Sorelle Marsini, Fotografiste lucchesi.La riscoperta di una storia di imprenditoria femminile nella Toscana dell’Ottocento

Sorelle Marsini, Fotografiste lucchesi.
La riscoperta di una storia di imprenditoria femminile nella Toscana dell’Ottocento

Villa Bottini, Lucca
6 June 2025
Archivissima – La Notte degli Archivi
Pop-up exhibition curated by Linda Bertelli, Agnese Ghezzi and Alessandro Masetti

La mostra

Sorelle Marsini, Fotografiste lucchesi. La riscoperta di una storia di imprenditoria femminile nella Toscana dell’Ottocento (The Marsini Sisters, Photographers from Lucca. Rediscovering a Story of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Tuscany) is an exhibition dedicated to Emilia and Giuseppa Marsini, photographers and entrepreneurs active in Lucca, Livorno and Florence during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Held at Villa Bottini in Lucca for the Notte degli Archivi (Night of Archives) within the Archivissima 2025 festival, the exhibition presented photographs and archival documents that made it possible to reconstruct the two sisters’ professional activity and the role they played in a field long portrayed as predominantly male.

The exhibition was developed within Fotografiste – Women in Photography from Italian Archives (1839–1939), a PRIN 2022 PNRR research project funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and promoted by the LYNX Research Unit at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca in collaboration with the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. Research on the Marsini sisters drew on materials held by the Archivio Fotografico Lucchese “Arnaldo Fazzi” and the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Lucca.

The curatorial project

Co-curated with Linda Bertelli and Agnese Ghezzi, the exhibition is structured in four sections, developing a narrative that moves from the personal and professional histories of the Marsini sisters towards a broader reflection on the presence of women in nineteenth-century photographic studios.
The first section reconstructs the history of the Marsini studio through archival sources, highlighting the two photographers’ professional independence in the context of nineteenth-century Lucca.
The following sections examine the spread of cartes de visite and the ways in which photographic studios constructed and promoted their professional identity.
A further section takes visitors inside the Marsini studio, examining settings, poses, clothing and accessories as elements through which photographic portraiture contributed to the social representation of its subjects.
The final section broadens the perspective to consider women’s presence in nineteenth-century professional photography, bringing archival sources into dialogue with historiography in order to examine the factors that contributed to the marginalisation of these figures.

Exhibition Design and Public Engagement

Conceived as a Third Mission initiative, the exhibition takes the form of an ephemeral event designed to encourage direct engagement among visitors, the materials under study, and the research team. The exhibition thus becomes a space for exchange, where photographs and archival documents can be examined up close, while the presence of the curators provides an opportunity to explore their contexts and discuss the processes by which historical research is developed and interpreted.
The exhibition is installed in the frescoed gallery of Villa Bottini. Its four sections are arranged across four tables conceived as minimalist surfaces for close examination, allowing visitors to engage directly with original photographs and documents, including through the use of magnifying glasses. The materials are displayed on coloured supports coordinated with the project’s visual identity, while each section is accompanied by an introductory text and individual object labels.
The display distinguishes between different types of sources, from registers held by the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Lucca to original photographs from the Archivio Fotografico Lucchese “Arnaldo Fazzi”.
To make nineteenth-century photographic techniques more accessible, the exhibition also includes graphic reproductions from period technical manuals, illustrating the equipment and devices used in photographic studios. These materials help visitors understand the production processes behind cartes de visite and approach photographs as material objects as well as images.
The exhibition design is therefore intended not simply to present the outcomes of the research, but to make local cultural heritage accessible through the materials and methods of research itself, creating an opportunity for direct exchange between the public and researchers.