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Massive Thefts from the Girolamini Library in Naples; Auction Aborted

4/19/2012

On April 19, 2012 La Biblioteca de Girolamini (Biblioteca statale oratoriana del monumento nazionale dei Girolamini), the oldest library in Naples, and an Italian national treasure opened to the public in 1586, was impounded by the Italian police because of mismanagement and thefts.

"Girolamini Library’s Disappearing Books

"Two thousand intellectuals protest at director, a self-styled prince with no degree

"Would you entrust the contents of one of Italy’s – and the world’s – richest libraries to a self-styled “prince doctor” who is neither a prince nor a graduate? Yet that’s just what has happened. The “nobleman” in question is in charge, with ministerial approval, of Naples’ historic Girolamini library, where Giambattista Vico once ruminated. And when hundreds of academics raised the alarm in the press, said nobleman rushed to report the theft of a shedload of books.  

"It all started a couple of weeks ago. Florence-born Tomaso Montanari, who teaches history of modern art at Naples’ Federico II university and wrote a book called A che serve Michelangelo? [What’s the Point of Michelangelo?] advancing serious doubts on the attribution to the Renaissance genius of a crucifix purchased by the Berlusconi government for more than €3 million, wrote a piece for Il Fatto newspaper. Montanari said he had visited the Girolamini library, which holds over 150,000 ancient manuscripts and books, and found an appalling dust-layered mess with invaluable tomes lying on the floor and empty Coca-Cola cans on the ancient reading desks. Professor Montanari wrote: “The library is closed today because it has to be reorganised, says Fr Sandro Marsano, the enthusiastic, exquisitely polite Oratorian priest who welcomes visitors to the stupendous 17th-century complex. No, it’s closed because of the strange goings-on, say people who live nearby and mutter about heavily laden vehicles leaving the library courtyards late at night”.  

"The piece was a headline-grabber, not least because Montanari listed the question marks hanging over the new director, “Professor” Marino Massimo De Caro: “Whatever the case, it’s beyond belief that one of Italy’s great cultural shrines should be entrusted to a denizen of the ‘undergrowth’ described by Ferruccio Sansa and Claudio Gatti in their recently published book. De Caro is the middle man in the Venezuelan oil affair, ‘one of the most spectacular instances of convergence between Berlusconi supporters and D’Alema’s group’”. De Caro is also honorary consul for Congo, former assistant of Senator Carlo Corbinelli, former head of PR in north-eastern Italy for the public-sector pension fund INPDAP, executive vice-president from 2007 to 2010 of wind farm and solar energy firm Avelar Energia, owned by Russian oligarch Victor Vekselberg, former owner of an antiquarian bookshop in Verona, and former partner in the Buenos Aires antiquarian bookshop Imago Mundi owned by Daniel Guido Pastore, himself involved in Spain in inquiries into the theft of books from the national library in Madrid and the Zaragoza library.  

"De Caro entered ministry circles thanks to Giancarlo Galan, as a note from the ministry reveals: “Dr. Marino Massimo De Caro was invited to collaborate with the ministry by Minister Giancarlo Galan on 15 April 2011 as an expert consultant on issues concerning relations with the business system in the arts and publishing sectors, and on topics relating to the implementation of regulations concerning authorisation to build and operate facilities for the production of energy from renewable sources, and their appropriate insertion into the landscape. On 15 December 2011, Minister Lorenzo Ornaghi confirmed Dr. Marino Massimo De Caro’s appointment, along with those of other advisers to Minister Galan, as an expert consultant on issues concerning relations with the business system in the arts and publishing sectors”.  

"Here is a passage from Gatti and Sansa’s book Il sottobosco [The Undergrowth] referring to a phone tap: “On 27 December 2007, De Caro complained about a Carabinieri captain from the artistic heritage unit in Monza who was ‘bothering’ him about a book purchased at a public auction in Switzerland”. He is under investigation for handling stolen goods, he says, and this has hampered his appointment as honorary consul of Congo since the foreign ministry will not grant approval. (...) On 17 July 2009, De Caro was finally able to relax when Milan deputy public prosecutor Maria Letizia Mannella ‘established that the incunabulum has not been physically recovered, despite repeated searches’, and found there was no case to answer. In other words, since the allegedly stolen goods could not be traced and the three individuals involved were accusing each other, the prosecutor decided no further action need be taken”. No further action. But among all the candidates, were there none with an unblemished record to direct a library whose ancient books had already been ransacked in past decades?

"The day after Montanari’s protest, De Caro explained to the Corriere del Mezzogiorno that he his CV was kosher: “I graduated from Siena and I taught history and technology of publishing on the master’s course at the University of Verona”. He added: “I consulted for Cardinal Mejia, the Vatican librarian, I published a book on Galileo and I was director of the library at Orvieto cathedral”. De Caro went on to explain to Il Mattino newspaper: “My grandfather’s godfather was Benedetto Croce. My family, which passed down the title of Princes of Lampedusa, merged with the famous Tomasis thus becoming di Lampedusa, something we are proud of”.  

“Goodness gracious me!” might have been the reaction of comedian Totò, who himself claimed the title His Imperial Highness Antonio Porfirogenito, descended from Costantinople’s Focas dynasty, Angelo Flavio Ducas Comneno of Byzantium, prince of Cilicia, Macedonia, Dardania, Thessaly, Pontus, Moldava, Illyria and the Peloponnese, Duke of Cyprus and Epirus, Count and Duke of Drivasto and Durazzo. “Not true” came the reply the next day, again in Il Mattino, from the real Prince Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi: “The librarian’s assertions about his descent from the princes of Lampedusa are fabrications. The title of prince of Lampedusa was granted by Charles II of Spain to Ferdinando Tomasi in 1667. The Caros therefore have no claim whatsoever to the title of prince of Lampedusa. ... Our egregious librarian should have all this at his fingertips. And I would advise the prior of the Girolamini to keep a close eye on an archivist who prefers a shared surname to supporting documentation”.  

