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But on closer inspection, something is unsettling. The young woman’s gaze seems distant, suspended between tenderness and detachment. The twins, Ana Lucía and José Miguel, appear strangely still. This impression, noted by several researchers, can perhaps be explained by the long exposure times of the era, which required complete stillness. And yet, some see in it a premonitory symbolism, an echo of the tragic fate that awaited this family.
A vulnerable mother
A few months before the photograph was taken, Catalina had given birth to her twins after a difficult delivery. Records indicate that she was very weak, both physically and emotionally. The term “maternal melancholy,” used in 19th-century medical journals, already referred to what we now call postpartum depression. At a time when mental health remained taboo, these disorders were poorly understood, and women who suffered from them were often isolated.
Felipe, her husband, worried but preoccupied with his business, hired several servants to help him. The surviving accounts describe a young mother who was distracted, sometimes absent-minded, lost in her thoughts. Nothing alarming by the standards of the time, when people simply spoke of “nervous fatigue.” But what followed would reveal a human tragedy that the medicine of the day could not explain.