Stendhal syndrome

The Stendhal Syndrome is an Italian Horror film from 1996, written and directed by Dario Argento and starring his daughter Asia Argento. It was the first Italian film to use computer-generated imagery (CGI).

Stendhal Syndrome is a real syndrome, first diagnosed in Florence, Italy in 1982. It is named after the French writer Marie-Henri Beyle, who wrote under the nom de plume Stendhal and reportedly experienced like symptoms in 1817. The director, Dario Argento, said he experienced Stendhal syndrome as a child. While touring Athens with his parents young Dario was climbing the steps of the Parthenon when he was overcome by a trance that caused him to become lost from his parents for hours. The experience was so strong that Argento never forgot it and immediately thought of it when he came across Magherini’s book, which would become the basis of the film. The film was a large Box Office hit when released in Italy grossing 5,443,000,000 Italian Lira ($3,809,977) Argento’s highest grossing film in his native country.

• A fictionalized version of Stendhal syndrome is described in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Diary.
• Stendhal Syndrome is the subject of a 1996 Italian thriller film entitled The Stendhal Syndrome and directed by Dario Argento.
• The character Bette Porter on the television show The L Word experiences Stendhal syndrome in the episode “Longing”.
• The author Robert Viscusi incorporates Stendhal Syndrome into his 1996 American Book Award winning novel Astoria.
• The character Antonia Collie experienced Stendhal Syndrome in the Alexander McCall Smith novel, The Importance of Being Seven (2010).

The illness is named after the famous 19th century French author Stendhal (pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle), who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio.

Although there are many descriptions of people becoming dizzy and fainting while taking in Florentine art, especially at the Uffizi, dating from the early 19th century on, the syndrome was only named in 1979, when it was described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, who observed and described more than 100 similar cases among tourists and visitors in Florence.

Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal’s syndrome, hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world.