"OK, then, but he’s still a professor. That’s what it says in a press release from Il Buongoverno, a national association established in Milan and “chaired by Senator Riccardo Villari, with Marcello Dell’Utri as honorary national chair. The secretary is Senator Salvatore Piscitelli. (...) National organising secretary is Professor Marino Masimo De Caro”. Goodness gracious me again! It’s a pity that even though official ministerial notes and statements repeatedly refer to him as “doctor”, De Caro never actually graduated from the University of Siena, where he enrolled as a law student in 1992-93 and remained a student until 2002. Nor does the computer at the University of Verona have the least record of our hero’s having taught there. //But the funniest part of the story comes last. Even before all the tweaks were applied to his self-celebratory CV, hundreds of intellectuals were signing an appeal to the minister Lorenzo Ornaghi to ask him how a library as important as the Girolamini could be entrusted to “a man bereft of even the minimum academic qualifications or professional competence to honour the role”. By yesterday evening, this devastating denunciation had attracted just under two thousand signatures, including those of Marcello De Cecco, Ennio Di Nolfo, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Carlo Ginzburg, Salvatore Settis, Tullio Gregory, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Adriano La Regina, Gian Giacomo Migone, Alessandra Mottola Molfino (president of Italia Nostra), Lamberto Maffei (president of the Accademia dei Lincei), Dacia Maraini, Stefano Parise (president of the Italian library association), Stefano Rodotà and Rosario Villari among others.  

"Well, on the very morning when these intellectuals were making their reservations public, “Doctor” “Prince” “Professor” Marino Massimo De Caro turned up at the public prosecutor’s office to present formal notification of a crime. He had just realised that one thousand five hundred books were missing from the library" (http://www.corriere.it/International/english/artic(oli/2012/04/17/girolamini.shtml)

On May 9, 2012 the book auction house Zisska & Schauer in Munich, Germany, published the following statement on their website concerning their auction to be held that day: 

"Zisska & Schauer regrets to announce that the following lots registered under ownership numbers 4 and 132 of the present Auction Sale No. 59 have been withdrawn until recently expressed ownership concerns can be satisfactorily resolved: 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 156, 157, 164, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 189, 194, 195, 196, 198, 202, 207, 210, 212, 213, 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227, 232, 235, 237, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 253, 256, 258, 261, 264, 265, 266, 270, 271, 277, 282, 283, 289, 297, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 316, 317, 320, 322, 325, 328, 329, 333, 336, 340, 341, 342, 346, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 357, 355, 356, 358, 363, 364, 366, 367, 374, 380, 382, 383, 384, 388, 393, 400, 402, 404, 407, 409, 414, 415, 416, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 428, 429, 433, 442, 443, 444, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 456, 459, 460, 462, 466, 467, 470, 471, 473, 476, 477, 479, 480, 489, 506, 507, 508, 509, 512, 513, 514, 515, 518, 525, 529, 530, 532, 533, 534, 536, 537, 539, 541, 546, 547, 548, 549, 551a, 552, 553, 556, 558, 559, 560, 561, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 571, 572, 573, 577, 579, 580, 582, 588, 589, 591, 598, 599, 600, 601, 605, 607, 608, 619, 620, 627, 630, 636, 643, 657, 659, 660, 661, 662, 666, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671, 672, 673, 674, 675, 678, 679, 680, 681, 682, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 693, 695, 696, 697, 699, 700, 701, 702, 703, 704, 707, 709, 710, 712, 713, 715, 716, 717, 719, 720, 721, 722, 723, 724, 725, 726, 727, 728, 730, 735, 736, 738, 741, 754, 757, 763, 794, 795, 801, 815, 816, 840, 857, 858, 860, 864, 878, 891, 896, 906, 911, 918, 919, 920, 925, 926, 927, 950, 955, 957, 959, 960, 974, 975, 976, 977, 985, 988, 989, 994, 998, 999, 1040, 1753, 1973, 1980, 2001, 2020, 2038, 2049, 2051, 2055, 2063, 2065, 2068, 2069, 2070, 2076, 2081, 2088, 2098, 2099, 2101, 2103, 2105, 2108, 2118, 2120, 2121, 2124, 2135, 2248, 2255, 2304, 2306, 2312, 2320, 2324, 2370, 2373, 2376, 2378, 2379, 2384, 2386, 2390, 2398, 2401, 2575, 2586, 2589, 2591, 2593, 2594, 2595, 2597, 2603, 2642, 2663, 2666, 2676, 2682, 2686, 2688, 2704, 2707, 2709, 2711, 2713, 2719, 2721, 2723, 2735, 2748, 2775, 2776, 2780, 2782, 2787, 2796, 2797, 2804, 2818, 2820, 2831, 2846, 2847, 2850, 2854, 2855, 2856, 2860, 2861, 2863, 2864, 2866, 2867, 2869, 2870, 2880, 2887, 2888, 2892, 2893, 2897, 2898, 2899, 2900, 2902, 2904, 2914, 2919, 2921, 2944, 2945, 2947, 2950, 2952, 2956, 2957, 2958, 2960, 2963, 2965, 2968, 2969, 2970, 2974, 2977, 2981, 2987, 2988, 2989, 2994, 2999, 3002, 3003, 3032 and 3053."

Provenance information had been removed from roughly 500 books in this auction, clumsily and in haste, to the point of defacing some of the volumes; it was believed that they had been stolen from the Girolamini Library in Naples.

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