“A mon oncle Polydore. Henry Guibert.” (To my uncle Polydore, Henry Guibert). Images: Di Chiara collection, Rome.

This article builds on our previous article on the Guibert family.

A few weeks after that first article, our friend the collector Mario Di Chiara tracked down the Bartolena studio photograph shown above and asked us whether it too might be linked to the Guibert family of Livorno, whom we had already studied through the two Marzocchini photographs. Despite our initial doubts, given how unlikely such a coincidence was, we did some further research to see whether we could identify the child in the photograph, uncle Polidoro and the Enrico who signed it, and perhaps date the picture as well.

What can we deduce from the photograph and the note on the back? We know that a certain Enrico Guibert dedicated the photograph of a small child, presumably his son, to his uncle Polidoro. Di Chiara adds that the type of Bartolena logo on this photograph was used only for a short period, roughly from 1872 to 1875.

Starting from the Enrico Guibert (1844-1891) we know from the article mentioned above, we know he was a son of Giuseppe Guibert and Emilia Arduin and that he had three children by his wife Albertina Fazzi (1853-1891): Ernesto (1874), Evelina (1876) and Enrichetta (1880). Given Di Chiara’s dating and the fact that the photograph seems to show a child no more than a year old, it could well be Ernesto (1874).

Assuming, then, that the photograph was signed by this Enrico Guibert and shows his little son Ernesto, we must now ask whether there was an uncle Polidoro and who he was, bearing in mind that he could be an uncle on either the father’s or the mother’s side.

Among his father’s brothers, already seen in the Livorno censuses, there seems to be no Polidoro. However, Enrico had had a brother, Polidoro Leopoldo Federigo, who died aged 5 in 1857: clear evidence that the name Polidoro was used in the family, perhaps in honour of a relative, maybe the very one we are looking for.

And indeed, searching among his mother’s siblings, helped by the research of a French colleague (Stéphane Sénès, username ssenes on Geneanet), we find that Emilia Arduin did have a brother called Polydore Adolphe Arduin, born in Briançon in 1815 and died in Marseille in 1880! He is certainly the person we are looking for.

To sum up, the picture is now complete: we have the father, Enrico, the child, Ernesto, and uncle Polydore, to whom the photograph is dedicated. We can also say that the photograph dates from 1875, since Ernesto was born at the end of 1874, which fits perfectly with the type of logo the Bartolena brothers used in that period. So this photograph too belongs with the Guibert family photographs seen earlier. We can even go a step further, without much fear of being wrong, and say that the photograph was sent from Livorno to Marseille to show the newborn to the dear maternal uncle who lived there, with his nephew’s dedication, and that it may well have been in Marseille that it entered the antiques market.

Finally, this Ernesto is the same man who, as an adult, married Anna Maria Sperandia Piergili (in Rome in 1917) and who was in turn the uncle of Gian Paolo and Albertina Gamerra, mentioned in the article cited above.

As this and the other cases show (see the other articles in the “From image to identity” series), historical and genealogical methods can be decisive not only for partly annotated photographs but for any other document: a letter, a will, a note left in a book, an entry in a diary… In short, they are very effective methods that can help in countless family history questions. If you need our help, we are at your disposal!