The Beauty of the Book: Giorgio Mangani
His books are masterpieces of resistance aimed at overturning the slippery slope into which the publishing sector is sliding today, while he tries with true grace to tell us about a region that I feel is perpetually balanced between a spirit of dejection and that of exaltation.
His characters do not follow the flow of easy narration, his editorial work (which is also the name of the publishing house he directs) is a work of proactive historical research, with encouraging results for all those who feel they can say something different from the rampant single-track thinking.
His are books of meaning, I dare say sensual therefore, which direct us towards an idea of the region that is no longer abstract to the point of sometimes causing a vague sense of bewilderment, but concrete and cohesive in representing that interior landscape that inhabits our soul, similar to the flowing of the hills.
And it is in this mood that his characters express themselves, in the ups and downs of their existence, giving voice to that spirit that is present in all of us from the Marche.
I decide to visit him at his publishing house in the historic center of Ancona. He welcomes me with a friendly atmosphere, and I feel I can ask him all my questions calmly, with that usual curiosity that characterizes me.
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Lorenza Cappanera: At what age did you found the publishing house Il Lavoro Editoriale?
Giorgio Mangani: I was 24 years old and finished university, with three of my schoolmates we
started our publishing house.
LC What year are we in?
GM It was 1980. At first in a somewhat hobbyist way, then in '85 we set up
an LLC and from there we decided to do it as a job. I also continued
to do other things, like teaching at the university for twenty years.
LC Where exactly?
GMI have taught at various universities: Ancona, Urbino, Milan, Iulm, Bologna.
The subject was: Cultural Geography.
LC Cultural geography? Can you explain it to me?
GM The qualification is in economic and political geography so let's say that my
The subject has always been that of culture linked to places. Even
Architecture of Bologna in the Cesena branch, I taught Geography of the
landscape. I retired in 2023.
Always in the cultural field I have been Director of the Museum System of the
province of Ancona for about fifteen years, whose project was born
from the association of various local bodies through which it was managed in a
cooperative the various small museums, which generally never have much
staff and resources.
LC Was the museum system on a provincial basis?
GM Yes. There was one in Macerata and another in Ancona. They wanted to do it in Pesaro and
Urbino, but then they abolished the provinces and the jurisdiction passed to the
Region. Municipalities have it, but only within municipal areas. The Region
contributes with funding.
And in any case my story coincides with the attempt to have this region recognized
as an area with its own specific and integrated culture, which is difficult
because every 15 km everything changes: a cultural biodiversity that enriches
but which is also an obstacle to a cooperative project.
My way of doing politics has been this: not to be a member of the parties, but
build relationships between cities, provinces, and territories. For a while
the situation has improved, certain books have had some functions: for example in 1989 we had
published “The idea of the Marche”, which had a great success, reaching
in its third reprint.
At some point it became the book that everyone who had to study studied.
take the regional exams where there was a little question about the Marche region and
on regional culture. The students studied it because it gave them an idea
of the themes.
LC What was this idea of the Marche?
GM There were several authors who talked about art, how it is expressed
concept of the Marche in literature, anthropology, even
in physical anthropology. There were various typifications, characterizations.
Leopardi was mentioned, a poet characterized by melancholy and was
out a contamination with the idea of the melancholic Marche. In
newspapers of the time in which the Marche region was represented little
combative, that is, a body docile even in relation to power.
A summary, an analysis of the characteristics of this region.
LC And which typing won?
GM In the end, especially thanks to the Merloni metal sharecropper, he won
model of the hard-working Marche native who before the Unification was thought
on the contrary. A model brought by the Piedmontese, who, as they say, has
taken root.
LC And on the coast? In Ancona there were no industries, but trade.
maritime…..
GM The whole economy was maritime. We were almost like Antwerp in the
14th-15th centuries.
The merchants from Ancona had offices in the ports of Smyrna, in Türkiye
and in Constantinople they were at home. I did some research and it seems that in
In the fifteenth century there was a neighborhood in Genoa called Ancona which was
the place where the people of Ancona lived because the Ligurian city was their ally
main against the common adversary Venice which was trying to prevent its
trade.
