Documents Archive
The correspondence preserved by the Museum is made up of 4 groups:
- the "Mantegazza Collection", consisting of the correspondence between Paolo Mantegazza and his friend Giovanni Omboni - for a useful biographical reconstruction of Mantegazza
- the "Autographs" collection, which Mantegazza created by collecting the writings of famous people of his time from the 1880s, with the aim of analyzing their handwriting
- the "Museum of Anthropology Collection", which collects documents relating to the donations and acquisitions of ethnographic objects and skeletal samples
- the "Protocol Collection", where the letters and paperwork of the Museum from 1910 to 1964 are gathered.
The cultural importance of the founder of the Museum is also evinced by 6 letters between Mantegazza and Charles Darwin, now preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge.
Learn more on the documents archive (English text at the bottom of the pages)
Roselli, M. G., "The Documents Archive"
Bigoni, F. e Defrance, S., "The correspondence between Charles Darwin and Paolo Mantegazza: the diffusion of Darwinism in continental Europe"
in: Moggi, J., Stanyon, R. (eds), 2014. " The Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence. Vol. 5, The Anthropological and Ethnological Collections", Firenze University Press (pp. 226-241)
Last update
07.09.2021