1. THE EVENTS
The events our centre is reporting on below are closely connected with the complaint lodged by Prof. Carla Rossi on October 2022 with the Carabinieri TPC (Antiques Protection Command) regarding infringements of two articles of Italian law on Cultural Heritage (Art. 20 co. 1 Codice dei Beni Culturali et Art. 30 co. 3) about a series of Italian manuscripts dismembered for profit by unscrupulous dealers. A second complaint was filed shortly afterwards with the foreign section of the same TPC concerning French and German manuscripts. On 20 December, Prof. Rossi published an article in AboutArtOnline, taking the liberty of referring to her complaint:
(See also :
- https://www.receptioacademic.press/vol6nr1).
Two days after the publication of the article referring to the complaint to the Carabinieri, at Christmas 2022, Peter Kidd, a British blogger, who deals with medieval and Renaissance manuscripts (and as a freelancer, works as a consultant to auction houses, art dealers and collectors), contacted RECEPTIO's generic address and the private address of a Receptio fellow. In his email, Mr. Kidd refers to Rossi's article on the dismemberment of manuscripts and simultaneously accuses Prof. Rossi (who is author of entries for the Treccani encyclopaedia, translator from German for major Italian publishers, and a renowned scholar, a Romance philologist active in codicology and philology since 1998, with original research highly regarded by the entire scientific community - from here you can download a PDF with some of the reviews that have come out about Carla Rossi's books) of plagiarising one of his posts. In what does the accusation consist? Carla Rossi, in her own edition of a dismembered manuscript, a complex and highly original 258-page essay of digital philological reconstruction and historical-artistic analysis of the artefact (https://www.receptioacademic.press/deroucyboh), allegedly 'plagiarised' a total of five lines from a 2019 post by Kidd, in which the blogger presented the position of three saints in a miniature (https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/p/the-courtanvaux-hours.html).
It's Christmas 2022, and after several emails in which Kidd pesters the secretary of our research centre, wanting an apology at all costs, the response he receives is blunt: stop disturbing!
Peter Kidd, perhaps wounded in pride, perhaps moved by more venial motives, turns up the heat on the secretary, claiming that even the image of a miniature recovered by Carla Rossi, through a method of researching the sales of each individual leaves (which also involves requesting material from auction houses and antiquarian galleries) was "stolen" from his blog. Despite the evidence of an e-mail with the miniature received from the German gallery Hartung&Hartung, the blogger does not accept the fact that no apology, as he demanded, is forthcoming from all of us (the secretary, the centre and Carla Rossi) for not mentioning him. For the sake of truth it must be said that, in an article published in August 2022 on the same reconstruction, Carla Rossi, who became aware of Kidd's blog, mentioned him.
Kidd raises his sights even higher and, within a week, tries to discredit and defame the scholar's 30 years of work via the web. Kidd is determined to destroy and humiliate his victim.
Kidd claims that the entire RECEPTIO centre is a fake institution, that it is corrupt, because it would have received 'illicit' funding, and he picks Carla Rossi's pocket (or thinks he does), even publishing the photo of her daughters and claiming that the two girls would have benefited from funds for the publication of that book (the reconstruction of the De Roucy codex) which he deems unworthy, like all the scholar's works. The vileness that Kidd and his associates arrive at is only partially documented at www.receptio.eu/kidd (other material, such as two obituaries written by unknown persons, relating to the alleged death of Carla Rossi, are in the hands of the lawyers). Since Peter Kidd had already visited our research centre's website and the pages on digital reconstructions of dismembered manuscripts back in August 2022, and had become aware of our centre's constant denunciations of the market of dismembered manuscripts for profit, one has to wonder whether the violence of the attacks is not premeditated and planned in every detail. The TPC (and other law enforcement agencies to which the centre has since approached) will ascertain this!
2. #RECEPTIOGATE