Rosalia Lombardo was an Italian child born in 1918 in Palermo, Sicily. She died on December 6 1920. It is thought that she died from a case of pneumonia. Rosalia’s father was sorely grieved upon her death that he approached Dr. Alfredo Salafia, a noted embalmer, to preserve her.She was one of the last corpses to be admitted to the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo in Sicily.
Mummies have a bit of a bad rap when it comes to attractiveness. If Mumm-Ra is anything to go by they all need a bit more than a quick crop on Photoshop. But little Rosalia Lombardo takes the mummy mold and smashes it to pieces under her tiny infant feet. Rosalia died of pneumonia in 1920 at the tragic age of two. Her father, understandably, wanted her memory immortalized and paid embalmer Alfredo Salafia to mummify Rosalia for all the world to see. Salafia set to work, replacing Rosalia’s blood with formaldehyde; drying out her skin with a mixture of alcohol and glycerine; and fending off fungus with salicylic acid. The effect is quite arresting and frankly you’d be forgiven for mistaking Rosalia for a little girl who’s simply fallen fast asleep – albeit in a hermetically sealed glass case swimming with nitrogen gas.
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