatory, while

the father’s was optional. These documents were created so that

the Innocenti Institute could understand whether or not a foundling’s

mother had suffered from venereal diseases, like syphilis, or had other

relevant health problems.

We are choosing from an initial pool of 300 cases, whose files contain

both physical tokens and paper documentation. The tokens themselves

are not dissimilar from those in our nineteenth-century collection.

Yet, from the turn of the century onwards, as official paperwork

became a mandatory condition determining the Institute’s acceptance

of children, the presence of tokens diminished considerably. After

the anonymous abandonment of children became illegal in 1875, and

the Innocenti’s grated ‘foundling’s window’ closed forever, parents no

longer needed a severed coin or a bauble cut in half, as a means of

reclaiming their child. When tokens stopped being considered a child’s

identity card, they became – as the name itself suggests – a sign of their

mother’s affection or symbolic protection.”

Antonella Schena

Head of Archives and Museum Cultural Activities and Services

Innocenti Institute

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“1900 to 1921 was a time of great change, as far as social services

for women are concerned, albeit policies were usually formed

from the child’s perspective, in view of their survival, not

necessarily the woman’s. At the dawn of the twentieth century,

the Innocenti started studying solutions to keep mothers and

babies together, by providing them with external services, like

childcare. As physicians began to see maternal breast milk as the

primary safeguard against infant mortality, national policies were

rolled out throughout Italy, to make breast-feeding by mothers

mandatory for the first few months of a child’s life. The Innocenti

Institute hosted two of the first conferences on this topic. Wetnurses

became a thing of the past, even if artificial milk available

at the time – usually goat milk – could offer no real guarantees of

an infant’s survival.

Our history is comprised of many small stories that are difficult to

reconstruct. For ‘Girls in the Innocenti Archive’, we are not talking

about complete histories or literary narratives. We have sparse

information, yet it was collected and it has been preserved.

Without this archive, we would know nothing of them. It still fills

me with wonder to see how the Institute has managed to maintain

these ties through time, unlike other historic institutions of its

kind. In many ways, we are looking at the history of the poor, the

history of social welfare – an important story to reconstruct and,

ultimately, to understand.”

Antonella Schena

Head of Archives and Museum Cultural Activities and Services

Innocenti Institute

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Identity token, Amelia B., 1900

Next page: Amelia R., 1904

Phs. Marco Badiani

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“What most moved me about the project?

The thought of a mother taking beads from

her own necklace, to give to her daughter,

tucking them away in her swaddling

clothes. These tokens represent the pain

of abandonment, of being unwanted – or of

not being able to feed a child – but they also

represent the hope of homecoming, the

chance to reclaim one’s daughter following

a shift in circumstances. Each token comes

with a description of how the children arrived

and ‘what they came with’. Initially, with the

restoration, we planned on removing some

of the stains found on the ribbons, until we

learned that many of them were already

stained, lacerated or frayed before being

found with the little girls who were taken in.

We left these signs of wear and tear… they

belong to the babies’ family of origin.”

There are thousands of

tokens in need of attention

and care; the collection has

some 40,000 tokens of all

kinds, saved over the course

of nearly five centuries.

Rossella Lari

Restorer

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“Our goal is to give long life and

far-reaching accessibility to

these tokens as a whole – both the

objects and their documents. We

have to consider that even today,

families and individuals come to

the Innocenti in search of their

identity. It is important for our

work to give these people hope and

the chance to discover who they

are. These simple actions of pure

conservation have given vibrance

to the tokens, extending their

lives. Archival photography and

digitalisation were a sacrosanct

element of this project, so that the

paper archive can be pored over

freely, even from afar.”

Rossella Lari

Restorer

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Restorers at work:

Rossella Lari (head restorer),

Merj Nesi (metals),

Federica Favaloro (fabrics)

Ph. Cinestudio

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“For a project like this one the team is

important. Sometimes, we worked on a single

object with four to six hands. Even something

like the rust of a staple that has been holding

a document together for 100 years can be

compromising. With certain coins or pendants,

conservator Merj Nesi used porcupine quills,

because they remove undesired alterations of

metal alloys without scratching. Some of the

cushion-like tokens needed a bit of sewing,

but none in this batch were ‘unsewn’ enough

to justify our ripping one apart to extract the

folded paper we know is inside… because in 15

of the 24 brevi we looked at, you could feel their

corners. Although radiographic techniques

were used for diagnostic testing, there is no

method to read a folded note, through fabric,

even in cases when the fabric is worn to the

point of transparency.”