A model later replicated by the English in the eighteenth century. The monopoly was not
based on laws or economic oppression but directly on
naval military force.
At that time, the people of Ancona had warehouses like Venice. The houses had
under the spice warehouse, of the goods they produced. So there is
There was a time when Ancona was truly flourishing, the fifteenth century was
the liveliest century.
LC And according to her, Ancona enjoyed its own independence, not only economically but also
thought?
GM Probably yes, in terms of thought, even if it wasn't a center that cultivated
particularly culture, that is, the originality of thought. Because as a
Venice political control was very strong, but let's say within that
paradigm there was a certain capacity for an economic vision and
commercial. In Venice it wasn't that different, only that there were people who then had
an enormous wealth.
LC Well, there were also printers.
GM It was a commercial culture, not a cultural one. They printed to sell.
LC Even if they had an academy and spoke only Greek there, like Manutius?
GM They also had a vision of development. Ancona a little less, but it was still
also a place of visionary merchants like Ciriaco Pizzecolli who invented
the art trade. Humanism arrived thanks to him.
He donated, financed by Cardinal Bessarion, documents, jewels, sculptures to
monarchs, to great personalities. Bessarion supported him because he wanted
to build an alliance against the Turks, among the leaders who were in the
areas of the Ionian and Aegean Sea.
Then Ciriaco saw that the mechanism worked and that many were also
willing to buy them and so he built a market and stocked these
materials in Ancona and then resold them.
He later became a curator of gem collections for some
cardinal and other important figures. He later became an antiques dealer.
LC He was also a very good draftsman.
GM He drew well. The first things that arrived here in the West were
He brought the Greek monuments.
LC What happened to most of these drawings?
GM They disappeared, it is said that they ended up in a fire in the fifteenth century
of the Sforza library in Pesaro. They probably ended up
in the Neapolitan environment since his family was originally from Naples and he was there
he returned often.
LC The people of Ancona are really unlucky because with the drawings of Ciriaco Pizzecolli, those that remain are
beautiful, you could even make copies and set up an exhibition.
GM I have proposed several times with different municipal administrations to do
a major exhibition on Cyriacus, in Ancona and in Greece in Athens. I also have a
my friend who has been at the National Research Center in Athens for many years.
There was also the funding, then the arrival of Covid…..
LC But is it a dead project or can it be revived?
GM If someone wants to put it back on its feet we are ready, but we have to do an exhibition
Today it really costs a lot. After all, when I was an assessor for
culture of the Municipality of Ancona and the president of the Mole Vanvitelliana,
We have launched a season of major exhibitions: Trajan at the borders
of the Empire, on the artist Cucchi, the millennium of San Ciriaco.
LC An exhibition on Ciriaco Pizzecolli with a connection to Delos would be wonderful.
GM In Ancona I attended the classical high school which is named after Carlo Rinaldini
who is a mathematician and is not even a classicist by the way
famous. Let's say: Pizzecolli is the founder of antiquarian sciences and world archaeology.
and we in Ancona don't even consider it.
LC His book on the two Ciriachis from Ancona who have in common the fact that they are not
known is very nice. Ciriaco was wanted as an international figure, a
Roman, oriental character. Beautiful.
GM Absolutely yes. Ciriaco Pizzecolli travels among the big merchants.
of the Aegean, some of them Genoese, some Venetian and French. It remains
months at the court of the king of Epirus, becomes his friend and relative and convinces
the Court to make an alliance between them under the aegis of the Pope to go
against the Turks. Some of these great patricians were already citizens
of the Turkish Empire, paid taxes and had a turnover equal to one
State. They were families who controlled ports, military bases, they had some
small armies, they were militarized traders who held the
territory, administered justice. Cyriacus proposes an alliance saying
that when the time comes we will have to fight for freedom from the Turks.
