ROOTS - paternal grandmother IDA QUINTINI PALEOLOGO

IDA ORIUNDI or, as Giorgio preferred, IDA PALEOLOGO or IDA QUINTINI PALEOLOGO was born in Ancona on 5th February 1854. In 1876 she married ACHILLE QUINTINI from Ancona. IDA was left a widow early with five children, some of whom would look after the young Giorgio when his mother died in 1934.
IDA's family claimed descent from the Paleologo di Monferrato branch of the ruling family of Byzantium. This was not a newly found idea but was based upon solid family tradition and documentary evidence of old. They had even laid claim at the Congress of Vienna. Thus Ida's son was brought up with Paleologo blood but also long and deeply ingrained family traditions. Giorgio inherited all of this and spent years, time and money on historical research into his family.
His grandmother died in 1927.

This portrait always stood in his sitting room.

Here is an article written by Giorgio when, in old age, he was living in Monferrato. It was published in URBS N° 1, XVIII, 2005, pp.75-76. http://accademiaurbense.it/urbs.htm . It is about the history of his family and the first page has a photograph of his grandmother, IDA QUINTINI PALEOLOGO.

Over the years Giorgio constructed innumerable genealogical trees and I have a very large quantity of them in manuscript, of various sizes. He also spent a great deal of time writing and rewriting a definitive history of his Paleologo di Monferrato family, which he hoped to publish. This has been left in many versions but it was completed and a final typescript with his manuscript additions exists. To some extent he was pipped to the post by his Venetian cousins,  Arnaldo, Ottorino, Carlo and Andrea Paleologo Oriundi di Monferrato, with their privately printed Libro della Genealogia della Famiglia Paleologo Oriundi di Monferrato (Venezia 1975-Ciampino 2007). Giorgio's copiously annotated and "improved" edition still exists (both his bookplate and full signature shown in the first post on this blog are taken from his copy).

This is his proposed title page for his own work.

In 1985 two researchers on the fringes of European nobility genealogical research published a handbook to diverse families which claimed descent in one way or another from the last reigning family of the Byzantine Empire. Giorgio Quintini provided help with the Paleologo di Monferrato branch (his handwriting is recognisable on the last page of their entry) but when the book was finally published he was horrified to find it was "full of impostors". The authors took no critical position regarding the various families but simply recorded what these claimed and it is true that some of those claims do seem frankly ridiculous. Nevertheless, the three pages here give a skeleton genealogy of Giorgio's branch for those interested in such matters.

N.B. The legal battle to add the name of Paleologo to that which they had born for a long time (Oriundi) was won three years before Giorgio Quintini was born. However, the line from Luciano did not add the surname as there were no male heirs; only the junior Venetian line, which brought the court case, has the name as an official addition. Nevertheless, the Quintini family, proud of the descent, used the extra name socially and although Giorgio continued to use just Quintini as a writer and artist, like his father, his cards were printed with the crown of an Italian Marquis and with either "dei Paleologo" or just "Paleologo" following Quintini. He was the last of his line and never married, so there are no descendants to continue this tradition.