Introduction by Mario Di Chiara, historical and genealogical research by Matteo Giunti.

For a general introduction, see the first “episode” of this series: From image to identity/1 – The Recouly-Roux and Vernière families in Livorno.

INTRODUCTION

The author of this photograph, Ugo Bettini, had been the most respected professional photographer in Livorno ever since the publication of his treatise “La Fotografia Moderna” in 1878, yet his remarkable command of technique is not enough to explain his excellent qualities as a portraitist. Almost a century and a half later, we mainly look at the portraits Bettini made of famous people, notably a series of poses of Eleonora Duse taken shortly after the picture we see here. Yet this great photographer paid particular attention to children, creating an atmosphere on ‘set’ that encouraged their natural spontaneity.

In the picture of Sophia and Ida Kauffmann we recognise what piano music calls a suspension: little Ida seems caught up in some fleeting thought, puzzled for that brief instant which Bettini seized to fix her image with the instrument he played like a virtuoso, the camera.

As for the staging, the pose has a painted backdrop set on an out-of-focus plane, which avoids any lack of realism and gives the scene greater depth. Finally, note the retouched eyelashes over the woman’s eyes: by hiding her gaze, they draw all our attention to the child.

IDENTIFICATION

Bettini’s delicately natural shot shows a mother lovingly holding her little girl; on the back is the handwritten note “Sofia Kauffmann e Ida K. di 4 anni – Photogra(p)hie Aprile 1881”.

So we know that the girl was called Ida Kauffmann and was born around 1877, and that her mother Sofia was married to a Kauffmann; nothing else that might help us find out who they were. The obvious attempt to look for the girl’s birth record in Livorno would fail, because she was not born in Livorno, as is easy to check in the birth registers for 1876-78.

This is where the database of our project Leghorn Merchant Networks, begun almost 25 years ago, comes to the rescue. A cross-search for the surname Kauffmann combined with a wife named Sofia (and variants: Sophia, Sophie, etc.) gives a single result, which reveals the whole family as well as the mother’s maiden name.

She was Sophia Maria Elisabeth Fehr-Schmöle (1847-1907), wife of Friedrich Wilhelm Kauffmann (1842-1907) and mother of Ida Amalie Albertine Kauffmann (born in 1877 in Mannheim, Germany). But who were these people and, above all, what was their link with Livorno?

The link with Livorno is the mother, Mrs Sophia Kauffmann née Fehr-Schmöle, daughter of the Swiss consul in Livorno Pietro Niccola Fehr (Livorno 1812 – Livorno 1898) and of Ida Federica Schmöle (Amsterdam 1812 – Livorno 1880), both buried in the cemetery of the Dutch-German Congregation in Livorno.

Sophia was born in Livorno in 1847 and baptised in Vicopisano, where the Fehr family still owns the Rocca del Brunelleschi. She married Friedrich Wilhelm Kauffmann in Livorno in 1872 and the couple settled in his home town, Mannheim, where he was a merchant and owned a windmill. One of Sophia’s sisters, Ernestina Jenny Ida, had married Friedrich Wilhelm’s brother Eduard, a banker in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Sophia and Friedrich died within ten days of each other, in 1907, in Mannheim. We have not been able to find anything more about their daughter Ida’s life, except that she had an elder brother, Otto Peter Eduard (Mannheim 1873 – Trogen 1952), an industrialist and well-known genealogist, who had descendants of his own.

Looking at the opening picture again now, it feels different: it has become more real and says more than before, when it was just an elegant shot from a famous Livorno studio with a short note on the back. For collectors too, we believe that identifying a portrait and reconstructing its history adds a new dimension to the photograph, which would otherwise remain a rare and interesting piece of card, but without its human story.