Prompted by the recent and interesting article by our friend Silvia Menicagli in WSI, we went back to the research carried out some time ago on the Modigliani, Garsin and related families, commissioned first by the collector Mario Di Chiara and then by the Institut Restellini. Back then, the Modigliani scholar Maurizio Bellandi (see his very well documented website Modigliani1909) had put to us the fascinating idea that there was a link between the artist Amedeo Modigliani and the Acque della Salute spa (Terme del Corallo), through the Lumbroso family. A first cousin of Amedeo Modigliani, Olimpia (1856-1926), had married in 1876 (a) Giacomo Lumbroso who, at first sight, could be identified with the Dr Giacomo Lumbroso who was deputy medical director of the spa.

Silvia’s article, which has the great merit of bringing the subject of Livorno as the city of Nations and the complexity of Livorno’s Jewish family networks to a wide audience, says at one point: “Linda’s cousin [Errera, ed.] was the Giacomo Lumbroso, a physician, who served as deputy medical director at the Acque della Salute.”

A word of explanation is needed here, to clarify, in simplified form, the problem one faces in such cases: without a good knowledge of the particular features of Jewish genealogy, one almost always risks making mistakes. Namesakes are extremely common, and there are even matching marriages, that is, several marriages in which both spouses have the same names, sometimes in the same years. In many cases endogamy is very high, with marriages between first and second cousins and even between uncles and nieces. Then there is the question of surnames, which appear both in transliterated Hebrew and in Italian translation, as do first names, which may also change during a person’s life (one example: the addition of Hai/Haim = Life after a child’s serious illness). Finally, for places such as Tunisia, among others, records are often fragmentary, confused, insufficient, or missing or inaccessible altogether.

Silvia Menicagli also cites the fine family history study by Luisa Faldini, Famiglie in Viaggio (Families on the move), in which the author, herself descended from several branches of the Lumbroso family, writes (our translation): “It is still difficult to establish exactly how the Lumbrosos of Tunis and those of Mahdia were related, because the same names recur in the family generation after generation.” In several other passages she notes that there are often inaccuracies, both in family trees [often based only on the compiler’s memory, ed.] and in the data found online [often the result of incomplete or hazy family memories, of the researchers’ own deductions and hypotheses, and of various attempts to reconcile conflicting situations, perhaps a little superficially, ed.]. The same difficulties emerge from Claire Rubinstein-Cohen’s study, “Une famille de Grâna à Mahdia (Tunisie): Les Lumbroso”, cited by Faldini herself.

All this already shows how complex the matter becomes, and why primary sources and original records are essential. Sometimes even they are not enough: settling certain questions takes far more research than the genealogies of other family groups, with cross-checks that reach well beyond parents and uncles, often to distant cousins, looking for contradictions or confirmations between different relatives, in a sort of intricate puzzle. That’s our job…

So here we face several almost surreal questions, which show just how hard it can be to identify certain people. Who, then, was the Giacomo Lumbroso who was deputy medical director of the Acque della Salute? And who was Linda Errera’s cousin, also called Giacomo Lumbroso? And Olimpia Modigliani’s husband? Another Giacomo Lumbroso, of course, but are they the same person?

In the research mentioned at the beginning, carried out over many months, we had at one point identified no fewer than ten different Giacomo Lumbrosos, most of them alive at the same time, and all, of course, with links to Livorno and Tunisia. Here they are:

1. Giacomo Lumbroso (1828-1912)
2. Giacomo Lumbroso (1847-1919)
3. Giacomo Lumbroso (c.1847-1937)
4. Giacomo Lumbroso (c.1852-1914)
5. Giacomo Lumbroso (1899-?)
6. Giacomo Lumbroso (c.1778-1835)
7. Giacomo Lumbroso (1844-1925)
8. Giacomo Lumbroso (1859-1926)
9. Giacomo Lumbroso (?-?)
10. Giacomo Lumbroso (1912-1987)

If it were not sometimes so astonishingly difficult, untangling this kind of namesake puzzle might even seem fun, and sometimes it is, or at least it is once you have succeeded.