Rossella Lari

Restorer

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Identity token, Bianca, 1904

Ph. Marco Badiani

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“Throughout its multi-century history, the

community of the Innocenti Institute has been

marked by the presence of numerous women:

not just the girls who were taken in, but also

wet nurses, nannies, and cooks, as well as silk

and carpet weavers, since the institution was

founded and originally managed by the silk

guild. Although the management of the hospital

was traditionally entrusted to men, a number of

female figures called ‘ministers’ held important

roles: the gatekeepers who guarded the

complex’s entrances, the sacristans who took

care of its religious activities, the nurses who

assisted the sick, including female apothecaries

and ‘medics’. For centuries, women’s work was

indeed the backbone of the institution, even

though their contributions remained in the

background for a long time.

The early 20th century marked a crucial

moment in the history of women and children,

but change is a process, and many things

remained unchanged at the Innocenti for a

long time. Yet women continued to play a

central role, as caring for children was still

considered the ‘natural prerogative’ of women,

the operational and emotional fulcrum of an

institution that had been the natural guardian of

childhood, for those in need, for centuries.”

Arabella Natalini

Scientific director, Innocenti Museum

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“Baby Calliope’s token, like many

others, involves fabric restoration,

because of its pink bow threaded

through two Italian coins with holes

in the middle, one of which is cut. A

metals conservator was involved as

well. In this time period, each baby

had eight to ten sheets attached to

their case – and the paper has its

own set of needs from a restoration

point of view.”

Lucia Ricciardi

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“During the first two decades of the 1900s, the Innocenti

accepted roughly 700 children per year, 300 of whom

arrived with tokens, called segnali, or ‘signs’ in Italian. The

choice of which ones to restore depends on several factors;

some are chosen for their aesthetic quality, and others are

selected for the story they tell. We’d also like to contextualise

these tokens, and see what story they collectively tell, as a

reflection of their historical period. I found documents for a

baby called Calliope among the tokens selected. She is the

project’s namesake child!

We have an annotation about her father and know he was

a 25-year-old farmer. Her mother, aged 23, is described

as follows: ‘Poor. She attends to rural tasks’. Both parents

were from the Mugello area, where Calliope was born and

reportedly baptised. Calliope’s token includes a ‘breve’, a

miniature cushion-like object, once used for devotional

purposes. It likely contains prayers or other kinds of texts,

but we’d never looked inside them. These messages are

tucked inside the object, and sewn up tight before being

further sealed with trimming. They constitute the token’s

secret, which we respect.”

Lucia Ricciardi

Archival curator, Innocenti Institute

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“One of our goals was to create a small exhibit bringing together restored

tokens, archival documents, and an overview of the activities carried out

to preserve and pass on their memory. Designing an exhibit that would

give proper shape to this complex process required a good measure

of care. There is a plethora of information to convey, but the texts had

to be as brief as possible. The lighting had to be soft – allowing paper

documents and textiles to be on show – but bright enough to enable

visitors to see and read them... Developing a space to spotlight archival

elements in a museum such as ours is by no means simple.

I’ll admit that we went back on our decision several times, discussing

it among museum curators and with the project’s partners and donors.

In the end, the decision to present ‘Girls in the Innocenti Archive’ in the

often-overlooked space dedicated to the 20th century – our historical

itinerary’s last room, proved the most convincing and sensible solution of

all. Faced with the challenge of finding a balance between the permanent

exhibition and our new content, in an effort to enrich both, we decided

to present most of the previously unpublished materials in the centre of

the room, as the project’s ‘pulsating core’ in dialogue with content found

on the walls, including videos, images, and short texts that cover a time

period that stretches beyond our focus, to expand the display’s time frame

and facilitate the understanding of a broader historical context.”

Arabella Natalini

Scientific director, Innocenti Museum

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“In the museum setting, these small objects, imbued

with poignant beauty, interact with the extraordinary

collection of works of art and precious artifacts that

narrate the evolution of the Innocenti Institute and its

founding values. Among salient episodes and glimpses

of everyday life, we find the faces of the well-known

figures who guided its activities alongside those of the

children who were welcomed there over the centuries.

Thanks to this project, the room that concludes the

Innocenti Museum’s historical itinerary has become

host to a symbolic Wunderkammer, with a unique

selection of 20th-century identity tokens, displayed as

a sign of ideal continuity with the archive’s older tokens

on permanent display in the museum since 2016, and

its nearby rotating temporary exhibition of tokens,

known as ‘And the Other Half I Shall Keep’.

