A rare copy of an historic letter written by Christopher Columbus, announcing the discovery of the new world, was returned Wednesday to Italy by the United States. One of them, bound in a volume and printed by Stephan Plannck – known as the Plannck II Columbus letter – was kept at Florence’s Riccardiana library.
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The return of the letter, which had been sent to the king and queen of Spain, describing the Italian explorer’s first impressions of the new world, was hailed by USA and Italian officials as a moment to celebrate because of the great historical significance of Columbus’s voyage. In 2012, agents with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) got information that one of those copies had been stolen from Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence and replaced with a forgery.
It was sold at auction by Christie’s in NY for $400,000 in 1992 and then in 2004 bequeathed by a private estate to the Library of Congress in Washington, whose staff had no idea it was stolen. It was finally bequeathed to the Library of Congress in 2004 by the estate of its final owner.
“Five hundred years later, it did the same trip (as Columbus), round-trip”, Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini told a news conference in Rome with the US ambassador by his side to announce the letter’s return.
According to a statement of the Carabinieri art squad, the true value of the letter is estimated at 1 million euros ($1.13 million).
A forged copy of the Christopher Columbus letter (top) and the original version (bottom) were on display Wednesday during a ceremony at Rome’s Biblioteca Angelica, a library that specializes in rare books. “I took possession of all of them for our most fortunate King by making public proclamation and unfurling his standard, no one making any resistance”. Columbus likely drafted the letter while voyaging back to Europe, dating it March 4, 1493, the day he landed in Lisbon.
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The forgery in Florence was discovered after an Italian police unit fighting illegal trafficking of artworks started investigating the theft of books from a library in Rome.