It's been two years of travel. Check out the infrastructure that will be needed in
a future war. Contact Venice to have the Isthmus of Corinth repaired. A
way that could be useful in times of war. In doing this he stops at
see the classical places, described by Homer, by the great historians and geographers
Greeks.
He collects documents, bringing back drawings or gems to kings, bankers,
to demonstrate that our cultural identity is Western, and there it is
his treasure, his repertoire, the real documentation.
This idea of the West that we defend was born in Greece, it
literally invented Bessarion, as a tool
propaganda to convince the West to finance a campaign
military that saved the Byzantine Empire and Cyriacus interprets, as
agent, as the Cardinal's agent, this strategy. Because he
replaces the power of Christian relics with pagan relics.
The narrative is that of Western identity in Greece which replaces
the narrative of religious faith. And thus Humanism was born in the West.
because everyone is starting to appreciate this kind of culture. The countryside is
will do, with a negative outcome, but in the long run the ideas of Bessarion and
Cyriacus consolidates in the West.
LC A cultural model is introduced from scratch, in practice.
But returning instead to the Marche, therefore to the
Piceni: it's thanks to them that we are the region of a thousand bell towers, right?
These multi-coloured and multi-form villages scattered on the hills: why don't the Piceni
They loved living in the city. What do they call it? Synoecism.
GM The pre-Roman Italic populations adopted this paradigm of living
in small villages.
The Etruscans and the Romans were different, so much so that they were linked to a
different legal institution, because inside the walls there was a law and outside
there was another wall.
The two brothers Romulus and Remus kill each other because one of them crossed the limes,
because the narrative in this case must be based on the fact that there is a
legal regime within the city and a legal regime outside the city.
Outside, the father, in short the owner of the Ager, was acting as if he were a
bad weather, a bit like a proconsul or the captain of a ship. Inside
the city the system was more mediated by institutions, counterweights, even if
the pater familias theoretically had the power of life and death within the house
Death.
LCSo we are no longer Piceni?
GM The Italian tradition is to live in villages in a distributed manner,
an attitude that the Germans themselves have. It is a tradition
very different from the Greek, Etruscan and Roman urban model. In short, the
widespread model probably remained, now think that there is a
I don't know about continuity from the Piceni to us, but it's certainly a model
that the Romans tried to counteract. There is an emblematic book of the
English on the effect of anguish that struck populations in the ancient world
locals on the anxiety of losing the village, the village:
Laurence Ray, Joanne Berry, edited
Cultural identity in the Roman Empire, London and New York, Routledge, 1998
in particular Capt. K. Lomas, Roman imperialism and the city in Italy, pp 64-78
GM Ruralism in the Marche region is more recent, in our country the countryside and the farm have
shaped our cultural tradition, so much so that in the 1980s I
a book on ruralism written by an Irishman has been published.
In those years there were three of us in the publishing house and we did a lot
other hits. Between '85 and '90 we also began to publish texts of
literature, not just history books related to banks. At that time
some writers were from the Marche region and some from outside.
This activity had its explosion in the nineties, but there was a
six or seven years of intense work that have created the basis, with lucky attempts
and even with some operations gone wrong. In Italian literature
there were important writers and there was no space for young debutants.
all the more reason to try..
With Pier Vittorio Tondellic, who became our friend, we started to
collaborate.
We set up the series called Under 25 which he published
every year a collection of young short story writers who had in fact
less than twenty-five years old. It was a great success.
And then there is “Jack Frusciante left the group" that of Henry Brizzi that has
sold millions of copies, forty translations in all languages, including a
film. At a certain point we sold the rights to Baldini & Castoldi because
we were not able to keep up with the distribution, the reprinting that
they were frenetic and even with daily rhythms.
From '94 to '98 I was the councillor for culture of the municipality for which I am
I missed four years and there was this problem too.
So we decided to sell as a brand also TransEurope and I am
left with Editorial Work.
LCWhat does the publishing house mainly do now?
