ABSTRACT
Thus opens Dario Argento’s (1996) film, The Stendhal Syndrome, with Anna Manni’s strange experience in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. First described by the French writer after whom it was named, and for years called only “the tourist disease” and “tourist hysteria,” the Stendhal Syndrome was officially identified as a rare psychiatric syndrome in 1979. Graziella Magherini, the physician who named the condition, did so to account for the phenomenon’s appearance in Florentine hospitals (Magherini, 1989). Although no formal numbers have been released, the Santa Maria Nuovo Hospital has documented more than a dozen cases per year of tourists displaying similar symptoms following an encounter with a work of art. Those afflicted experience dizziness, disorientation, prolonged elevated pulse, confusion, and extreme emotion (Correll, 2014). They become light-headed, often faint, and sometimes hallucinate (ibid.). Magherini posits that the syndrome is a psychosomatic illness caused by the stress of travelling. Or, given the region where these incidents occur, it could be due the heat of an Italian summer. But then again, we should not discount the sheer magnitude of the art that confronts one in Florence. This is the explanation suggested by filmmaker Dario Argento: it is the art itself, and the sensitivity of the individual encountering it that causes the extreme reaction called the Stendhal Syndrome. Somewhat surprisingly, art historians concur. In his exploration of our emotional responses to artworks, Elkins (2001) writes:
Most of us look at paintings and feel a little something as the images sink in. Magherini’s patients are nearly drowned by tidal waves of emotions.…
The moral I take from the histories of the [Stendhal] syndrome… is that even outlandish experiences in front of paintings need to be taken seriously, because they are part of the spectrum of human response.
