"Many years ago, when I arrived in Villafranca, I was told that I had three great faults, three things that were wrong. The first was that I wasn't from there, the second was that I had too much desire to do too many things and the third was that I'm a woman" (Anna, inhabitant of Villafranca). That’s what Anna, a sculptress artist, confided to me when we met during a few days of residence in the lands of Lunigiana, while I was working on a project about the Ethnographic Museum, a place dedicated to the historical memory of everyday objects of the ancient peasant civilization. Starting from the fascination towards a terracotta saucer used to cure the evil eye and which once belonged to a healer, I tried to investigate the echoes of this ancient practice of therapeutic magic, through meetings and evidences with local people : "I don't remember very well what my mum saw, but I know that she used a plate with a little water in it, she used it like a small glass, she made a candle wick, she dipped it inside the oil, inside the little glass of oil, and set it on fire. Then She said some words, something like: 'I say three Our Fathers to remove the evil eye from this person'. She repeated the three Our Fathers and drained five drops of oil. If the oil remained compact, therefore round, it meant that you did not have the evil eye. If the oil was spread, she said instead that you had the evil eye. Sometimes strange shapes would come, like a stomach and then she would say that it would have hit the stomach, or a head shape and she would say that it would have hit you in the head. I know my mother did it and took it off, she took off the evil eye in this way, many others used salt instead, but my mother always did it with oil" (Anonymous inhabitant of Villafranca). I eventually realized how to, a contemporary eye, these objects reveal, how much the subdivision of gender roles in the peasant world was subject to a rigid dichotomy, where the man were for work and power, while the woman for care and hospitality. I therefore tried to investigate the traces of the stereotype of the figure of the healer, looking for its presence in some women of Lunigiana and in their aspect. Through the frontal photographic portrait I tried to reflect on how the distorted representation of this mysterious figure is strongly rooted in the collective imagination and in our gaze as observers, and it’s still evocating suggestions and ways of thinking even in the contemporary world. The stereotypes and preconceptions of the past are still playing a predominant role in the development of contemporary identity and they are becoming limits and/or models to which it seems necessary to adhere and to conform. As well as the genesis of the evil eye, the identity crisis also carries with it a precise and common symptomatology: forms of illnesses, anxiety, turmoil and a feeling like you always have "eyes on you". The main causes of the evil eye are, in fact, feelings such as envy, anger and jealousy towards the unfortunate person and the curse can be generated through fake compliments or accusations, such as those addressed to Anna. The healer's terracotta saucer, preserved in the Ethnographic Museum, becomes a fundamental Leitfossil not only for its historical legacy, but also for the importance that it still exercises even during the present time.