The location

Introduction

The Collezione Anatomica Paolo Gorini is located inside the Ospedale Vecchio in Lodi, enjoying the suggestive atmosphere of the fifteenth-century Chiostro della Farmacia. Like for some ancient paintings, where the frame equals or surpasses the value of the painting, the location that houses the collection represents an unquestionable and clear added value.

La storia dell'Ospedale Vecchio

LThe history of the Ospedale Vecchio has roots that go as far as the 15th century. On January 6th 1459 (after executing the decrees of the bishop of Lodi, the marquis Carlo Pallavicino) was set the foundation stone of the institution that later would absorb most hospitals, healthcare facilities and hospices of Lodi from the 12th till the 15th century.

Like Agnelli remembered,

the bishop, after getting the appropriate information and discussing the matter with the Capitolo of the cathedral, decided to go along with the wishes of the decurions and on November 21st 1457 published the letter of aggregation of all the hospital of Lodi under the one of Spirito Santo; letter in which was also determined that the administration and government of the hospital was up to the City, and that however the election of the administrators had to be confirmed by the bishop. The suppression of the many hospitals of Lodi and their union with that of Santo Spirito was declared, and the administrators had the license to nominate the chaplain.

(G. Agnelli, Ospedale di Lodi. Monografia storica, Pierre, 1950, p. 30)

The hospitals of the city and the surrounding area were actually a lot. Their number was just under twenty, including the Lazzaretto, which remained active gathering the people infested by plague in 1524. However,

at the discovery of the plague of 1630, the sick were conducted during the night to the Ospedale Maggiore to a separate apartment from the rest of the ill and ministers of the hospital, with an opening on the remote district of Santa Chiara. Things were orderly arranged, with men separated from women, and the infected from the suspected.

(Ibi, pp. 19-20)

The facilities of the surrounding rural areas should also be included (these were also almost twenty in number). Of all the hospitals of the rural and city areas, only seventeen were reunited in the Ospedale del Santo Spirito della Carità or Casa della Carità, which, at the end of 16th century, was renewed and named Ospedale Maggiore of Lodi. The first delegates of the new hospital were: Taddeo Fissiraga, abbot of S. Pietro in Lodivecchio, Giovanni Forti, administrator of the Ospedale di S. Spirito and in charge of the cathedral; Antonio Sozzi, Giovanni Ponteroli, Giovanni Antonio Micolli (experts in law); Giacomo Sarone, ducal secretary and Francesco Meletto, apostolic writer. In 1466 the number of the delegates grew up to 22 members, plus an additional delegate of the City.

The transformations of the hospital during the centuries

Over the 16th and 20th century the hospital undergoes several transformations and as a result today it's very hard to locate the place where the Casa della Carità used to be. In the 18th century the imposing neoclassical façade looking on the Piazza Ospitale was erected, designed by the architect Giuseppe Piermarini. Thanks to a radical building innovation, studied and applied by Luigi Trovati and the hospital admistration, between 1869 and 1882 another impressive façade was created, this time on the west side of the building (on today's Via Bassi). A small celebrative bust dedicated to Trovati, made by Tomaso Giudici, is today placed in the garden at the entrance of the building looking on Via Bassi; the same entrance that takes to the Chiostro della Farmacia, where the Collezione Anatomica Paolo Gorini is located. Between 1894 and 1904 took place the general reform of the hospital of Lodi, and a committee for the creation of a Children Hospital was established in 1925. In the same year, a very wealthy man named Antonio Lombardo died, and in his last will and testament he left his plot of Santa Maria of Villanova Sillaro to the Ospedale Maggiore, asking the administrators of the Opera Pia to realize a gynaecology/obstetrical ward dedicated to the memory of his mother, and named after her.

the two initiatives, in response to a strong and long felt necessity to have two separate institutions to help sick children and women both healthy and in need of gynaecological or obstetrical care, were unobtainable in the great hospital, given its lack of separate spaces and other obvious reasons; so they were destined to meet and reunite in the current […] Padiglione Maternità e Pediatria.

The rich and still unsurpassed monograph by Agnelli, regarding the Ospedale Maggiore of Lodi and many times directly and indirectly quoted in this section, clarifies some episodes in the period between 1881 and 1911 relative to the "Gorinian relics". It's worth transcribing it in its full lenghth:

Since Paolo Gorini's death in 1881, several of his anatomical preparations, which had undergone the processes of embalmment and petrifaction, were given in custody to the City of Lodi that retrieved them from the local civic Musem of San Filippo. A dedicated room next to city Library was used, but being dark and not well-ventilated, it wasn't appropriate for the rational conservation of those materials, and so they were deteriorating. Because of the expansion of the Library, due to various donations of books and periodicals, the City needed more rooms, including one for the Gorinian specimens, and agreed with the Ospedale Maggiore to keep them there, and subsequently passed over their ownership. The transport took place in 1911 and was overseen by the Administration of the Luogo Pio chaired by Dr. Giuseppe Brambilla. But unfortunately after a few years, even in this location, mismanagement and negligence were more and more compromising the preservation of the specimens. The current Administration was aware of its duty to find a remedy and an arrangement for the important Gorinian collection, that still represented a prerogative of the City. City that was highly valued in Italy as long as the great naturalist was still alive, and therefore ordered that the museum should be reallocated in the most perfect order: using appropriate glass shelves, cleaning the anatomical specimens, bodies, human heads, pathological phenomena, different human and animal parts, etc. that always arouse amazement and admiration. The museum Gorini is located on the ground floor near the anatomical mortuary rooms of the Hospital, and its windows look on to strettone Paolo Gorini. The Administration should do well to put a door onto the street, with a sign, allowing the public to visit the museum, maybe once a month. Without them the museum itself wouldn't have reason to be

(Ibi, pp. 57-58)