GM When you develop a product you have to accentuate it, like the
brand characterization, so I further accentuated the
characterization of the Marche region with books, exhibition catalogues, books on
proverbs, local history. Still continuing to work on the construction
of this regional culture.
But of course regional culture also needs policies
public that go in that direction and the Banca delle Marche was doing the
books with the publishers in Milan and I said to build a project. Instead
they made these "chests" that were used to stop the doors, quite
useless. The language used was specific and elitist, while the diffusions
they were important even of fifty thousand copies. So then in the end even those who
maybe he would receive the book and could even browse through it, read a little,
there were the figures, in short he could be captured, then on the third page he
he left it there and these books ended up in the dashboards of cars and in the
waiting offices.
LC Never opened in short
GM Exactly. I mean that even those funds, which were many, and those books, which
in many cases they were the Christmas book, they could also offer the opportunity to
to establish a more cultural initiative. Years later I proposed to resume these
materials and to make them into cheap editions, the four-hundred-page chests
they could also be summarized, there were different topics, do things
from fifteen euros. But the idea didn't get through, because these worlds saw the book
like a fetish or like chocolates to give as Christmas presents.
LC What future is there for publishing then? I see there is, meanwhile there has been
all the exploring of the ebook, right?
GM Well, the paper version remains because it helps with memorization.
While these pages under glass are all the same, they do not create a
similar memory mechanism and I also see young people
which come back a little to the subject.
For now, even the paper version works, on the other hand, I do a certain type
of books.
LC very beautiful too…
GM Yes, being books on topics related to the Marche with an audience of people
grew, let's say as a niche, in the 80s and 90s. I could say that the
I could send Christmas greetings to readers, in the sense that I had them
identified as a typology. Many were professionals and were people who
He wanted, like collectors, to have them all. He was a reader.
particular…thinking that I would probably die soon, like home
I mean, publisher, they wanted to do it like the stamp collection.
LC But did he finally succeed in doing so, in connecting all the cultural realities?
That is, what role did your publishing house have in this sense?
GM I can't support the counterfactual, because if I hadn't been there
we should know how it would have gone, but if there is a little attention
for a region in its complexity it is also for our work and the
our initiatives carried out throughout our publishing history and something is
remained.
When I started this work, books didn't analyze the specifics.
I'm interested in knowing how the concepts were introduced in the Marche and
are developed. It doesn't matter as a phenomenon in general but if I talk about
classicism I would like to know how this has influenced our
architecture. A narrative that can escape an editor who does not experience it
Marche and it's not from here.
LC Of all the books you have written and edited, which is your favorite?
GM Surely the palmiro di Luigi di Ruscio it is one of the most beautiful and most
funny ones we've published. It's a truly lively book, worth rereading.
even now. Then certainly Silvia Ballestra who then made a career with
Feltrinelli, certainly Henry Brizzi, even though he was from Bologna.
Then we did the History of the cuisine of the Marche region who won the
second prize in 2010, as the best book in the world out of one hundred and sixty countries.
We went to Paris to get the prize. That big book that financed the
Region covering the costs, this is to say that the public could do
a lot in the book industry. We have sold all the copies and now we would like to
reprint it in a paperback edition.
LC Also the book on Gerardo Cibo, amateur botanist and landscape painter.
GM The interesting thing is that Cibo was a botanist, alchemist and physician who
he made medicines.
The Cibo family were essentially Protestants, they see the Marche as a
popular religiosity and therefore represent, according to the Dutch model,
this religiosity and portray it in beautiful paintings. And then there is the
landscape of the Marche region in the sixteenth century, almost a snapshot.
LC No, but this is a fabulous idea, I mean…
GM ……Everyone who wandered with a naturalistic gaze in the Marche region
Five hundred, nice, isn't it?
LC Truly beautiful. It makes me think: if he managed to sell this book on Gerardo Cibo, which is certainly not cheap, it means there's hope for the future of publishing. Even in the Marche region.
And this gives me enormous pleasure.
Thank you for this interview.
GM Thanks to her.