Let us start with the one who first comes to mind in Livorno on reading the name of the physician who worked at the Acque della Salute: number 8, Giacomo Lumbroso (1859-1926).

His death record (no. 514, part II, series B, 1926) states that Dr Lumbroso died on 10 November 1926 at the “Villa Tirrena” nursing home, aged 67; he was born and lived in Livorno, was a physician, the son of the late Abramo and Adele Massa, and the widower of Maria Fiorini, known as Dina. Dr Giacomo Lumbroso’s parents had married in Livorno on 30 November 1856 (record no. 67). That record gives us G.L.’s grandparents: Jacob Raffaello Laudadio Lumbroso (who is in fact Giacomo Lumbroso no. 6) and Meriam Moises on one side, and Servadio Massa and Meriam Molco on the other.

Next, the Giacomo Lumbroso who married Amedeo Modigliani’s cousin Olimpia (no. 4). Their marriage record (no. 223 of 1876) states that the lawyer Giacomo Lumbroso, aged 24, born in Tunis, son of Cavaliere David and Allegra Errera, married Olimpia Modigliani, aged 20, born in Livorno, daughter of Isacco and Letizia Alatri. To find this G.L.’s grandparents, one can look for example for the death of the groom’s father, David, which took place in Livorno on 21 January 1880, in the house at Scali d’Azeglio 4, second floor. The record shows that David was the son of Isaac Vita Lumbroso and Myriam Costa.

Finally, let us see who Linda Errera’s cousin Giacomo Lumbroso was. Linda’s mother was Marietta Lumbroso, daughter of Salvatore and Enrichetta Lumbroso. Her father was Dr Vittorio Errera, son of Felice (Pinhas) Errera and Enrichetta (Ribca) Cesana. On her father’s side, Vittorio’s sister was the Allegra Errera who married David Lumbroso, so cousin Giacomo is the Giacomo (no. 4) seen above, husband of Olimpia Modigliani.

But let us not stop at Linda’s cousin. On her mother’s side, a brother of her mother Marietta Lumbroso was also called Giacomo Lumbroso: he is no. 3 in our list, and Linda’s uncle. This Giacomo was born in Mahdia around 1847 and died in 1937 in Sousse, also in Tunisia; but since the family claimed to come from Livorno, his death record was also transcribed in Livorno (record no. 98, part II, series C, 1937).

Linda’s mother also had a cousin, yet another Giacomo Lumbroso, our no. 1: born in Tunis in 1828, a merchant in Marseille and consul general of France in Tunis, he married Enrichetta Fiorentino and died in Marseille in 1912. Just to make things easier, this Giacomo Lumbroso had two first cousins with the same name, both Giacomo Lumbroso… one is of course no. 3, seen just above; the other, our no. 2, was born and died in Mahdia (1847-1919) and married a close relative, Giulia Lumbroso (whom we have not studied further, but who is surely related to some other Giacomo Lumbroso…).

In these few lines we have quickly covered numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8.

Another very well-known Giacomo Lumbroso is no. 7, Baron Giacomo Lumbroso (1844-1925), historian and Hellenist, archaeologist and university professor, born at Le Bardo in Tunisia and died in Santa Margherita Ligure. He was the son of the Bey’s physician, Abraham Lumbroso, and of Ester or Emilia Costa; his paternal grandparents were Isaac Vita Lumbroso and Myriam Costa, mentioned above, so he was also a nephew of no. 1 as well as a cousin of no. 4.

Numbers 5 and 9 have not yet been studied in depth. They are Giacomo Lumbroso, an eye doctor born in Tunis in 1899 (no. 5), who graduated in Cagliari and worked in Rome, and a Giacomo Lumbroso (no. 9, still without dates) who should be the grandfather of Giacomo Lumbroso no. 3. No. 10, Giacomo Lumbroso, known as “Mino”, is a grandson of no. 7, and his name is linked to the Fondazione Marco Besso in Rome.

So, as we have seen… Giacomo Lumbroso who??

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