“The Sweet Flower Cut Down in its Prime”. Emotions in the 19th and 20th century Italian Cemeteries. The case of Children’s Graves

During the 19th century, the transformation of the demographic conditions and changes in cultural perceptions are two slow and interrelated processes that affected the lives of predominantly upper-class children in urban Italian society. Adults invested increasingly both emotionally and economically in their offspring, and this was certain to have a deep impact on the way families experienced and coped with the death of a son or daughter. The study of the 19th and 20th century funerary culture linked to the loss of a child in a European country in still almost a historiographical terra incognita, especially seen from the perspective of the history of emotions. The study of the funerary monuments in Italian urban cemeteries together with a close scrutiny of the archival primary sources will offer the opportunity to partially understand what kind of emotions were depicted and in which manner, how the representation changes over time, and which  impact the age and sex of the child bear on the expression of emotions.