"The Innocenti, as it is known, was the first institution in Europe devoted solely to the care of unwanted children. The first foundling, named Agata because she was left by its gates on Saint Agata's Day 1445, had been nibbled at by mice. At the time, children made up half the population of Florence, and many were abandoned. The church demanded be fruitful and multiply and condemned the use of contraception, which was primitive anyway."
"Babies were left inside church doorways, dumped in rivers and chucked on to rubbish tips. They were, in the lively Tuscan vernacular, the gittatelli the thrown-away ones. Many were the result of unwanted sexual advances, especially on servants by their masters. In a fiercely patriarchal society, the majority of children deposited at the Innocenti were girls. The mothers would break a coin in two and hang one half round the baby's neck in the hope of meeting them again."
"The Innocenti, like the city itself, mixed high-minded motives with utilitarian and cruel ones The Innocenti was built by the Silk Weavers Guild in an era when the contribution that wealthy Florentines were expected to make to civic life was measured in counting-house ledgers like a business's gains and losses. The building had arches designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, architect of the Duomo, and it housed (and still houses) works by the greatest artists of the Renaissance: Ghirlandaio, Botticelli,"
Hospital of the Innocents in Florence was the first institution devoted to caring for unwanted children. The first foundling, Agata, was left at the gates on Saint Agata's Day 1445 and had been nibbled by mice. Children were a huge share of Florence's population, and abandonment was common due to lack of contraception and social pressures. Babies were left in church doorways, rivers, or rubbish tips and were called gittatelli, the thrown-away ones. Many resulted from sexual exploitation of servants; most abandoned children were girls. Mothers sometimes broke a coin and left half with the child hoping to reunite. Wealthy guilds funded the Innocenti, mixing civic charity and utilitarian interests.
#hospital-of-the-innocents #foundlings-and-child-abandonment #renaissance-florence #brunelleschi-and-renaissance-art
Read at www.theguardian.com
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