Over many years of work on the parish and civil registers of Livorno we have often come across well-known figures: artists, publishers, politicians, musicians. And not infrequently we have found that the dates given by encyclopaedias, dictionaries and catalogues do not match those in the original records. Here we gather, in chronological order and with no claim to completeness, a few of these genealogical “crumbs”: corrections, clarifications and the odd curiosity. More will follow.

Hambly Pope (c.1708-1772), translator

An English Catholic (a “papist”) settled in Livorno, he translated many works from English, including George Anson’s Voyage round the World (Livorno, Fantechi, 1756). In 1763 he wrote to David Garrick, sending him his own Italian version of Miss in her teens, which had been performed in Livorno “with some applause”. Library catalogues have him dying in 1785, but the Livorno registers record his death on 7 November 1772; he was buried in San Ferdinando. He married first Maria Rosa Caterina Ciolli, widow of Giuseppe Arnaldo Mornini (she died in 1769), and secondly, on 29 January 1771, Maria Agata Dani.

Giacinto Micali (c.1722-1798), merchant

Born in Venice around 1722, he owned the famous Livorno emporium known as “del Veneziano” (Giacinto Micali e figlio), whose printed catalogues of 1780 and 1789-1793 survive. He died in Livorno on 16 December 1798 (parish of S. Giulia): the entry, however, was written at the beginning of the 1799 register, hence the confusion over the year. He was the grandfather of the archaeologist and historian Giuseppe Micali, baptised in the Collegiata on 20 March 1768 and died in Florence in 1844.

Marco Coltellini (1724-1777) and family

Publisher, poet and librettist, he is often said to have been born in Livorno in 1719: but that is the date of a namesake. Research in the diocesan archives (S. Corrieri, in Nuovi Studi Livornesi) has established that he was born in Montepulciano on 24 May 1724. In Livorno he took over Giovan Paolo Fantechi’s printing house, under the sign “All’insegna della verità”, which in 1764 issued the first edition of Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments. He married Spina Chiaveri on 28 September 1755 and died in Saint Petersburg in November 1777. The press passed to his nephew Giovan Tommaso Masi.

His daughter Celeste Coltellini, the celebrated soprano known as “the Pearl of Naples”, was born in Livorno on 26 November 1760 and baptised in the Collegiata on the 29th. In 1792 she married the banker Jean George Meuricoffre, and she died in Naples in July 1829.

Carlo Lasinio (1759-1838) and his grandson Carlo Verico (1802-1847), engravers

Carlo Lasinio, the engraver who introduced multi-plate colour printing to Italy, was born in Treviso on 10 February 1759 (the Enciclopedia Italiana gives 1757) and died in Pisa on 25 March 1838, not in 1839; he is buried in the Camposanto. His daughter Maria Anna married Antonio Verico: their son Carlo Verico, also an engraver, baptised in Florence on 8 October 1802, settled in Livorno, where he married Maria Teresa Consalvi on 10 August 1826 and died on 18 December 1847. In 1835 his grandfather Lasinio called him to Pisa to assist him.

Filippo Gragnani (1768-1820), composer and guitarist

Son of the luthier Antonio, he was born in Livorno on 3 September 1768 and baptised in the Collegiata the following day. He died on 28 July 1820 and was buried at San Martino a Salviano: the register of deaths gives his age as 52.

Joseph Gott (1785-1860), sculptor

The English sculptor, active mainly in Rome and known for his groups of animals and children, lost his first wife in 1841 and remarried in Livorno on 21 December 1841, to Ann Drew; one of the witnesses was Frederick Thompson. The marriage is recorded both in the civil registers and in the Livorno municipal archive.

Giuseppe Baldini (1807-1876), painter

Giovanni Fattori’s first teacher was born in Livorno on 4 January 1807 and baptised on the 5th: Comanducci gives the baptism date as his date of birth. He married Angiola Baluganti in November 1836.

Nino Bixio (1821-1873)

The Garibaldian general married twice. Having been widowed, he entered his second marriage in Livorno itself, marrying his niece Adelaide Parodi on 11 January 1855 (entry no. 5, parish of the Cathedral).

Ernesto Rossi (1827-1896), actor

The great tragic actor is often said to have been born on 27 March 1827, but the birth register (entry 519, parish of S. Sebastiano) gives 27 February 1827. This is also the date he himself indicates in his Studii drammatici e lettere autobiografiche. He died in Pescara on 4 June 1896.

If you have information, documents or corrections about any of these people, do write to us: the Zibaldone is a work in progress.