These 120 identification tokens, which belonged to

the girls taken in by the Innocenti Institute in the first

two decades of the last century, are among the last

examples preserved by its Historical Archive. For the

very first time, they allow us to move closer and to

discover a little-known page in the recent history of

this institution, characterised by its ever-broadening

vision of the concept of hosting children and their

care, and by progressive open-mindedness towards

more modern forms of medical assistance and welfare

services aimed, not only at the care of children, but

also at supporting mothers. By ideally reconnecting

with these testimonies that represent ‘the other side

of the coin’ of history, these identity tokens are like

fragments of real lives, which resurface in our memory

when a name resounds there, evoked by a poem, a

shred of fabric, or a medal severed in half.”

Desdemona Ventroni

Conservator, Innocenti Museum

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Identity token, Emma, 1912

Ph. Marco Badiani

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Identity token, Gemma, 1912

32 Ph. Marco Badiani

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“A project like this one gives these little girls relevance. They are given their

own place in history, however brief. Wouldn’t it be nice, if each of us had our

own physical page in history? These girls sometimes lived no more than a

few days or even hours; they were meteorites. But this project affords them

attention, salvaging them from oblivion, and the gesture seems to stop –

even for a moment – the mad rush in which we find ourselves, as members of

the modern world. If children, in general, had few rights at that time, these

children had even fewer. So, the project enables them to emerge. It is about

uncovering a still hidden side of social history.

For several months, while working on the project’s archival phase, we

would pore over the archives and talk to each other in hushed voices. The

whispering was a form of respect, We are very keen on giving solidity to these

girls’ stories – as we raise awareness about the small but significant ‘body of

evidence’ that constitutes their life story. History with a capital ‘h’ is made of

many small stories, such as theirs.”

Lucia Riccardi

Archival curator, Innocenti Institute

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“The project as a whole is not limited to

preserving or promoting the material, historical,

and symbolic significance of each of these

objects, rather, it aims to strengthen their role

as an essential source for understanding the

past with greater depth, as well as upholding

their narrative power in the present and future.

Thanks to a ‘virtual room’ forming part of a

digital display inside the museum, the items

presented under the spotlight will continue to

be viewed and studied even after their return

to the Historical Archives, promoting greater

awareness of this precious and fragile heritage.”

photo credits

Desdemona Ventroni

Conservator, Innocenti Museum

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All photographs published herein are

courtesy of the Innocenti Institute.

Cover: Identity token, Luisa, 1903,

ph. Marco Badiani

Photos by Marco Badiani

P. 2-3: Identity token,

Clara Dolores, 1901

P. 4-5: Historical Archive,

Innocenti Institute

P. 9: Historical Archive,

Innocenti Institute

P. 10: Identity token,

Maria Assunta, 1903

P. 17: Historical Archive,

Innocenti Institute

P. 20-21: Historical Archive,

Innocenti Institute

P. 26: Document’s linked to baby

Calliope, 1903

P. 27: Register Balie e Bambini

(Nannies and Children),

Calliope, 1903

P. 27: Balie e Bambini registers

P. 27: Register cover, with emblem

of baby in swaddling clothes

P. 28: Identity token, Augusta, 1902

P. 29: Historical Archive,

Innocenti Institute

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P. 29: Identity token, Elettra, 1901

P. 33: Historical Archive

with Archivial curator Lucia Ricciardi

P: 34-35: Identity token, Francesca, 1913

Other photography

P. 6-7: Innocenti Institute, Brunelleschi’s

loggia, ph. Guido Cozzi

P. 23: Fabrics conservator Federica

Favaloro with Isola’s token, 1902,

ph. Cinestudio

P. 26: Identity token, Calliope, 1903,

ph. Courtesy of the Innocenti Institute

Archival references

Amelia B., 1900: AOIF – S – 1900 – 6

Clara Dolores, 1901: AOIF – S – 1901 – 2

Elettra, 1901: AOIF – S – 1901 – 4

Augusta, 1902: AOIF – S – 1902 – 9

Basilissa, 1902: AOIF – S – 1902 – 13

Isola, 1902: AOIF - S - 1902 - 3

Calliope, 1903: AOIF – S – 1903 – 4

Maria Assunta, 1903: AOIF – S – 1903 - 9

Luisa, 1903: AOIF: S – 1903 – 21

Bianca, 1904: AOIF; S – 1904 – 6

Amelia R. , 1904: AOIF – S – 1904 – 10

Lida, 1910: AOIF – S – 1910-12

Gemma, 1912: AOIF – S – 1912 – 6

Emma, 1912: AOIF – S – 1912 – 13

Francesca, 1913: AOIF – S – 1913 – 6

(AOIF= Archivio Ospedale degli Innocenti

di Firenze).

Explore more tokens via the

Innocenti’s digital archive

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euro 2.00