Fernando Oreste Nannetti, born to an unknown father, was institutionalized from childhood in psychiatric facilities. Diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 29 in Rome, he was transferred in 1958 to the hospital of Volterra. Taciturn, he only communicated with the nurse Aldo Trafeli and began engraving his writings on the walls of the Ferri pavilion.
His monumental work, created from 1959 to 1961 and then from 1968 to 1973, extends over seventy meters of façades. Inspired by “electrical and magnetic waves,” he recorded messages received through telepathy, combining diary entries, biographical notes, references to war, and imaginary figures, first drawing a rectangle to serve as a “page” for his inscriptions.