QUINTINI or QUINTINI PALEOLOGO?

Was Giorgio "Quintini" or "Quintini Palologo"?

Naturally from the strictly legal point of view, Giorgio was born and registered as Giorgio Quintini and so he stayed and that is the name which is on his grave in the cemetery of Ovada in Monferrato, where his remains are today. However, from a very early age he wanted to add the name of his grandmother's ancestors and it seems that in 1960, a year in which he was exhibiting in Florence and had just had his novel published, he was taking steps to do just that.

His 'partner' and adviser in this mission was the unlikely person of Paul-Theodore Paleologue-Crivez, one of the various Byzantine claimants (including Totò) who flourished in the post-war period, but who had an entry into the United Nations and the Vatican and was accepted by the Italian state. There will be more on Crivez in a separate post dealing with Giorgio's more colourful friends. Throughout the 1960s Giorgio was involved with him in various semi-official ways.

Here is a small bundle of letters from the pretender to the Throne of the Orient to Giorgio regarding his adding the name Paleologo to that of Quintini. They start in August 1960 and continue until December, when, probably because of the death of Giorgio's father, Adolfo, in whose name this would have been done, they suddenly stop with a letter of condolences from Crivez. They are but part of a larger collection of letters from Crivez to Giorgio.

As can be seen here, Crivez ends this planned legal document with the suggested name of "Adolfo Quintini Paleologo di Monferrato della Torre di Casale", a rather ridiculous formula Crivez cooked up to avoid offending, he said, his Venetian cousins, who might claim the Monferrato name. It had got to the stage of Crivez drawing up a document in which he, as self-proclaimed but also internationally recognized head of the Paleologue Imperial House, gave his permission to Giorgio to add the name.

When this came to nothing, it did not much matter since he went on addressing Giorgio with a name by which the present writer knew him when on meeting him in 1978, as is clear from this photograph given to him in 1963.

Giorgio appeared on the Roman social scene as Quintini Paleologo, and this surprised his cousins in Venice, as may be seen in this comment by Carlo Paleologo Oriundi, in a letter to Giorgio dated 13th August 1981.

However, Giorgio continued to use the name and used to pull out a letter from Falcone Lucifero, written on behalf of King Umberto II in exile, to establish the use. He filed it under "Riconoscimenti". Here is a copy of the original.

The last page of the Libro della Genealogia della Famiglia Paleologo Oriundi di Monferrato by Arnaldo, Ottorino, Carlo & Andrea Paleologo Oriundi, finishes by stating very clearly that no descendants in the female line use the name of Paleologo. In his annotated and "improved" copy of the book, Giorgio Quintini added a photograph of himself, wrote his name "Giorgio Quintini-Paleologo" underneath and on the page opposite pasted a copy of the Falcone Lucifero letter.

Such things probably matter little to most of us, but they were important to Giorgio and many people knew him with the added name. It also helps to place him in a social, cultural and historical context. This is why the Blog bears his preferred appellation.