Two Photographs from the Gerini Fund of the University of Naples “l’Orientale”

Abstract

There are two photographs in the Fondo Gerini of the University of Naples Oriental Institute, “L’Orientale”, which are of particular interest. The first shows a monk meditating on a skeleton, the second a skeleton surrounded by vultures. These two images present us with meditation on the stages of decomposition of the body, the antecedents of which are to be sought in the Indian world. The originality of these two images, representing a unicum, lies in the fact that we have here two photographs taken in the late 19th-early 20th century by a foreign photographer who had the opportunity to survey the scene, usually reserved to initiates alone.