Espressioni dell’anima. Sperimentazione e immagine al Collège de France

Between the second half of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century, the work of the École de la Salpêtrière stands out in the medical world of the French capital. While the production of this school has been widely acknowledged, the work of some doctors, whose clinical and didactic activity presents itself as rich in the lively inter-mixing concerning medical and artistic fields, is otherwise still less examined. From this perspective, the article examines the research of Charles Émile François-Franck (disciple of Étienne- Jules Marey) and his physiological laboratory at Collège de France around the theory of emotions. Starting from the experimental method, the work and the apparatus of this space proceed to welcome new psychological paradigms and a web of discursive and iconographic instances, that create an original photographic archive. Thus, this ‘icono-diagnostic’ collection shows the epistemological bond between photography, history of art and the semeiotic image of emotions.